Despite numerous entries for James Bray in census and electoral records, city directories, newspapers and college archives, it is almost impossible to determine where he lived from 1875 until around 1901. The same can be said for Henry George Muddle Sr and his family for the fourteen years 1887-1901. That they lived and farmed at Edgwarebury hamlet is without doubt, but to go beyond that requires a certain amount of guesswork.

What we do know is that they lived in one of two houses at Edgwarebury: Edgwarebury Farmhouse - a large, stuccoed brick building which dated back to the 18th century, and the house at Bury Farm, which still stands today and is very much older. Henry George spent some fifteen years living in one of these houses, or both consecutively.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century there were three All Souls farms at or around Edgwarebury: Bury Farm, Edgwarebury Farm and Brockley Grange Farm. The three farms were detailed in an 1874 report to parliament which listed all the property owned by the Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Unfortunately, although the acreage and the name of the tenant are listed, the farms are not named.

John Partridge is listed as the tenant of a farm comprising 159 acres which had previously belonged to Joseph Ginger. In July, 1870, the crops on this same farm had been listed for sale using the name 'Edgware Bury Farm'. Thomas Partridge is listed as the lessee of a second farm comprising 212 acres. College records identify this as Brockley Grange farm.* The third farm is listed as having 192 acres with Richard Smith as its tenant.

Although published in 1874, the statistics in the report date to July, 1872. Both John Partridge and Thomas Partridge are listed as having fourteen year leases, which had commenced in 1870. Richard Smith is listed as having just two-and-a-half years left on a lease which had commenced in 1860. By the time of the newspaper advertisement above, Thomas Ratcliffe had replaced John Partridge at Edgwarebury Farm. So it is almost certain that James Bray replaced Richard Smith at Bury Farm in the latter part of 1875, farming there for the next thirty years.**

The farmhouse at Bury Farm was technically the Manor House of Edgware, and it was a requirement of the lease that the house be kept prepared for visitors who came to Edgware on Manor business. If James and Mary Bray's made it their home in 1875, they would have lived in the older, timber-framed part of the house which dated to the 1600s, while Manor visitors were accommodated in the grander rooms of the brick, 18th century addition.***

In a report of his funeral published in the Hendon & Finchley Times in 1904, it was noted that James Bray had died at 'the old homestead where he had spent so many years of his life'. This would suggest that he had lived for most, possibly all the time he was at Edgwarebury, in the house known as 'Edgwarebury Farmhouse' - where his photograph was taken in 1901. So although, according to college records, Bray farmed the land at Bury Farm, it is by no means certain that he lived in the house there. Only one piece of evidence suggests that he did.

About two years after the death of his mother, Henry George Muddle Sr and his family, who had been living at Broadfields Farm, went to live at Edgwarebury with James Bray - presumably at Edgwarebury Farmhouse. But in 1911 when completing his census return, HGM Sr stated that Ellen Muddle had been born in 1887 at 'Bury Farm'. So, we do have to allow for the possibility that Bray did live in the house at Bury Farm beginning in 1875, that the Muddles joined him there c.1887 and that they all moved to Edgwarebury Farmhouse sometime after that. 'Bury Farm' was also used many years later when Henry George Sr retired and the auction of his crops and farm equipment was advertised. When Caroline Fry, Henry George's sister, died in 1957, her obituary stated that her family had farmed at Stoneyfields, Broadfields and Bury Farms.

Regardless of when James Bray moved to Edgwarebury Farmhouse, he continued to farm the land at Bury Farm until his death. In 1886, the College received an offer from the publisher Irwin Cox to buy 91 acres of Bray's land. In 1887 Bray's rent went down from £517 a year to £321, so it is possible that the college had accepted Coxs' offer. By 1903, his rent at Bury Farm had gone down to just £172. This may reflect the severe depression in agriculture at that time, a reduction in acreage, or an effort by All Souls to keep Bray as a tenant ~ the syndicate which had leased Edgwarebury Farm in 1897 went bankrupt just four years later.

According to college records, Henry Muddle Sr continued to farm at Bury Farm after Bray's death in 1904 and probably remained at Edgwarebury Farmhouse. His eldest daughter, Caroline, and her family lived there also until 1925. Unfortunately, the house was demolished just after the Second World War and replaced by a modern bungalow.

Edgwarebury is now a very different place to what it was in 1875. But although the M1 motorway now cuts across many of its fields, some farming still continues there. In 2013, All Souls College submitted plans to build a golf course on 168 of the 330 acres it still owns at Edgwarebury. Previous, unsuccessful proposals from the College have included a leisure centre, a hospital, a hypermarket and two other golf courses. Local residents organized a petition and in 2016 the local council unanimously rejected the proposals. Although the decision has been appealed, it seems that for the moment, the future of the 'most sequestered hamlet' familiar to James Bray and Henry George, is assured.