There are some photos you just have to love and this is one of them. It says so much about past times. It shows Court Close Farm in about 1940.
Court Close Farm, Easterton in about 1940
This is taken from the front garden of recently renovated Manor Cottage and the buildings we see are on White Street, Easterton. Court Close Farm is the further away building.
In this 75 year old picture Court Close Farm looks resplendent under its thatched roof and the cottages, this side of it and often lumped together and called Kandy Cottages look pretty good too.
But let’s take a closer look at something on the side of the road.
The milk churn stand
Just in front of the farm house there was a stand for milk churns. A couple of empty churns stand next to it. When full, those churns would have weighed close on a hundredweight (50kg). They were put on the stand by the farmer to make it easier for a dairyman to get them onto a lorry. They may well have been taken to Lavington Station for onward transport by train. We do not know when churn collection ceased in this area but it was probably stopped by about 1970. So we have a real link with past times here.
And of course in the 1950s and 60s road improvement was the thing and Kandy Cottages became a victim of that. It was decided to straighten a kink in the road as it left Easterton heading for Market Lavington. Those cottages, or part of them, stood in the way and so they were swept into oblivion. This is a similar but much more recent view.
21st century – a similar view
Court Close Farm is still there and still looks grand. If we hadn’t got the older picture we’d suspect it had once been thatched. The steep pitch of the roof tiles now on it is a bit of a giveaway.
Where one end of the cottages once stood there is now a verdant lawn. This end of the cottages would have been in the road. We now get a better view of the rather ramshackle collection of barns behind Court Close Farm.
Tags: 1940s, Court Close Farm, Easterton, Thatch, then and now
Market Lavington Museum 
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