Category: Crawley

Poetry In Motion

Friday was a lovely sunny day, the glorious sunset the night before suggested it would be, and it didn’t disappoint. It was another day for wandering, and we parked up in the Grattons Park car park at the top of St Mary’s Drive. There were quite a few dog walkers there, although there was a lot more talking than walking going on.

We headed away from the park and ambled up and down the local streets as I compiled pictures of all the street signs in the little estate of poets. Yes, I was looking for a Tillotson sign, but it must have moved! (I did have my coat, but I had resorted to carrying it by now as it was a bit warm.)

This is an old stomping ground (quite literally) of mine with it being sat between where I use to live in Wakeham’s Green and my old office on Hazelwick Drive. There were many different ways through to use to reduce the boredom of the walking commute. We walked past the spot on Park Way, close to the junction with St Mary’s Drive where my knee gave up the ghost the first time back in 2010, throwing me to the floor in both agony and embarrassment. Marvell Close was where friends lived and there were frequent visits there.

Once all the signs were snapped, we crossed Worth Park Avenue and went into the Moat. A small woodland and water area, where both English Heritage and The National Trust lay claim to looking after parts of. It is a lovely oasis of calm, and the moat has houses backing onto it from three sides, with only the footpath to the east of it accessible to the public. For more information about this and other moated manors in Crawley, then go to Ian Mulcahy’s website

http://iansapps.co.uk/oldbritain/moats.html

Where there are many great informative pages about Crawley’s history, and which have been an inspiration for me to do these walks of discovery.

To north side of the moat is Barnwood, a private road, full of buildings of character. To the south and west are Mount Close and Moat Walk which also have properties that back onto the moat, but which can’t be seen through the trees surrounding the moat and on the island in the middle.

We come out of the little sanctuary onto Dene Tye, part of a number of streets full of large well-appointed houses. The triangle formed by Worth Park Avenue, Crawley Lane and Balcombe Road is filled with such houses, and as mentioned before I would walk around these streets, probably looking quite suspicious, looking at the houses and dreaming of moving here.

From there we made out way up to Worth Park. When I used to live near it, it was still called Milton Mount Gardens, and hadn’t had all the wonderful restoration done. On entry to the park the magnificent Ridley’s Court catches your eye.

This was a later addition to the Worth Park Mansion as a stable block, and now they are the grandest building around, a Grade II listed one at that.

The mansion was demolished in 1968 with the seven-storey block of flats that stand on the site of the mansion replacing it. It always seemed a strange place to build such a large (and relatively) high rise block of flats, and they do seem somewhat incongruous, especially now that the lottery heritage funded restoration work has taken place. Yet I don’t dislike them, and I wouldn’t mind having the view those on the west side of the building have. (If not their current problems with gas leaks, Scottish Gas Networks vans were still parked outside and working there.)

We stop for a coffee at the little café in a horsebox that sits between Ridley’s Court and the covered Camellia Walk, taking a drink only, and managing to resist the allure of the wonderful looking chocolate cake and interesting sandwiches on display. With it being a sunny day there were a lot of others out, and the little café was doing a roaring trade.

Whilst drinking we carried on passing through the formal gardens, along the balustrade and down the grand steps to the fountain and pond. The gardens were laid out in the 1880s by the firm of James Pulham and Sons, the James Pulham who did the work being the third of four of that name to head up the company. There is a blue plaque to commemorate his work, and three parts of his work in the original grounds of the mansion also have Grade II listed status.

The fountain is one of them. We walk down over the Ha Ha (yes really, that is its name) and across Somerville Drive to the lake. In the lake is the second of the listed items, this little islet made from Pulhamite.

Pulhamite is a manmade stone that the firm James Pulham and Sons invented and used at a number of sites they worked on, including Newstead Abbey and Battersea Park. It has been found to have been made of sand, Portland cement, and clinker over a core of rubble and crushed bricks. It is difficult to tell that it isn’t real rocks. The firm were one of the stars of their day, and other examples of their work still survive at Sandringham and Buckingham Palace.

