Michael Evans, the owner of Chobham Park, commissioned an historical survey by Peter Bushel & Sara Van Loock of the house and the lives of its previous inhabitants.  It included an interesting description of rural life on a typical gentleman farmer's estate:

Like all farmhouses, Chobham Park House would have been divided into two areas - one for service, one for living. The former would have included rooms for brewing, dairying and laundering. At the very least, the latter would have been represented by a parlour - used on high days and holidays, and for funerals. Bridging the two and serving as the chief focus for the house would have been the kitchen where, sooner or later, all occupants met. The furniture here would have embodied the spirit of Cobbett’s ‘plain manners’ - simple and functional, the product of the village joiner, working to local traditions. Styles scarcely changed. Only the increased use of imported deal in place of native oak, ash and elm distinguished newer articles.

Certain items were basic to all farmhouse kitchens: a robust long table, for example, large enough to seat all the household. Chairs of ladderback or spindle back were common, as were Windsor chairs. Alternative seating was provided by the settle, which was invariably placed beside the kitchen fire, where its back served as a screen against the scything draughts drawn up the chimney. Another essential item was the kitchen dresser, loaded with earthenware such as Staffordshire, which by the Daborns’ day had replaced the pewter of an earlier age.

If you had asked John Daborn for a glass of water in the middle years of the 19^th century he would have drawn it for you from the well. It would have been good fresh sparkling water, but there was of course no mains supply and no taps to turn on.

At night the farmhouse would have been lit by candles, and from about 1850 by paraffin lamps. The candle provided a beautiful mellow light, soft and golden, but not by modern standards a very bright one. Consequently the Daborns would have tended to go to bed soon after it got dark. This practice probably accounted for the large number of children they produced. ‘Early to bed’ was the accepted rule of our village forefathers. By eight o’clock on a winter’s night it would have been unusual to find anyone astir. This was natural in a place where the only means of lighting at night was tallow ‘dips’ or rushlights. Latterly, candles and oil-lamps were employed to ‘make darkness visible’. To sit by the dying embers of the fire, without light enough to see, might be good enough to talk by, and that was when old tales were related and memories of the past recalled, but when work beckoned at first light, it was more comfortable - and more sensible - to get to bed. The old oil lamps were, in fact, steadily improved, but when electricity finally came in the 1930s, the village quite literally passed out of the ‘dark ages’.

Ann Daborn was responsible for the making of butter, cheese and clotted cream, and for the smoking and curing of meats. In what little spare time he enjoyed, her husband and his young sons would have set their rabbit traps or gone after duck, partridge or pheasant - anything for the pot.

John Daborn’s life was a busy one. We know that he employed a carter, who was responsible for looking after the horses, and a cowman to tend the cattle. The cowman took the animals to pasture, brought them in for milking at 5.30 a.m. and again at 2 p.m., milking them by hand. According to Richard Jefferies, writing in 1872, ‘the commonday labourer receives 10-12 shillings a week [about £25] and if he milks a shilling more’.

Daborn’s life at Chobham Park House was ruled by the seasons - the measured procession from one harvest to the next which determined the farm’s routine. Once the autumn harvest was gathered in - later then than now - ploughing would begin. By the middle of October, Daborn would have sown his winter corn. In January his men would have spread manure on the unploughed fields, and the corn of the autumn harvest would have been threshed - a great event. February was a quiet month, known as ‘February Fill-Dyke’ on account of the high rainfall. It was also the month for hedging and ditching, when the men were kept busy trimming, cutting and burning. In March grain was sown, and in April root crops for cattle-food.

With the coming of the warmer weather, and the luscious grass of May and June, the happy and fragrant days of haymaking began, the most evocative of the year. During hay-time the fields smelled delicious and the village children who were sent out to deliver their fathers’ ‘fourses’ - or tea - would stay to play in the hay, hiding in it, tossing it about and enjoying its warmth and smell. In June, when the hedges began to sprout new, tall green growth, the men were put on hedge-trimming again; and in July John Daborn’s mind would have turned once more to the corn harvest and the likely success of his crops. Soon August came and all hands were in the fields. There was extra money then both for Daborn’s regular workers and those he borrowed from other farmers, all of whom worked until the daylight faded. The corn harvest would have been cut by scythe or perhaps with the aid of a horse-drawn machine. Labour was cheap and three good men using scythes could cut ten acres of wheat if they worked from dawn to dusk. The days of harvest were in some respects the most memorable of the year. The work was hard and had to be done quickly; but there were rest times at ‘elevenses’ and at ‘fourses’, when the men would lie in the shade of the trees and quench great thirsts with cold tea or beer, and eat heartily to ‘stoke up’ for the next spell of work.

