The Glynde Place Archive contains a document dated 23 October 1317 recording the transfer of two acres of land in Glynde from Thomas de Brykedene to Roger Bost. However, the land appears to have been in the north of Glynde parish around the area now known as Glyndebourne. Brigdens was certainly a place name in Glynde by 1440 when a ‘meadow called Westwisch near Brikedenys’ was named in a partition of the land of John Waleys. In January 1514 Thomas Brykeden, son and heir of William Brykden of Glynde, sold a messuageHouse or dwelling,
inc. outbuildings &
orchard, courtyard
or gardens and 182 acres of land to Thomas Mustarden of Stoneham in Ringmer for £25 which appears to have been part of the land that eventually comprised Brigdens Farm.

There was then a dispute over the ownership of this property. Robert Morley leased it to Thomas Vynall in 1515 but Thomas Mustarden recovered the premises and mortgaged the premises to John Thatcher of Westham in 1537 for £30. By 1546 John Thatcher of Priesthawes in Westham owned the property and sold it to Thomas Morley, owner of the Glynde Estate for £76. The property then consisted of a messuageHouse or dwelling,
inc. outbuildings &
orchard, courtyard
or gardens called Brykedens on the north side of the highway from Glynde Bridge to Lewes, 2 gardens, 30 acres of land, 26 acres of meadow, marsh, wood, link and bushes on north and south of the said way, and pasture for 100 sheep and 1 ram on the down of Thomas Morley called Calborough Down [now called Mount Caburn] to Pococks Crouche.

William Morley in his will of 1573 bequeathed the tenancy of Brigdens Farm for life at an annual rent of 40 shillings to his servant Richard Tull, ‘occupying it as Thomas Dyne occupied it’. William Heath probably lived there in 1662 when he paid the hearth tax on two hearths and he definitely occupied Brigdens ‘in the hole’ in 1671 when he was paying £30 a year rent. William Watts, steward for Glynde estate, was the occupier from 1739 to 1743 and shortly after this the farm was let out on a combined lease with Glyndebourne Farm. William Als, John Ellman and John Ellman the younger all rented Brigdens and Glyndebourne Farms but from 1841 to the early twentieth century the house, divided into two, was let out to village labourers and their families.

It returned to being an independent farm by 1901 when Henry Wheeler was the occupier and Wheeler and Hobden were occupiers in 1915. Mary Hutson, cowkeeper, who had lived at Lake Cottage in 1915, was the tenant in 1927 and after her death in 1950 her sons Frank and Henry, with their wives Elsie and Edie, and their sister Dorothy Hutson, became the last tenants to live at Brigdens and work the farm there.

After Henry and Frank’s deaths Elsie and Edie moved to Pear Tree Cottage and the farm was amalgamated into other farms and the house, still divided, let as two cottages.