The Cottage Drive is a bridleway hung over with trees and bushes forming an inviting straight hollow way all the way through from Thunder Lane to Pound Lane. You could almost be rambling down a country lane here instead of in a densely built-up suburb. It's pleasantly shaded in summer and magical in winter snow.
You can access the beginning of the Drive either from Thunder Lane (please do not park in the Drive itself) or via the footpath which leads from the Cottage Public House car park. If you park there please patronise the pub! In either case take time to walk up to the front of the pub and take a look at it and its setting.
It was built as a private residence, a farmhouse most likely, by the Birkbeck family who had Hill House (at the top of South Drive/Thunder Lane) and much of the local land from the 1860s. For many years a Miss Antonia Birkbeck lived here, and she was still in the County Directory in 1933. There were extensive gardens and good specimen trees.
On one map there is a structure here marked as 'Talbot Cottage' which may be the same building as the Cottage. There were also extensive farm buildings, now all gone, off to the north of the main house. Local residents tell me they played in a large stone barn here as boys.
Prior to the Birkbecks buying the estate in 1864 it was owned by the Westons who were brewers, and who sold the estate off in 13 lots. One of them is a distinct enclosure of 22 acres centred on where the Cottage now stands, under lease at time of sale to one Charles Jecks. There were probably old barns here then.
However in 1935 the whole estate was broken up and the houses began to
be built. As the area filled with thirsty people, Steward &
Patterson cannily bought the house and turned it into a pub. An aerial
photograph of the 'Spinney Estates' from 1935 shows the house in
splendid isolation, surrounded only by the long narrow belts of woodland
and open fields. The woodland is still largely intact today but the fields
have all been infilled.
As you turn north from the car park and follow the narrow footpath in front of you under the large trees, to your left would have been a fairly rough and ready building with a tin roof. This was the original Church of the Good Shepherd in Thorpe, patronised by Antonia Birkbeck. On the first maps it is marked as 'Mission Church', on later ones as 'Church hall' and seems to have been kept for that purpose even after the new church was built on St Williams Way.
The footpath brings us to another minor road, which is the start of the Cottage Drive. The actual origins of this dead straight 'drive' are unknown; it would seem sensible to link it with the farm at the Cottage as 'carriage drives' were popular additions to country houses. However at various times it has also been called Church Loke, Mud Lane and Shepherd's Way, so it may be more mundanely connected to the agricultural landscape. Dead straight roads are often a feature of the new farms of the enclosure period (eg Pound Lane) but I can't see what it's purpose was in that case. Some years ago I also came across a section of the drive which had been washed clean by heavy rain, and underneath was pammet brickwork.
There are good oaks on the Drive, some of them arguably as good as anything elsewhere in Thorpe. I hope too many householders who back on to the bridleway (who are responsible for its upkeep) don't decide to replace their end hedge with a fence. It's tidy but it will simply not be the same as the current rather atmospheric lane! The view down the drive was somewhat spoilt by the installation of bright blue bus shelters right in the line of sight of the drive, where it cuts across suburban side roads. However the walk is very pleasant and as well as the birds for company you may catch a glimpse of a cheeky fox or squirrel.
As we come to the end of the school playing fields we pass under a large holm oak.
Quercus ilex, the Holm Oak or Holly Oak is a large evergreen oak native to the Mediterranean region. It takes its name from holm, an ancient name for holly. (The younger leaves on the lower branches are toothed like a holly). It produces a good hard wood but on the continent is more often planted in truffle orchards. It has catkins in the spring and acorns in autumn.
As we emerge on to Pound Lane, we have the choice of turning left and on past the Oasis Club to go and look at the lake in the bottom of the dip (to the right of the road) or continuing over the road into the playing fields and shelter belts round Dussindale.
The Oasis Club was formed from the large country house and estate known as Woodlands. In 1883 William Birkbeck also owned Woodlands, and it was occupied by a Mrs Patteson. At one time this house owned the lake which is now in the garden of Well Close, as well as other boating lakes set amidst an ornamental woodland garden across Pound Lane in Belmore Plantation. The lakes and woodland paths were adorned with statuary, some of which was apparently of a very high standard. The town council were approached about their history archive by an American researcher looking into 'a
very important piece of 19th century American sculpture once in
the collection at Woodlands' which was sold shorty before the house changed hands in the 1990s and became the Oasis.
Unfortunately the archives are silent about the statute and also very quiet about Woodlands, having only one or two old photographs - one of which shows a rather grand cast iron bridge spanning a lake.
To be continued......
