According to a copyholdType of feudal land tenure
with duties and obligations
to the Lord of the Manor surrender document Miss Mary Sergeant, described as "late of the City of London but now of Netherbury", bought a "Dwellinghouse situate in Netherbury Street together with the Plot of Ground to the same belonging called the Hempland" from John Travers for £57 10s in 1790. That dwellinghouse is now known as Yew Tree Cottages and it was one of several properties and parcels of land she owned in the village.The Land Tax Returns show her paying tax on two or three properties until at least 1830.

Mary's older sister Fanny married Stephen Whetham at a ceremony in the City of London in 1770 when she was nineteen years old - some fifty years his junior - and it would appear that Mary followed Fanny westwards to settle in Netherbury. Mary never wed and did not have any children so, when she drew up her will in 1833, she left instructions that all the properties she owned should be "sold together and in one lot" and the proceeds should go to "Hanna Denziloe". This was her great neice Mary Anna Denziloe, the daughter of Mary (Polly) & John Denziloe. Polly had been left the house by her father, Stephen Whetham, but before she reached the age of twenty one it appears to have been first mortgaged and then sold to John Travers from whom Mary Sergeant subsequently purchased it.

You might think that Mary would have left the house to her neice Polly, therefore fulfilling her brother-in-law's intention, but she seems to have fallen out badly with Polly's husband John Denziloe over a debt of £75. She left Polly an annuity of £15 a year for the rest of her life "for her own sole and separate use". However she instructed that for the first five years after her death the annuity would not be paid "until the full amount of the said sum of £75 has been repaid to my Estate". Later on in the will she bequeaths various sums ranging from £1 to £150 to a number of people including neices, nephews as well as the daugters and granddaughters of people who were presumeably her friends. She also rather pointedly leaves 1 shilling to John Denziloe.

Mary's will is dated 19 June 1833 and she died three weeks after it was drawn up on 10th July. The Parish Register records her burial on 15th July and gives her age as 80. There is a record in the Parish card index that records her monument and states that her great-nephew Edwin Denziloe was buried in the same plot some eight years later when he died aged 40.