Farm, Bordesley

Farm is an historic estate within the former manor of Bordesley, now situated in the area of Sparkbrook, a suburb of the city of Birmingham, England. It has been described as the "focal point in family mythology" for the prominent and wide-spread Lloyd family, Quakers, iron producers and founders of Lloyds Bank.

The former 56-acre "Owen's Farm" with an Elizabethan farmhouse in the manor of Bordesley, now in the locality of Sparkbrook, was purchased in 1742 by Sampson II Lloyd (1699 - 1779) of nearby Edgbaston Street, Birmingham, an iron-master who later in 1765 co-founded Lloyds Bank. He was descended from the ancient family of Lloyd of Dolobran Hall in Montgomeryshire (now Powys) in Wales. He retained the Tudor farmhouse and built near it "Farm" an eponymous mansion house, which survives as a grade II* listed building known today as "Lloyd's Farmhouse, Farm Park, 139 Sampson Road, Birmingham", one of the most important of the rare surviving Georgian buildings in the city of Birmingham. An English Heritage blue plaque is affixed to the building.

The original "Owen's Farmhouse" still stood in the grounds of the Georgian house in 1907, "a very beautiful piece of Tudor architecture", possibly then the oldest house in Birmingham. Lloyd spent most of his time in his large town house in Edgbaston Street, Birmingham, returning to Farm, his rural retreat, at weekends. Over time the location became unfashionable and surrounded by housing, and the family moved to Edgbaston Grove, a home in a more fashionable location. Farm was donated to the City in the 1920s by John Henry Lloyd (1855-1944), of Egbaston Grove, Birmingham, Lord Mayor of Birmingham in 1901-1902 (only son of George Braithwaite Lloyd (1824-1903) by his wife Mary Hutchinson) and the grounds laid out as a public park. One of his four sons, Alan Scrivener Lloyd (d.1916), MC, broke the family tradition of pacifism and was killed in action at Ypres in World War I. It is now a regional home for the Bromford Housing Group. "Farm Park" (bounded by Sampson Road, Kendall Road, Dolobran Road and a row of terraces on Dearman Road (all names connected with the Lloyd family)) within which "Farm House" stands today, is a public park consisting of part of the former grounds of the mansion, surrounded by a densely built urban landscape, referred to now as "The Capital of British Pakistan" and the centre of Birmingham's "Balti Triangle".

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