The yard was later filled in to form a central hall and the existing, rather grander staircase inserted. At the same time, doorways were knocked through from one room to another, to form a single house. This came to be called Field House and was farmhouse to Hampton Field Farm, to which the surrounding fields belonged.
This change had certainly taken place by 1881-2 when the area was first surveyed for the Ordnance Survey, on whose map of 1884 it is marked as Field House and it appears to have the same ground plan as the existing building. But it was also, apparently, a single dwelling in 1839 when the Tithe Map for the parish of Minchinhampton was drawn up because the House and Garden in 'Morris Tyning,' (the name of the field in which Field House stands) is listed in the accompanying schedule as being owned and occupied by John Fowles and there is no indication of it being anything other than an ordinary dwelling.
The building shown on the Tithe Map is different in shape however, and has no outbuildings, which are generally shown on other properties round about if they existed. So it is possible that John Fowles's house was a much smaller building, standing roughly where the range containing the dining room and part of the sitting room is now, with the well-made cellars underneath and these would indicate that it was even at this time something more than a humble cottage.
To this, in the 1840s perhaps, two wings were added and at the same time the original house was divided into two further dwellings but for what purpose, charitable or industrial, remains a mystery - although with the weaving industry long being a main income producer in this area, it could have been connected with that in some way. Whatever they were, within a generation these small dwellings were no longer required and the transformation into Field House was carried out.
There is a tradition that a building has stood on the site of Field House for several centuries and that the vaulted cellars are all that remain of it. This seems not to have been the case, however, because on another map of the parish of Minchinhampton, drawn in 1803, no houses at all are marked in the area, only fields. The only houses in the immediate area to have existed at this date are Crackstone Farm and Peaches Farm, slightly to the north of Hampton Fields, and Aston Farm to the south-east, in the neighbouring parish of Avening. The reason for a hamlet growing up here soon afterwards lies partly in the history of agriculture at this period and partly in the history of the manor of Minchinhampton itself.
The Fowles family seem to have bought several plots of land at Hampton Fields since three others of that name appear on the Schedule besides John Fowles, although he is the only one to both own and occupy his property. A Trade Directory of 1876 lists members of the same family as tailors and bakers in Minchinhampton, so it may be that they were simply investing in the land as a sideline and were not farmers themselves. A Miss Fowles still owned a field to the north of Field House in 1919.
At some date after the Tithe Map Survey of 1839 and before 1890 a change of ownership had taken place however. In 1890 Hampton Field Farm, with other lands, was inherited by George Hoole Lowsley Williams, of Chavenage House near Tetbury, from his great-aunt Miss Harriet Lowsley. The Lowsley family had owned land in the area from the late 18th century, when Joseph Lowsley bought Aston Farm, consisting of 987 acres in the parishes of Avening and Minchinhampton. It had once been part of the Manor of Avening, but had been sold in the 17th century to the Drivers, who had already been tenants there for over a hundred years and who sold it on themselves in the 18th century. The northern boundary of Aston Farm touches Hampton Field at Gillhays Bottom. The Lowsleys subsequently bought Lowesmore as well, which had once been in the same estate as Aston. According to the family pedigree they also owned land in the parishes of Saperton, Frampton Mansell and Tarleton, in addition to Mugmore House to the west of Minchinhampton.
All this property was inherited on the death their father John by Joseph’s grand-daughters, Harriet and Mary Lowsley. Of the two sisters, only Mary married, and George Lowsley Williams was her grandson. When, on Harriet’s death, he inherited her property as well, the divided Lowsley estates were reunited and joined to that of Chavenage, which had been bought by his parents in 1891 from the heirs of the Stephens family - and this is where the family still lives.
Hampton Field Farm must have been acquired by the Lowsley sisters to round off their property and was indeed probably created by them, since the various fields that later belonged to it were previously under a number of different tenancies and could only have been drawn together into one property by its new owners. A possible date for this is 1868, the date of an unspecified indenture referred to in a later conveyance - this would give us the most likely date for converting the four small dwellings into one new farmhouse, with stables and outbuildings.
In 1919 (the date of the conveyance already mentioned), George Lowsley Williams sold his farms in this part of Minchinhampton and Avening. Hampton Field Farm and Matchless Farm were sold as one, consisting of 76 acres. Aston and Lowesmore Farms went at the same time.
Hampton Field and Matchless Farms were bought by Mr Ernest Harman, Innkeeper of Avening. The land was let to a tenant, Thomas Witchell, but it seems that Mr Harman intended it for his son Albert because it was he who was farming there when Mr Harman made his will shortly before his death in 1937.
Albert Harman lived at Matchless Farm and it seems that for some time, perhaps even before the sale in 1919, Field House has not been needed as a farmhouse and had been let to tenants. Certainly in 1926 it was leased for five years at £60 p.a. to Thomas Knox Angus Esq. of Minchinhampton in succession to a previous tenant, Elizabeth Lawrenson.
In his will Mr Harman left Field House and two or three fields round it, not to his son Albert but to his daughter, Florence May Howley. She continued to lease it to Mr Knox Angus and she and her husband also kept an inn in Avening, so they are unlikely ever to have lived in the house, especially since in 1945 Mrs Howley sold it to Francis John Hind Esq. It was probably Mr Hind who laid out the garden, filling it with fragments of ornamental stonework and even a broken Coade-stone tub, which has been taken away for safe keeping. He in his turn sold it in 1961 to Miss Eileen Jenkins, who left it on her death in 1985 to the Landmark Trust - the transfer was completed a year later.