Our story
A working farm above Onecote, longer than anyone living can remember.
Onecote has been recorded by name since 1199, and the farmhouse at Lane Head has stood on this hillside since around 1670 — long before either barn you might be staying in existed. What follows is the real history of the place, as best we know it: the families who farmed it, the barns that came later, and the two of us who look after it now.
The farm before us
1199
The earliest record of Onecote by name — the village Lane Head Farm sits above, on the edge of the Staffordshire Moorlands.
c. 1670
The farmhouse at Lane Head is built, in local stone, on the hillside it still stands on today.
1900
The farm — 142 acres of it — is sold to W. Finney.
1947
The Swindells family buy the farm, in the same hard winter that's still talked about locally. They still farm nearby in Onecote today.
1950s
The Cappers take on the farm.
1970–1987
Dr Martin Dent, a Keele University politics lecturer, farms Lane Head. During these years he founded Jubilee 2000, the campaign that persuaded the world's richest nations to cancel billions in debt owed by the poorest — work he was later awarded an OBE for.
1987
The Clowes family buy the farm. The shippon that's now Morridge View is still a working cattle shed.
2015
Paul and Kate buy Lane Head Farm.
2017–2021
Paul and Kate convert the old shippon into Morridge View over the winter of 2017–18, then Mixon View in 2021 — the two barns as they stand today.
Today
Jason and Angela are the current hosts, continuing what Paul and Kate started.
Lane Head Farm from the air, 1967 — the farmhouse on the right, and the old shippon on the left that later became Morridge View.
There's more to Dr Martin Dent's story than fits here — read the full piece on our journal.
Jason & Angela, today
Between us we've spent over twenty years each in hospitality, and when we took on Lane Head we knew we wanted to keep faith with what Paul and Kate had built — the same farmhouse warmth, the same barns of stone and oak — while adding a few thoughtful touches of our own.
A kitchen garden is going in, an orchard is taking root, and Brownie Heaven — our bakery — has moved onto the farm two doors down, so there's the option of homegrown food and baking treats for guests staying with us. Sheep still graze the fields, dry-stone walls still run out to the moor, and the two barns still look out towards Morridge ridge the way they were built to.
