There’s no doubt that Alfie Alexander was one of the characters in our part of the world. He had an uncanny ability to hobnob with the great and good whilst also being something of a radical in many ways. He was always on the lookout for ways to earn just that bit more and one thing he did was refuse removal from the village. Rumour had it that he used to dump the refuse on a patch of land he had ‘up at the sands’ so perhaps this document tells us where the land was.
Let’s take a look at a few details from this document.
Document showing Alfred Alexander owns land in 1931
We can see it is dated 1931 and is a document showing that Alfie had purchased a plot of land.
These legal documents do not lend themselves well to the blog format so we’ll show a bit and explain the rest.
This is far too small to read, but as ever, you can click on the image to open an enlarged version.
This tells us that Alfie actually bought this land in 1917 from a person called George Grant Stevenson. Alfie paid £425 for it.
The document lists other transfers of ownership before this date and financial arrangements from 1917 onwards.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the document is the little map, drawn out on tracing paper.
Map showing the location of the land
From this we see that Alfie acquired the parts shaded in pink. This area lines Ledge Hill near the junction with King’s Road and thus had good access.
It could have been the ideal place to dump rubbish and it might have pleased Alfie’s radical views that it was close by the Manor Gate House.
Tags: 1917, 1931, Alfie Alexander, land ownership, Market Lavington
Market Lavington Museum 
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