The Beanery, 486 Fair Oak Rd

A Memory of Fair Oak.

Born in 1955, we went from Botley to the New Forest and then we moved again where I went to school in Fair Oak when I was 8 years old. I remember the cows to be milked used to come down Mortimers Lane to the field, to the left side the main road of what is the junction where you turn right to go to Eastleigh. That road didn't exist then, and the only way to Eastleigh was through the village, past the butchers shop. Also, if you were coming down Mortimers lane, the road went straight past the Church and and not in a loop to the right as it does now. That part didn't exist then. We lived where the blue cross animal rescue is now on Mortimers lane. We lived there for 10 months. There was no electricity to the house, and we had to get water from the well. We had a transistor radio but no TV. Light came from oil lamps and we cooked on a full sized cooker which was powered by large gas canisters. It seems incredible now, but it's true and I loved it.
We then moved to Bishopstoke, but when I got to 21 years old I bought The Beanery, which was a beautiful old cottage right in Fair Oak square. I paid twentyone thousand pounds for it, and sold it for one hundred and two thousand pounds...a tidy profit! All you could see from the road was a door and a window, but it went behind another building and had a decent sized garden, a very large inglenook fireplace and two bedrooms upstairs, as well as a good sized bathroom, and a small kitchen. We couldn't hang any pictures on the walls because the walls were leaning at weird angles. It had lovely oak beams, which I was told came from a ship that had been broken up. It seems strange that I have never found any history about the house, but as a marker, I found a King William 3rd coin in the garden, dated 1697, and would therefore assume it was built about the same time. I loved my time there, and my son and daughter was born there but we needed more room, so we had to move. It'll always be my favourite house.

---

---