The plot of land where Elmleigh now stands was originally a piece of land attached to Norton Farm until the house was built by Bernard and Mary Elizabeth (Molly) Marston in 1950. The house stands on Wainlode Lane, towards the Green from Norton Farm.
Bernard Minett Marston was born in 1928, son of Sidney F Marston and Marjorie nee Minett and married Mary Elizabeth Lifely at Tibberton in 1950 and originally they lived at Norton Farm before building and moving to Elmleigh.
The following account has been extracted from a book written by Molly Marston entitled “Through all the Changing Scenes of Life”. Molly married Bernard Marston whose parents had owned Norton Farm for many years through the early to mid-1900s and originally they also lived at the farm before building and moving to Elmleigh.
“At this stage we decided to increase our family and so needed a house of our own after sharing for so many years. We had a house built next to the farm in front of the orchard facing the road. Soon after this Claire, our second daughter, was born. Robert was now aged seven and Suzanne was five. Seventeen months after our second son Christopher arrived. This kept me very busy with four small children to care for. There were no nursery schools then or playgroups to attend. When they were old enough to attend school they arrived home quite exhausted by the end of the day. It was a very lovely life for them to grow up in the country, there was so much to do. At the time of haymaking we all shared picnics with their daddy in the fields enjoying the lovely open air. This we did also at the corn harvesting of the crops of wheat. The children would help me to feed the stock also to pick up the fruit. We had a very large vegetable garden at the rear of the house this supplied us with all our needs. We were in fact the early pioneers of organic farming methods using the natural manure from horses and cattle to fertilise the land. The dung heap would stand in a pile to rot down to nature and then it was ploughed back onto the land, some we used in the garden to enrich it. We did not own a fridge or freezer as they were not on the open market then but we always had plenty of fresh food every day. We made great use of all that was available and learnt how to make things stretch a long way. Whenever I had a bacon joint given to me, when I had my weekly grocery order delivered, I boiled it down with many vegetables then it became useful for sandwiches to use during the week. The order was given to the deliveryman for the following week this gave him time to pack it for us. Most people living in the country had to do this each week. There were no supermarkets then, these were all small grocery businesses, families would all work together to pack up the orders for outlying districts such as ours. This was the way most self-employed people worked as one unit together, each having his own responsibility, as much as the way we worked together as a team in farming families all over the country. It was heartbreaking for us to be informed by the Post Office that Bernard’s mother had decided to sell the farm. After a lifetime of living there, he was devastated. We had spent eleven happy years there. We had actually built our house on the farm and our children had been born there. They attended school in the village when old enough and they had all been baptised at the village church. My husband had continued to farm there for about three years after his father’s death, running it on behalf of his mother. Once again we had to move. We would like to have purchased it but did not have sufficient capital for this large amount. Mum-in-law refused to rent it to us.”
Elmleigh first appears in village records in 1954. Bernard and Molly Marston left Elmleigh after Norton Farm was sold by auction in 1961.
The next residents were Eric Gray Pringle and Patricia Ann nee Baker who had married at Prestbury, Cheltenham, in 1959 and who were here till at least 1966 and I suspect longer.
In 1985 Michael P and Marian Kane were here.