Box People and Places
Latest Issue 47 Spring 2025 
  • This Issue
    • Millers of Box
    • Vezey Wall
    • Jesse Smith
    • Pauline Gibbons' Story
    • Great Quarry Trade
    • Rose, Rustic and Undercliffe
    • Kate Bull
    • Very Long Day
    • Roman Roads
    • Where Is This?
    • Who Are We?
    • Times Past
    • Recalling Mill Lane Halt
    • Wolf Hall
    • Canoeing and Caving
    • Dirty Arch Myth
    • Brook Northey Children
  • Previous
    • Issue 46 - Box Hill
    • Issue 45 - Moleyns Lordship
    • Issue 44 - Viking Hazelbury
    • Issue 43 - Late Medieval
    • Issue 42 - Beautiful Box
    • Issue 41 - Becket Plays
    • Issue 40 - Selwyn Hall
    • Issues 30-39 >
      • Issue 39 - Modern Box
      • Issue 38 - Railway Workers
      • Issue 37 - Mill Lane Halt
      • Issue 36 - Box Rec
      • Issue 35 - Inter war
      • Issue 34 - Fogleigh House
      • Issue 33 - KIngsdown Post Office
      • Issue 32 - Chapel Lane
      • Issue 31 - Saxon Box
      • Issue 30 - Georgian Rudloe
    • Issues 20-29 >
      • Issue 29 - Darkest Hour
      • Issue 28 - VE Day
      • Issue 27 - Northey
      • Issue 26 - Heritage Trail
      • Issue 25 - Slave Owners
      • Issue 24 - Highwaymen
      • Issue 23 - Georgian
      • Issue 22 - War Memorial
      • Issue 21 - Childhood 1949-59
      • Issue 20 - Box Home Guard
    • Issues 10-19 >
      • Issue 19 - Outbreak WW2
      • Issue 18 - Building Bargates
      • Issue 17 - Railway Changes
      • Issue 16 - Quarries
      • Issue 15 - Rail & Quarry
      • Issue 14 - Civil War
      • Issue 13: Box Revels
      • Issue 12 - Where You Live
      • Issue 11 - Tudor & Stuart
      • Issue 10 - End of Era 1912
    • Issues 1-9 >
      • Issue 9 - Health & Leisure
      • Issue 8 - Farming & Rural
      • Issue 7 - Manufacturing
      • Issue 6 - Celebrations
      • Issue 5 - Victorian Centre
      • Issue 4 - Slump after WW1
      • Issue 3 - Great War 1914-18
      • Issue 2 - 1950s & 1960s
      • Issue 1 - 1920s
    • Index By Author
    • Partner Sites & Book Reviews
    • Currency Converter
  • People
  • Places
  • General
  • FULL Series
  • Contact
    • Blog
    • Q&A
The Ley  - As it Was !
PictureWestdene from the Devizes Road, August 1935 (courtesy Anna Grayson)
Anna Grayson
February 2015

In the years after the First World War, The Ley was scarcely developed. When Cecil Lambert built Westdene on a meadow bought from Merretts, the building firm, in 1933, it was one of the very few properties in the road.

This is the story of how the area developed after that time. 

All pictures CMP, unless stated.



Picture
Extract of hand-drawn map of Box believed to be by Cecil Lambert, probably dating from when he was a child pre World War One (courtesy Anna Grayson).
I always understood from my uncle, Cecil Lambert, that The Ley was an ancient road, predating the Devizes Road, and at one time connected with Henley Lane. It may also have had a connection to the byway which goes up to Pye Corner, behind what used to be the Lamb Inn (opposite Chapel Lane) and comes down close to the Tollhouse.

We know that it goes back centuries because Leyes is marked on Francis Allen's map of 1630 as a field, an area of common pasture where animals could graze freely and securely close to the centre of the village. The Ley road is still the border of a low-lying, secure area, just to the south of the Manor House and within its overview. The complexity of grazing arrangements on common pasture needed close control, sometimes administered by the village collective or by the court of the lord of the manor.

Ley (or lea) is an Old English word meaning land sometimes let out to grass for grazing and sometimes left fallow.[1] It is interesting to note that it falls within a typical Saxon farming structure of land radiating from the centre comprising: central housing; gardens and paddocks (for vegetables and animal over-wintering); then communal arable and pasture.

In 1947, when I arrived in Box, this is how The Ley was. Entering from the village end off the Devizes Road, I am going to deal with the left hand side all the way along it.


Left Hand Side
The first house on the left, Charnwood (Picture 1), did not exist. Previously this space was the gardens to older cottages, Mead House and Strauchen Mead Cottage (Pictures 2 & 3).[2] Another property is also there now, Melrose (Picture 4).


Picture
1 Charnwood
Picture
2 Mead House (Woodstock)
Picture
3 Mead House and Charnwood House
Picture
4 Melrose
The council houses, numbered 1 to 10 The Ley (Picture 5), were there in 1947 and date back to at least 1939, as was the bungalow now named Alyssum (Picture 6).

