Back gates

Yesterday evening, I happened to walk along part of what used to be the south western end of Pound Lane, running along one side of Court Recreation Ground.  So in the snap above, Pound Lane bottom right, running up to the right. Then a ditch, then the back fences of the houses to the left. Quite a lot of which had gates opening onto the path, mostly not as elaborate as this one, mostly now condemned, that it so say shut up without the possibility of opening, without, that is, the benefit of a pince-monseigneur, this last being one of the French phrases for wrecking bar. Also, confusingly for heavy duty wire cutters. But barre à clous might be more common, a literal translation of our nail bar.

A relic of the days when it was thought convenient, rather than otherwise, to have a garden door onto the road or park adjacent.

Off to the free maps service operated by the National Libraries of Scotland, from where I am able to clip the snap above from a map from around 1900.

A time when the estate we live on, marked in pocked purple did not exist. The yellow above left used to be the boundary between the estate and one of the Epsom Cluster hospitals, now between the old estate and the new estate. The green triangles of Clayhill Green at the bottom are still green, although the right hand one is now called Fair Green for the fairs that used to be held there, only stopping at about the time we moved to Epsom thirty years ago. Travellers used to appear from time to time after that, sadly making their usual unpleasant mess.

Court Farm, roughly in the middle, is where the Blenheim and the short parade of shops next door are now to be found. I believe the ponds did cause some foundational problem at one time. The orange blob below is Court Recreation Ground. The clump of oak trees in the middle is still there, now tall and mature. Pound Lane which used to run down to Clayhill Green, is now reduced to the green streak. The rest of it is now a footpath, about on a par with the disused road called 'Doctors Lane' running up the side of our holiday cottage in Brading on the Isle of Wight.

Some of the gates have been shut for a long time, but these days we quite often have the police helicopter hovering over the recreation ground at night, which would suggest one needs something more than a gate on a latch, which I imagine would have done when the houses were built in 1920-1930 or so. In the days when the country was so rich that we could afford a park keeper. His house having been a veterinarian surgery for quite some years now. In the triangle visible above the top of the recreation ground.

PS: curiously, neither Ordnance Survey nor gmaps recognise 'Doctors Lane', despite it being the name I remember and Bing turning up conclusive evidence.

Reference 1: https://www.blenheimarms.co.uk/. Perpetuating the error, not to say the solecism, the house once being the haunt of betting gentry, of the arms. The Blenheim was a Derby winning race horse, not some county family or better sporting, or at least aspiring to, a coat of arms.