I knew there was another example of Pulhamite work somewhere in Worth Park, but on Friday afternoon it eluded us. Instead, we walked back up the hill in the direction of the flats and past this old horse chestnut tree, fenced off to try and prevent people climbing on it, and then on to St Catherine’s Road.

This was me collecting more road signs, with all the ones here been taken from Oxbridge colleges, some from Oxford, others from Cambridge and some that are at both.

The road meanders around and we found ourselves walking towards Peterhouse Parade (a Cambridge one), past the wide-open expanse of Grattons Park, where football training was in full effect, with footballs outnumbering people by at least three to one.

I rarely went in the Tavern in the years I lived that way, it would normally be the Snooty after work. But I did frequent the row of shops on a weekly basis, especially getting an illicit burger or kebab from Real Barbeque whilst I was supposed to be out walking.

Just along from the shops are 55-59 Grattons Drive, locally listed, they were part of a farm that would have been on the Montefiores’ Worth Park estate. Next to it and across the road are another couple of interesting looking buildings that have the look of being from a similar period.

From here it is a case of walking back to the car, taking the path between the school and bowling club. They rerouted the stream away from this part of the field a number of years ago, and it does look as if the water wants to have its old path back as it is quite boggy there still. There are even more dog walkers in the car park when we get back there, and again there is much more talking than walking taking place. Possibly involving the same people.

Having not found the remaining Pulhamite listed structure is needling me when I get home, so I get the full coordinates of it and find it was hidden behind the 1930s house that stands between the flats and Balcombe Road. If we had gone as far as Balcombe Road, then we would have been able to see it.

And so Saturday saw me head back over there to get some photos of it. It was another lovely sunny day; the café was doing brisk business again. I’d walked over from town and gone up the wide expanse of Milton Mount Avenue to get there.

Walking through the flat’s car park meant I passed the community centre, which is in the grandest looking community centre building, something that had passed me by the day before.

Once there I stepped foot into Wakeham’s Green for the first time since I moved out nearly seven years ago. I took photos of various street signs again as I completed a loop of the estate. This included the one where I had lived for what seemed like thirty years between 2008 and 2014.

Continuing around I came to the Heathfield store, a law unto itself for opening times, and a constant source of frustration when trying to get newspapers if it was within half an hour of its advertised closing time, as they would already have been batched up for return.

The community centre next to it is more in common with those found anywhere else in Crawley apart from Milton Mount. The next little bit of the estate was another collection of themed signs, this time bombers.

Plus, I always liked the sound of the word Nimrod. I think it’s a great word to use as an insult, and I had a picture from the side of Nimrod Court as my Facebook profile picture for a couple of years.

Back out on Balcombe Road I head back along to Worth Park Avenue, realising, probably for the first time ever that the grand looking building behind the wall on the other side of the road is, of course, the back of Ridley’s Court. It’s amazing how disconnected images can be when viewing the same place from different angles.

I turn to head down Worth Park Avenue, but in a nod to a past life of living in Pound Hill, I cheat and wait for the bus into town, having been out longer and later than intended. My fatbit has done its little wrist dance again, and its time to go home and have the usual Saturday night curry.

To Three Bridges and Back

After a Friday afternoon walk around Lowfield Heath, I was back out walking Saturday afternoon, this time by myself. I was aiming in the general direction of Three Bridges, but not taking the most direct route. Coming out of the back of Southgate, I walked past Malthouse Farmhouse. Another building tucked away, and one that is up for potential local listing in May as Crawley Borough Council discuss 6o suggested buildings for listing.


I crossed over to near the Library and had a quick walk along Telford Way, just because it was there, and coming back I looked at the library longingly. Ever since lockdown started I’ve been missing my bi-monthly creative writing group sessions, and the one coffee a fortnight I would have after the session. I’ve done a few zoom writing sessions, but they aren’t the same, I suppose it is the one thing I miss the most in these strange times.


