At the time of writing, in 2024, many people in our local villages are concerned about the state of the roads, particularly the number of potholes needing to be filled. In the little batch of newspapers, awaiting accessioning into our museum collection, we have a Wiltshire Gazette and Herald dating from 29th September 1973, with this article about roadworks needed at Eastcott, near Easterton. It seems that there was to be about a four year wait for improvements to be made on that road.
Hopefully the local potholes will be dealt with more speedily.
In our previous blog entry, we saw that a row of lime trees had to be felled in order to clear a route for the main roadway through the planned housing development on the former Grove Farm land. The road would link The Spring with Parsonage Lane and Spin Hill and Canada Rise, where there is now a small roundabout. This photograph from our Building work on the Grove Farm site shows Grove Road completed, although there were still many houses to be built on the grassland.
We are currently about to accession a donation of yet another set of photos recording the building on this site. Here we see a large vehicle working on producing the route for Grove Road.
The road left The Spring directly opposite the garage, where there is now a roundabout.
We have another photo, already in our museum collection, showing road building at Grove Farm.
This one is dated 1988-9. Its record informs us that many trees in the row of Scotch firs in the background, on the manor driveway, were blown down in a storm in January 1990.
This photograph was taken in 1987, the day before the row of lime trees at Grove Farm was felled.
In fact, since our 1987 photo, much has changed along this stretch of the road called The Spring. The outbuildings and wall of the former farmyard at Grove Farm were soon to be demolished to make way for a new housing estate. The garage on the left remained for another ten years before that too was closed and demolished.
This picture was taken deliberately as the photographer knew that the lime trees were going to be cut down to make way for the road into the new Grove Farm estate. We will look at the road building there in our next blog entry.
Looking through the pages of the Wiltshire Gazette for 7th September 1939, we saw that not only were there 1939 evacuees to Easterton, but also to Market Lavington in those very early days of the second world war.
But first, there was a reminder that local hen owners could sell their eggs at the yard behind the Bear Hotel in the Market Place of our nearby town, Devizes.
Britain only declared war on Germany on Sunday 3rd September, following Germany’s invasion of Poland on Friday 1st September. By the time this newspaper was on sale on Thursday 7th September, there had already been several busloads of London children and some mothers with children and all had been found homes in which to stay with Market Lavington residents.
At Market Lavington Museum, we have many photographs of the building of the housing estate on the land which had been Grove Farm. Recently, we started to look through another set, which had belonged to our museum founder and former curator, Peggy Gye. We will need to compare these with the pictures already accessioned into the museum collection to see if any of Peggy’s are significantly different to those we already have.
However, looking through this pack of pictures, we found a few that were not of Grove Farm at all. Building at Grove Farm began in 1987, so we assume that this pack of pictures date from some time after that. Maybe this photo is from the late 1980s or early 1990s.
It shows the track at the top of Northbrook. Modern residents can spot the differences in the garden fences and sheds behind the Northbrook Close houses. The inner track has been there a long time, but the outer, stone covered one dates from about 1976.
Of interest are the galvanised dustbins. Residents along the track had to carry or wheelbarrow their bins to the end of the track, as the bin lorry did not drive along the track at the time. Later, wheelie bins were introduced and the rubbish collection team no longer had to lift the bins manually, to tip the contents into their lorry.
In our previous museum blog entry, we saw a newspaper report about the death of our village butcher. This paper, The Wiltshire Gazette dating from 25.6.1936, also contained a report about a tennis event in Easterton. It was obviously a bit of a local Derby, with Easterton playing Market Lavington.
Maybe one of our Easterton readers, with a long memory or good local knowledge, could tell us where the tennis court on Oak Lane was and whether is was a public facility or if the club used a court in a private garden.
Regular readers of our daily museum blog, will have come across Edward Doubleday before. He was a butcher in the shop opposite the Market Place in the 1920s and 1930s. We know that he was ill by the mid 1930s (see Mr Doubleday at the Forbes Fraser Hospital) and that he died in 1936.
Recently, we have been looking through a set of newspapers, saved by museum founder, Peggy Gye, in order to accession those with a village connection into our museum collection. The Wiltshire Gazette from 25.6.1936 reported on Mr Doubleday’s death.
So, this is definitely a paper which we will keep at the museum.
And here is Mr Doubleday on the step of his shop, not long before he died.
At Market Lavington Museum, we welcome donations of items with a connection to our village and neighbouring Easterton. It is great when the donors are able to give information about the artefact and some history of its link to the village.
We have lots of photographs of local people and places, including this one of a local vicar.
Unfortunately, the only information we have about him is that he was Reverend Douglas, in charge of the parish in the 1940s. The date 1940 is given, so presumably the photo was taken then.
Looking at the list of clergy we have in a book in the museum, we do not see Rev. Douglas.
We know that there are lengthy gaps in this list. Maybe someone could tell us if and when Rev. Douglas was vicar here or whether, in fact, he was just here temporarily or was actually the vicar of another parish.
A recent visitor to Market Lavington Museum is a keen metal detectorist and has kindly loaned some of his finds for us to put on display. This little collection was found quite recently in our neighbouring village of Easterton. We collect items from there as Easterton was once part of the parish of Market Lavington.
The donor has a lot of knowledge about these items, which we hope to tap into, so that we can make relevant labels for our visitors to read, when they see the finds on display. We will feature some of these finds in more detail on this blog, when we have the information to share.
In our previous blog entry, we mentioned that some World War II evacuees were billeted in Easterton Vicarage. Perchance, we have just been looking through some of the items awaiting accessioning into our museum collection. These include a pile of old local and national newspapers and pages saved by our founder curator, Peggy Gye. We needed to look through these to ascertain which contained items of local interest, relevant to our museum collection, and whether some just held reports about relatives and acquaintances of the donor’s family, who were not resident in our collection area.
In amongst the papers, we have
which is full of information about the outbreak of the second world war. Towards the back we found this little item.
So, right from the very beginning of the war, children with some mothers and teachers were being evacuated to Easterton from places such as London, which were felt to be more dangerous.
Peggy would have been interested in this article as she herself was a billeting officer in Market Lavington.
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