The extended Atkins Family and Manor Farm, Sutton Benger

Manor Farm, Sutton Benger

Throughout the 1600s, and possibly from the mid-1500s, the Atkins (or Atkyns) family had the lease of Manor Farm in Sutton Benger. They were probably the most important and wealthiest family in the village, and second only to the Longs of Draycot Park in the parish.

Manor Farm was passed down through the male members of the family; at the beginning of the century the farm passed from Leonard Atkins to his sons John and then Richard Atkins; the leaseholder after Richard was his son, Robert Atkins (1607-1671), who held the farm for 33 years. However, Robert’s only son Richard died childless in 1678; as if in a detective story, the family looked for the nearest surviving male relatives.

Fortunately, Robert had several sisters, three of whom had husbands, and who also had sons. However, like any good gothic novel, the bequest of Manor Farm seemed to come with a curse; it seemed as if every time a member of the extended family inherited, then he died young, and that branch of the family also died with him.

Nephew John Rogers, son of Robert’s sister Katherine, died in 1697. Nephew Nathaniel Coleman, son of Robert’s sister Ann, died in about 1700. Nephew Daniel Collins, son of Robert’s sister Bridget, died in 1703.

All three of them seem to have died without marrying or having children. So the lease then went back up and down the family tree, to another female branch of the extended Atkins family: to Ann, the daughter of John Rogers (senior), and her husband Robert Langley. At which point, in 1705, Ann also died, leaving Robert Langley to become the sole tenant of Manor Farm, with his second wife. Katherine Atkins, who died in 1713, was the last member of the Atkins family in Sutton Benger.

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