fox farm

The Whitgift Foundation owned the Fox Farm for many years at least from the 17th century.  The area was generally rural in nature 

with  the Fox Farm house being located where now the junction between Westhill and Essenden Roads exists

In 1898 the land ownership in the area looked like this:

In the early 1900s, Croham Hurst was more open than it is today and was a very popular location for day trips and picnics. When the Whitgift Foundation proposed to sell it off for development, a massive local appeal and public outcry emerged resulting in the Hurst coming under ownership of the Corporation of Croydon.

With the coming of the railway station and a massive demand for housing land, owners started selling off land for development. This started nearest the station and slowly spread towards Croham Hurst.  By the 1920s, the Whitgift lands were now rapidly being approached, and The Whitgift Foundation started the development of the Fox Farm Estate (in pink). The planning of this development had in fact started much earlier, in 1903; the lands needed to be developed in conjunction with the Ellis Davis Almshouse Charity due to the lie of the land determining that many shared services had to pass through Whitgift Land and much needed road access to open up the area had to come via the Ellis Davis lands. By 1926 the sale of plots was in full swing along West Hill and Brambledown Roads; in 1930 the Whitgift Foundation attempted to auction off large plot for development but failed to sell any. The sale of individual plots then continued through to 1938, interrupted by WW2. The building boom coming out of WW2 saw a spike in sales during 1946 and by the end of 1948 the vast majority of the plots with built road access had been sold. Due to administration boundaries, some parts of the Estate fell under the Croydon UDC and the other parts under Purley and Coulsdon UDC. Both councils zoned the estate for residential development, but at slightly different densities.  It would appear that the Whitgift Foundation applied the lower of the two. There was a further pause in activity until the late 1950s

when a large section of the Fox Farm Estate was sold off to AJ Wait to build 200 houses and the row of shops along Elmfield Way; the site of the Ridgeway School was transferred to Surrey County Council. Final plots sales were completed by the early 1960s.