Old Reading Room Ploverfield

A Memory of Old Milton.

I think you need to get a bit further back in history to find anything about the Old Reading Room which you describe as "High Trees", Long Lane.  In the thirties my parents rented Ploverfield Lodge Cottage which stood at the entrance of the driveway leading to Ploverfield, at that time owned by a family named Oliver.  The Reading Room, as I remember it a wooden building with a corrugated roof, was included in the rental and we had it as a playroom.  My father who was an expert model maker was repairing a model of an East Indiaman called Rienzi and partitioned off about a third of the hall with a chicken-wire fence for this very large model where he could work in peace.  We had the rest - and soon became the most popular kids in the village. Christmas and birthday parties were terrific because we could rampage as much as we liked. The owner of Ploverfield, I think he was a Captain Oliver, died about 1937-8 and the estate was bought by someone who I think was called Stistead - or something similar, although we had moved by that time.  I think the house was requisitioned for the army during the war and probably the hall was too but I was at boarding school at that time and we left Bursledon in 1947.  I have no idea when or how the Reading room became called "High Trees" - perhaps the Lodge Cottage was sold off and renamed but it was certainly part of the Ploverfield Estate in the 30s and there was nothing called High Trees in Long Lane - in fact there was nothing else in Long Lane. The Lodge cottage was the only house/building between the junction of School Lane (not School Road - please!) and Long Lane and a house close to the top of The Cut leading down to Lowford. Opposite that house, owned by one of the clan of Fishers in the village, there was a footpath which lead across the strawberry fields and down the hill to the church, next to that was the recreation ground on the right. On the left there was a building which I think was some sort of non-conformist chapel which I seem to remember was little, or perhaps not used at all, then I think there were a couple of (semi-detached?) houses before the Church Hall.  Past the Church Hall there were several more houses on both sides just before one came to where the road bent round to Oak Hill.

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