Before Bargates Margaret Wakefield January 2024
Children in the photo include Angela Mortimer (holding tennis racquet), Margaret Lambert, Sandra Cook and Christine Webber (courtesy Margaret Wakefield)
The problem with dramatic changes is that they obliterate all memories of the original site. This is true of Bargates, perhaps the most significant alteration in Box since World War 2.
This photo of children playing dates to the Carnival procession gathering in the corner of Fete Field (now Bargates) and Highfield House in about 1950. The field had traditionally been used for village gatherings and as a place of communal assembly.
Despite the lack of finance and high unemployment in the austerity years after the war, summer celebrations were important to people keen to show that the war had ended and to regain a sense of community and local purpose. It was also a chance to offer a better childhood for children as part of a new beginning.
Despite the lack of finance and high unemployment in the austerity years after the war, summer celebrations were important to people keen to show that the war had ended and to regain a sense of community and local purpose. It was also a chance to offer a better childhood for children as part of a new beginning.
Site plan of Bargates by Calne & Chippenham District Council dated January 1948 (courtesy Margaret Wakefield)
Because the village had use of The Rec for public gatherings after GJ Kidston donated the land in 1936, the local authorities were able to consider the Fete Field site for development. One of the first needs was to provide safe access onto the A4, which was achieved by making Bull Lane one-way and by cutting off part of the garden of Highfield House, then occupied by Mary Ellen Bradfied, the daughter of Walter John Bradfield.