Curiosity leads to unexpected stories from my little corner of the Drayton Estate.

A quiet corner of the Drayton Estate as seen from the once-empty 3 Pinder Close

A while back I wrote a piece about a house just around the corner from mine that had stood empty for a few years (click to read). This house had barely been modernised over the years, and the more I delved into the history of this one particular house, the more interesting it became. Often is the case when researching your local history, following your nose often leads you down historical alleyways that you never expected to end up in, and more often than not, they end up being more fascinating than you ever could have imagined. And it’s this kind of follow-your-nose research that the MX100 research leads, myself included, had been teaching our fellow citizen researchers as we encouraged them to dig for interesting snippets of the estate’s history for the recent Mile Cross 100 project. Another part of this process was also asking for the public to provide us with their own stories about Mile Cross.

Continue reading “Curiosity leads to unexpected stories from my little corner of the Drayton Estate.”

Lassie almost made it home.

This is a story that I have already written about in the past, over two separate pieces and I thought it was about time to merge the two old posts together to tell the whole story in one. It’s a story that demands attention and it makes far more sense to be able to read it all in one sitting.

In the very northern corner of the estate and just behind the Boundary Pub is a quiet little cul-de-sac named Spynke Road. Like a lot of the roads up there on the very fringes of the boundary it wasn’t always this quiet. Most of the roads adjoining Boundary Road were once connected directly to it, allowing for people to use it as a rat-run to avoid the increasing volumes of traffic building up on the increasingly-busy outer ring road. Soon these roads were deemed too unsafe for the local residents and it was decided that for everybody’s safety it would make sense to have them closed off. Because of these road closures the area now has a strangely quiet and closed-off feel, but with the unrelenting background drone of traffic. As annoying as that background droning may be to the visitors or new residents, the modern day residents of Spynke Road are probably more than happy for that to be the only drone they need to worry about, as will become apparent later on.

Continue reading “Lassie almost made it home.”