Cippenham Lane

A Memory of Cippenham.

I lived near here, we are looking the other way to the other pic, Dorothy Mutton's Post Office is in the distance. On the right is the elm hedge and bank which bordered the (dry) gravel pit where we played. It was wonderful! A dump for surplus council materials from which we could build camps. The best were the Anderson shelter bits, 1,000's of them! We made long "ghost trains" standing the curved sheets on edge and roofing with flat sheets, we built smoky fires inside, not a good idea in thunderstorms! Of course it's all built on now, Boarlands Close with memories of Mr Horwood's pigs is the only road name I know, he had been groom at Cippenham MANOR Farm but bought part of "the pit" and had a smallholding. Some of his land that backs onto Ivy Crescent (where I lived) was used during the 20's by the council to dump household rubbish, if the present owners dug down! The pit was dug at the end of WWI and the gravel taken on a little mineral line across the Bath Road and railway line to build what became the Trading Estate