Picture
5 Houses 1 to 10 The Ley
Picture
6 Alyssum
Ley Industrial Park
The land where The Ley Industrial Park (Picture 7) now stands was a paddock with a shed. Pat Brickell's pony was kept there and later Bull & Brickell built an ice cream factory and later sold frozen peas.[3] In 1947 The Ley was two-way. Probably when Bull and Brickell built their ice-cream factory on the paddock on the bend it became one-way.


Picture
7 Ley Industrial Park
There were two bungalows between the end of the paddock and The Lagger footpath. The long-serving Box school master, Bert Swan, lived there but his house has been totally altered. The first one, Forest-side, is still there.(8)

But the second one has been much changed and several properties have been built in the garden and orchard of the second property.

These are: Hazelbrook (9), Willowbank (10), Bianca's House (11), Appletree (12) and Brookfield (13).



Picture
8 Forest-side
Above Left to Right: 9 Hazelbrook                                                 10 Willowbank                                                         11 Bianca's House
Below Left to Right:                 12 Appletree                                                                                         13 Brookfield

Picture
Picture
The Lagger Footpath
The Lagger (Picture 14) is believed to be very ancient; in modern times it was the shortcut to the bus stop. After the Lagger there was a large, very steep paddock with an upper narrow level, part of which led down to the field proper. On this there was a rough stable.

Ben Drew, the baker from the Devizes Road, owned this field and kept his horse, Joey, there.[4] Joey was a chestnut cob with a white face and docked tail. He hauled the baker's cart for deliveries to the outlying hamlets.[5]

When Benny Drew died he gifted the field and Joey to Ted Hulbert and Joey continued to live there for the rest of his life. We used to talk to Joey at the gate and stroke his head. (This issue also publishes Ted Hulbert's story.)

Where the telegraph pole now stands there was a huge ash tree. When Ted Hulbert died the field was split into two separate plots for development.

Picture
14 The Lagger Footpath
After The Lagger a little rank of houses was built: Cambria (15), Thorn Wood (16), Contours (17), Taurene (18), Grasswood (19) and The Chestnuts (20).

Above Left to Right: 15 Cambria                                                  16 Thorn Wood                                                             17 Contours
Below:                    18 Taurene                                                   19 Grasswood                                                              20 The Chestnuts
Ley Cottage
The next piece of land in 1947 was the orchard to Ley Cottage (21). The cottage was lived in by the Miss Higgens, Clare and Barbara, who wrote An Intimate History of Box and Footpath Walks. I believe they lived there with their father at first.

Prior to the Misses Higgens, the cottage was owned by Lieut-Col AWB Wallace, whose daughter Daphne, married a naval officer from HMS Royal Arthur, Corsham, in 1947. At one point the Selby family lived at the cottage.

Picture
21 Ley Cottage
Townsend
Townsend then was largely as it is now. The first cottage (22), was a tiny premises lived in by Jack and Mill Norkett. Jack worked for the railway and Mill was related to the Lamberts. There was a door to The Ley, where the canopy is now blocked up. Inside you stepped down to the floor level. There was no electricity or gas or running water.
Water was fetched from a tap on the corner of Hazelbury Hill and there was an outside toilet in the garden.

Picture
22 The Norkett's Cottage at Townsend with blocked doorway
There were two rooms downstairs: a living room with  kitchen range, and a sitting room. Steps led down to a substantial cellar (almost like a crypt) with a vaulted ceiling, stone shelf and a doorway through to a second cellar (we were not allowed to go into there).

It was alleged that a passageway from this cellar led under the road but I can't confirm that. Outside, at the back, was a washhouse with a boiler. The garden was well-kept. Upstairs were two bedrooms.

Adjoining this (now part of it) was a one-up, one-down cottage with a lean-to kitchen. A mother and a child with learning difficulties lived there.

The third building, Townsend Cottage (23), which was attached to the other two, belonged to the Lamberts at one time and is externally unchanged. The end house, Townsend House (24), has changed little over the years.
Picture
23 Townsend Cottage
Picture
24 Townsend House
In one of the properties at Townsend (in the road called Hazelbury Hill) (25 & 26) lived Mrs Wainwright. She was a most distinctive person, very old, and she always wore black. She usually wore a black cloak, hat, boots and skirt and carried a black umbrella. It was all very strange in the 1940s.
Picture
25 Hazelbury Hill
Picture
26 The terrace is split into two parts
Right Hand Side
Starting from the Devizes Road, there was no building with an entrance to The Ley on this side. The site, where The Shambles (27) now stands, was entered from the Devizes Road and they owned all the land. Box Bottom House (28) stands in what used to be a substantial meadow owned by Mr and Mrs Ratcliffe who lived in Toll House (29). Mr Ratcliffe was a solicitor.

Picture
27 The Shambles
Picture
28 Box Bottom House
Picture
29 Toll House
On the bend, the rough track leading along Box Bottom leads from The Ley. The first part was Hazel Coppice (30). Then there was a gate and a very steep open meadow on both sides of the track. There were lots of molehills in the meadow and a narrow stream ran along the bottom of the valley.

