Manor Farm, Wotton, was originally called Home Farm when it was supplying milk and other produce for the Evelyn family at Wotton House. When this supply was no longer required from those fields, Home Farm was re-named and tenanted out to EDG Matthews, with 381 acres in 1935.
Edward Douglas Gerald Matthews and his wife May moved to Manor Farm from Cowden, Kent in 1935 with their two sons Edward and Fred and two members of staff, they ran a short-horn dairy herd, beef, pigs, poultry and arable business.

Once the Matthews family moved to Manor Farm, they employed between 6 -8 men during the year, with two or three milking the 30 dairy cows and three employed for carting corn, mangolds and milk. 

Horses were used to pull the plough and carts and there were two tractors; manufactured by Case and Ford.  

Many of these original photographs show EDG Matthews in his usual working attire of collared shirt and tie, waistcoat, jacket and hat!

The corn was cut by hand and with a binder and placed in small stooks (stacks of corn) in the field for two or three weeks to dry, after which it was carted to West Lane for threshing. After threshing, the straw was stacked in a rick and was used as required for bedding or feed. Two and a quarter hundred weight (cwt) sacks were filled with corn (252 lbs), these were lifted by hand onto carts and taken to grain merchants, such as Attlee’s in Dorking.
At that time, crops included oats, wheat, barley and mangolds. The mangolds were fed to the cows and a corn or barley mix was kept on farm also for animal feed.
During the Second World War, Edward Matthews was in the home guard and continued farming. He was soon asked to work for the War Agricultural Committee which was responsible for ensuring that British farms were producing as much food as possible for the people of Britain.  Two Italian prisoners of war followed by two German prisoners worked on the farm and were photographed for the local newspaper as they loaded a cart with mangolds. The prisoners were given a bunk at Manor Farm and meals were prepared for them by May Matthews. 

In 1946 the shorthorn dairy herd was sold and for a while just a few cows were kept and milked by Edward himself. Gradually over the years Friesian dairy cows were purchased and a herd was established at West Lane, with the milk sold to the Milk Marketing Board.
The first combine harvester was bought in 1950 and the acreage increased until it was 550 acres by 1960 when Edward and Fred took over the farm from their father. However, in 1964 Fred took control of the business after the retirement of his father and death of his mother and brother Edward. 

The family ceased dairy farming in 1977, pigs in 1981 and poultry in 1999 as each element became unviable to the business. Fred's son Laurence started working on the farm in 1978, taking time out to attend agricultural college for three years and in 1989 Laurence began a major restructuring of the business, rationalising the farm and updating equipment.  The farm increased to 750 acres and the work was undertaken by Fred, Laurence and one employee.  Laurence became a partner in 1994. 

Since that time the area farmed by the business, has increased to around 3,000 acres with nine landlords. Laurence now runs the farm in partnership with Paula and their son Christopher, four full time employees and an extra three during harvest.