John Daborn was not only a farmer. He had also to be his own salesman. Most of what he produced - wheat, barley, beans and oats - found its way to the local markets. He would have taken a sample of his grain in a small cloth bag to show the dealers and the factors of the Corn Exchange - the middle-men of the agricultural world. On the strength of that sample the factors would have offered a price for the entire crop lying in sacks back at the farm. The first price was never accepted and some hard bargaining would have ensued. Corn was sold on to the miller, barley to the brewers, oats to the porridge-makers and manufacturers of cattle-feed. Livestock went to market on a separate day.

When all was gathered in, John Daborn would have provided his workers with a harvest supper by way of thanks. The Harvest Home was the crown of the year, but there were other farm feasts also: the pancake supper for the shepherd and his helpers after lambing; the plum-pudding supper for the carter and his boys to celebrate the end of spring-sowing; and the Whitsuntide Supper, attended by every one. Additionally, the women and the girls had a hay-tea at the end of hay-making each year.

John Daborn would have rendered up his thanks for his harvest to God in the church - the church which he served many years as a churchwarden. He was prominent in the conduct of vestry meetings, which until 1894 had final authority in all parish matters, including the election of constables, overseers and surveyors. As a churchwarden he retained the ancient power of arrest.

John Daborn was also an Overseer of the Poor, another important village office. One aspect of this was to enforce the Settlement Act of 1697, whereby strangers were allowed to enter a parish only if they held a certificate to show that in the event of their becoming destitute they would be taken back by their own parish. As a punishment for disobeying this instruction, paupers and their families were forced to wear a capital ‘P’ on their clothing. Mild offences against the Poor Law were purged by a spell in the village stocks. Serious offenders were liable to imprisonment with hard labour.

Daborn’s other function was the collection of the Poor Rate. This was levied on the property owners of a parish by two men appointed each year to be Overseers of the Poor at the vestry meeting. The money raised in this way was used to assist the elderly, the infirm and the unfortunate - when poor harvests sent up the price of grain or epidemics caused much illness. It was there to assist those thrown out of work by the increased use of farm machinery or by soldiers rendered redundant by the return of peace. By and large it was an efficient and humane system run by overseers such as John Daborn with care and competence. It suited the smaller communities nestling in the countryside. It could not cope with the vast numbers of poor in the newly industrialised towns, for whose benefit the workhouses were introduced after 1834.

John Daborn died about 1869, at which date he would have been about seventy-six years of age. In 1871 his widow, Ann, was running the farm of two hundred and twenty acres with her son, Frederick, and with the assistance of ten men and six boys. She seems to have sat at the head of a very labour-intensive operation because in an era which saw the increased use of mechanisation, she employed a workforce almost twice that previously employed by her husband in order to farm five acres less.

The following description of the lives of labouring people is extracted from Joy Mason's book "CEBBA'S HAM; THE STORY OF CHOBHAM".

The labouring people lived in single-storey, one-roomed cottages. They were mud or turf walled and rough thatched. In 1890 Stanley Alder in his book Work among the Gipsies, describes just such a cottage at West End: 'Harry Elston or 'Old Harry' as he was commonly called, was the occupier of this hut, built by himself some 28 years ago. From its peculiar size and shape no one would have suspected that it was built for a man and his wife. It was twelve feet long by six feet wide. On entering, to the right was the bedstead reaching from side to side, with coarse thatch just above it. Opposite the narrow door was one chair and a table upon which were neatly placed the cups, plates, a few books etc. To the left the hut narrowed off to form an open fire-place. This end was made of layers of clay three feet thick at the bottom and rising to the level of the roof, the rest of the walls were made of layers of turf cut from the neighbouring common. At this end of the house 1 found the old man and his wife on my first visit sitting by the fire on the hearth ... There was no window to the hut, and the door being closed I was asked to sit in front of the fire-place to read. The light coming through the hole by which the smoke went threw a little light on the sacred pages.'