From here I took a walk all the way up and down Spindle Lane, which isn’t much to look at, but is interesting in how these industrial / commercial areas look as if they’ve been thrown together with all the different styles and building materials used.


As I was passing I took a detour around Commonwealth Drive. I’d never taken the time to have a walk around it. There is a mixture of buildings in there, not just the flats I’ve seen from passing it countless times in the car or on the bus. And it’s bigger than it appears from passing it in traffic as well. There must be getting on for a thousand properties in the area.

I carried on past the Harvester and the Holiday Inn, a place I stayed a few times when I started work down here before I found a permanent place to live, but the American Diner I used to get my evening meals in is long gone. I carried on past Sutherland House and then made a right along the footpath up to the south end of Stephenson Way. Yet more industrial units, but right at the end is the Crawley Swarna Kamatchi Amman Temple.


A place of worship in the middle of an industrial area next to the wonderfully named (being on Stephenson Way) Stockwell Centre. One converted from an industrial unit, as opposed to St Michael’s and All Angels in Lowfield Heath whose houses were all replaced by the industrial units that surround it.


I walk all the way down Stephenson Way and out onto Haslett Avenue East. Across the road is the newly painted Three Bridges Free Church. And on the outside of the wall of the electric company’s yard is a blue plaque to the woman the road is named after.


I stop for refreshments at Charlies, home of the Scooby Burger, where the guy serving me tells me that they aren’t currently open 24/7, only from 5am to 11pm, as if he’d taken a look at my size and girth and decided that I was the right type of person who’d be turning up at three in the morning for something unhealthily fattening. To be fair if I still lived around the corner in Maunsell Park I probably would be.


I walk up Hazelwick Avenue, and past Tesco going to the furthest point of my travels today. It is to a building I’ve walked near to - especially for six weeks when I “lived” at the Ramada - and driven past the end of Hazelwick Mill Lane it sits on numerous times. Hazelwick Grange is a Grade II listed building, believed to date from the early seventeenth century, and was a farmhouse that sat to the north of the mill pond that covered the area the tennis club and Tesco’s now sit.


I used the underpass to get across Hazelwick Avenue and meandered through tree related named streets back down the the conservation area of Hazelwick Road. A mixture of terraces, semi-detached, cottages and detached houses from the late nineteenth century. And at the top, just before the end of the road is the locally listed 107 Hazelwick Road, the “substantial” detached villa the Victorian-era developer built for his family.


I turned into North Road and made my way down to get some pictures of the row of nineteenth century artisans’ cottages that run along the east side of the road. This row of much altered cottages are locally listed. Meanwhile of the other side of the road, from a similar period, is another row of impressive, but not listed buildings.


I make an about turn to head back up to a footpath through to the top of New Street, which seems a misnomer now that it is one of the oldest streets in the extended Crawley new town. Along here there are yet more late nineteenth century cottages. Upon one of which is a blue plaque, this one to the author Richard Marsh who used to live there. 


As I was taking the photo the owner of the house was repointing the brickwork of his front wall and jokingly said he’d have to charge me for the photo. We started a socially distanced conversation and he asked me how many blue plaques I’d found, and when I mentioned the one at Tilgate Lake he told me an interesting tale. He said he knew the children of the Campbell family when they owned the lake before Crawley Borough Council bought it, and he used to go swimming in it, “before anyone else in Crawley did”. 


Further along New Street opposite the junction with Mill Road (Cross Road on the 1909 map) is the former Spiritualist Church. Another building up for discussion for locally listing, but one that the inspectors couldn’t get around the back of to be able to verify some of the claims in the submission for listing.


Across the road at the end of New Street is the former Barclays Bank, another locally listed building.


After I got back from the walk I read in the Observer that the site just to the east of this of the former TSB bank has received initial planning permission to be turned into 49 flats. Though my mind boggles at how they are going to cram that many into what isn’t a massive space, and where the hell they are going to park.


