Monument record FNG 002 - West End Farm; Boarded Barn Farm; Adders Hall, High Street Green

Square moat adjoining the S end of High Street Green. Three sides survive water filled, the W side is partly blocked by the existing farmhouse (early C16 with an early C20 brick frontage). The moated island is used partly as a garden and partly as an orchard. Flanking the approach to the house is a large 9-bay double barn (5-bay early C16 barn extended by 4 bays in the C17 and doubled by addition of 9 bays in parallel in C19) with two gabled porches. Fine C19 cattle shelter sheds arranged around a yard. Small round clay lump building with a thatched roof on the outer NE edge of the moat. Has a door but no windows - purpose unknown to present family of occupiers (there since 1919). Possibly an ash-house, of a type more common in the West Country (C19).
Deed of 1656 indicates that this property was then called Adders Hall, but that the holding also contained a tenement called Dadens (S1). The same deed mentions the manor of Finborough Magna alias Ardens alias Adders alias Addens (taking its name from the de Arden family, who held the manor as a knight's fee belonging to the Bishop of Ely's manor of Hitcham in the C13). Property known as Boarded Barn Farm or Finborough Place in the C19, now called West End Farm.
1991: Assessed in advance of grant aid application to de-silt. Fine site with ancient pasture to N, E & S. Details in (S2).
Moat cleaned out early August 1991, believed to have been previously cleaned out in 1920 (S3).