Picture
30 Hazel Coppice
Picture
31 Footpath
A second gate (31) led into a second field and copse. A concrete pumping station (out of use) was near the stream. The track led to the side of Pinch Pond where the lower end (outside a dam) had the remains of a sheep dipping pond with metal shepherds' boxes to enable the sheep to be pushed in and out with sloping ramps for access. The track then led across a steep field to join Wyres Lane (the top end of Hazelbury Hill), where it crossed over to Hazelbury House.

Back on the road, The Ley was wooded up to the entrance to Woodstream (32). There was no drive up into the woods or houses in the woods. Now Silkwood has been built here as well. Westwinds (33) stands in what was the orchard and garden of Westdene.


Picture
32 Woodstream
Picture
33 Westwinds
Westdene
Westdene (34-36) was built in 1933. Access to Westdene was by a stony, narrow footpath with a white railing beside it. For years after it was built, clay pipes were found in abundance when digging in the garden. Possibly it was an allotment or perhaps a haunt of workers relaxing after working on Box Tunnel.

Picture
34 Westdene above the Lagger footpath (photo courtesy Anna Grayson)
Picture
35 Westdene (courtesy Anna Grayson)
Picture
36 Westdene's Pergola, now demolished (courtesy Anna Grayson)
The rest of the older bungalows were built in succession: Box View, Quiet Ways (37) and Kildare (38).
Picture
Picture
          37 Kingsmoor Cottages and Quiet Ways                                                                                            38 Westdene and Kildare
Kingsmoor
There was no car park or Kingsmoor Cottages in 1947. Where they stand used to be the kitchen garden, later paddock, to Kingsmoor House (39).

Picture
39 Kingsmoor House
Kingsmoor House was probably built between 1900 and 1911.[6] It may have been built by the Pinchin family because in 1911 Edwin Skeate Pinchin, Brewer and Maltster, lived there in 9 rooms with his wife, one child and a domestic servant. At one stage, it was owned by the Skrine family.

The Skrines were before my time but my uncle talked about them. They were a reminder of pre-war society, led by the matriarchal Mrs Edith Sholto Skrine, daughter of the Hon Sholto Douglas Skrine, Procureur-General of Mauritius. Edith lived in Kingsmoor from at least 1923 until her death in 1931 when her surviving son, Walter, and his wife lived there until at least 1941. Their condition seems much diminished by then because, instead of advertising in the local paper for a good house parlour-maid (as they had done throughout the 1920s), by 1941 they needed a milking goat, good breed.

Probably in the latter stages of the war and after, the property was taken over for military use and in 1947 was referred to as the Naval Station, Kingsmoor.[7] Then later, it was a children's home run by Mr and Mrs Tull, a much loved couple, on behalf of the Wiltshire County Council. It has changed externally with various owners and two extensions have been added on either side, possibly built by the council.

The Cottages were sold off by Wiltshire County Council after the children's home was closed. The Richmond Fellowship, a charity helping young people, took over the main house in the 1990s until 2008-09 when it reverted to a private residence.

Picture
The Upper Ley
This road had some bungalows on both sides but these have been much changed or the land infilled with more properties. At the end was a house on the left and a house on the right.

A narrow, private footpath comes up from Westdene, past all the properties, crosses the Upper Ley and then joins the top of Hazelbury Hill. It is shown on early deeds as a wide right-of-way but has never been this in my time.

Past the Upper Ley, where the council houses called 1 - 8 Hazelbury Hill (40) now stand, was a very big meadow, steeply sloping, with a cluster of big trees in the centre. Cows were kept in the field and I once saw a calf being born there. The council houses in this field were built after 1947.

Left: 40 The Upper Ley


Because of the way that The Ley has been developed ad hoc after 1947, it is sometimes difficult to imagine how it once looked and the views that it previously afforded over the whole of Box village. The marvellous photos below demonstrate the landscape in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Below left (41) you can make out the old Pontings shop in Queen's Square (now demolished to form the car park). Below right (42) you can make out the line of Steam Mill Cottages. They are a reminder of the original rural purpose of the Ley fields.
Picture
41 View towards Box Church (courtesy Anna Grayson)
Picture
42 View towards Market Place (courtesy Anna Grayson)
These photos are a reminder of the original rural purpose of the Ley fields and the glorious views that its position allows overlooking the whole of Box village.(43)
Picture
43 Photo courtesy Chris Dancey
References
[1] Oxford Dictionary
[2] See Historic Houses
[3] Ken Oatley adds that Bull & Brickell had a parlour selling ice-cream next to Lloyds Bank in Corsham.

[4] There are some fabulous photos of Joey, the horse, and Ben Drew in the article in this issue about Ted Hulbert
[5] There are many affectionate stories about Ben Drew and Joey, although I cannot vouch for their authenticity. I like the one that a householder in Ditteridge bought all the loaves that Ben took in a basket to her front door. He went back to the cart for extra loaves and took them to the lady. Joey, thinking that his master was on board, set off for home without him.

[6] Details indebted to Sarah Street
[7] Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 13 December 1947

Back to Issue 6
Council Houses