Around the corner on Three Bridges Road is another row of locally listed buildings - 215–223. Again, these date from the late nineteenth century and have the gabled central section. This section of Three Bridges Road has a number of impressive looking buildings, two pubs, and a Jehovah Witness’s Kingdom Hall.


I continued back towards town along Three Bridges Road, full of large houses in differing styles, two of which are locally listed. 89 and 91 Three Bridges Road are thought to have been farm cottages from when it was all agricultural land between Crawley and Three Bridges prior to the new town plan.


From here it wasn’t far back into the town centre. I had one more photograph to take. I moved to Crawley in 2006 on a TUPE transfer when the company I work for took their payroll back in house. Ten years ago they had seven offices in Crawley, with divestments that reduced to three, two of which had been closed in the last few years. The last of the seven, and the one I’ve been mainly based in for the last ten years closed at the end of 2020, and when lockdown in over I’ll be commuting to Portslade. 


Of the seven I have worked in six of them whilst I’ve lived in Crawley, and I passed them all today. The first five in Three Bridges weren’t done intentionally, but to complete the set the last one in the town centre was.
I had only meant to pop out for a stroll, but ended up walking further than the previous day, although without happening upon any icy cold swamps. Tomorrow will be a rest day for writing these walks up.

Poles Apart

Underwear. That’s how the latest wander to find historic Crawley buildings started this time. Helen had an order to pick up from Next, so I thought that County Oak would be a good place to park up and start to explore from. Of course it is a different County Oak from the one that appeared on the map at the turn of the twentieth century.

We got out on County Oak Way and headed into the mish mashed styles of the industrial units taking a somewhat overgrown and almost hidden path between office buildings and storage units where high barbed wire fences, metal grilles and occasional fire exits lined either side until we come out into a car park and turn a corner to be faced with this.

County Oak Cottage is hidden away at the very end of the industrial estate, dating from 1705, it is thought to have been a conversion of an even older barn, and is a Grade II listed building, converted to offices, with a somewhat sympathetic extension to the west side of it. Peeking around the corner of the picture above is a more modern, but also Grade II listed building.

Oak Cottage has been much modernised, but originally dates from the later half of the eighteenth century. Both sat on the edge of what is Lowfield Heath, all open land when they were built.

The more modern map I have in my pocket shows there is a footpath north from these buildings up to Poles Lane. And it is true, there is a gap in the fence and what must be a pleasant path to walk across the adjacent field in the summer. Only it isn’t summer, and with the most recent thaw and rains, the path is more stream that anything else. The whole field is like a marsh with tuffets of grass offering points of apparent solid ground amongst the surrounding quagmire. Only there is no substance to the grass and soon I am ankle deep in shockingly icy water. It will take an hour after I escape from the swamp for my feet to return to having any real sense of feeling. One of the pitfalls of not being able to get on with walking boots and only feeling comfortable walking anywhere in trainers.

Once across the field we join a more substantial path that comes across from London Road to Poles Lane, one where there are at least some solid parts to use to avoid the puddles. There is only open land to the north of this path and that whole parcel of land between London Road in the east, Poles Lane in the west, north of the footpath and south of Charlwood Road used to be Cheals’ Nurseries.

And this footpath we walk on had used to form the border between West Sussex and Surrey, with Lowfield Heath being in Surrey until the reorganisation of borders in 1990, bringing it under Crawley Borough Council’s control.

Poles Lane is a much wider track, which it needs to be for the stream of cars to be able to get to and from the houses along it. It is surprisingly busy for a road to nowhere with only ten houses along its length. We head north along Poles Lane first passing first Poles Farm.

Which can only be seen from a distance between the trees. The barn in the grounds in a Grade II listed building from the seventeenth century.

Closer to the road (well lane) is a more modern, but dilapidated brick structure, overgrown and better hidden despite being almost next to us.

Next along, at the end of its own drive and small field is Spikemead Farmhouse, which dates from 1604. The run of lovely old buildings is somewhat spoiled by the utilitarian Thames Water building with a ramshackle tourer sat in its car park. A couple of later period cottages are right on the lane just before getting to Charlwood Road, but the building that is the most interesting is mainly hidden from the rear, and it requires a short walk along Charlwood Road to get to it.

Charlwood House is a huge building, Grade II* listed, dating from the early seventeenth century. And although it has a car park and openings to the west side of it, pictures were taken of the higher levels only, seeing as it now houses a day nursery.

To the south side and behind a fence is Lowfield Hall. Originally built as a barn in the early seventeenth century to serve Charlwood House it was extended in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries converting the original timber build to brick panelled walls, it became a residential property in the 1960s/70s.

We turned around to get back to Poles Lane and the follow it out at the other end. There is only a short stretch of Charlwood Road to negotiate, but it has no footpaths, and there was a sudden influx of traffic. None of which bothered to slow down in the slightest, and most didn’t even move over to the middle of the road to pass us, instead flying past with wing mirrors only millimetres away from us. Forgetting the highway code entirely in that pedestrians are listed first and have right of way.

As we passed Spikemead Farmhouse a car turned in and buzzed at the gate. I’m not sure what was being said but somehow have an imagined conversation in my head now.

“Hello, who is it?”

“It’s me Tarquin, open the gate.”

“Who’s me?”

“Don’t be such a prat, it’s Jemima, your wife.”

“Can you prove that?”

“What do you mean can I prove that?”

“Have you got an ID?”

“What do I need ID for, I live here.”

“If that were true you wouldn’t have needed to buzz to get in.”

“Tarquin, stop pratting around and open the damn gate before I get cross.”

“Sorry, no ID, no entry, thanks for passing by.”

“Tarquin? Tarquin? I’m going to bloody well kill you when I get in.”

“And that’s exactly why I’m not opening the gate.”

After my little imagination detour, we get to the point where the tarmacked road stops and it becomes a pot holed track. At the end of the straight just after the footpath we had originally come in from, Poles Lane turns right and meanders for a bit, on the next corner is another Grade II listed building.

Originally from the late Tudor period, it was extended in the mid nineteenth century is similar materials to the original. Poles Lane comes to a halt for us with the sharp turn into the entrance to Amberley Farm.

There are two footpaths either side of a stream, and not sure which to follow we took the left one as a group of teenage boys on bikes had taken it. It wasn’t a great choice, and I’m not sure how they managed to get through the thick mud, over the pronounced roots of the surrounding trees and under their low hanging branches, as they were all difficult enough for us walking.

The path popped out at the back of the Cherry Lane playing fields, somewhat waterlogged themselves. We crossed the field and turned in Langley Walk, passing as we did Langley Green Farmhouse. An eighteenth century brick cottage, which is yet another Grade II listed building. As is Langley Grange which sits further west along Langley Lane, and which dates from the early seventeenth century.

Back in relative civilisation I took a number of pictures of road signs on various themes, but without completing any set (this will require another trip), as we made our way to Langley Green Parade.

And as Helen got some soft drinks, I had a quick scoot around to add to my picture collections of pubs. With the Dr Samuel Johnson, which I will forever misname since someone told me they called it the Samuel L Jackson.

Then on to places of worship, the snappily titled Voice of Deliverance Full Gospel Church of God, which had used to be the Church of England parish church of St Leonard’s. It also runs with the name of Igreja de Deus for its Pentacostal congregation. Next to it in the Anderson Shelter lookalike former church hall of St Leonards is the Sri Lankan Muslim Welfare Association Crawley.

As we made our way up Martyrs Avenue on the way back to County Oak it would have been remiss not to take a short detour in to Old Martyrs, as Helen hadn’t seen it before.

And then it was back to the car, food shopping and home.