Imagine

Story by: Brian Ballard, Friends of the Aldershot Military Museum

Imagine it is 70 years ago, approaching 1945, imagine that you are standing at the top of a cart track with your back to North Lane, the track is a right-of-way but unnamed. To your left is North Farmhouse with its English country garden, little changed over the years - but, imagine, to your right is another track running parallel with and separated from this track by an old chestnut paling fence and an overgrown ditch and is surfaced with ashes and coal dust.

Imagine, next to it is a large, roughly square area covered by couch grass, formerly an allotment, crisscrossed by shallow irrigation ditches, now hidden by the tall grass, with its entrance at North Lane and it's five-bar gate leaning open, drunkenly into a large, tall group of stinging nettles.

Imagine the games you have played there and the shoes full of water you have suffered.

Imagine, as you turn to face down the track, you make your way past the farmhouse and its tall, sheltering trees, a large field comes into view, and it rises gradually and then dips down, out of site to Deadbrook Lane with, at its center, a huge, very old oak tree.

Imagine, in late summer, it is carpeted with green Curly Kale.

Imagine, as you approach another huge oak, the barbed wire fence which marks the perimeter of this field, dividing it from a large meadow. Directly in front of you is a large, wooden stile next to the oak, to your right is a hedge and ditch marking the lower boundary of the allotment.

Imagine, at the end of the allotment track is a wood and tin lean-to with its floor covered in coal chips and dust, imagine the times when you saw that old coal-man put away his cart there and tether and feed his horse.

Imagine further along the hedge, the old weeping willow, leaning over the pond covered in green scum and frogs' spawn and where, walking across the trunk, you nearly came to grief more than once!

Imagine, as you look to your front again, the large, fallow meadow to your left where the cows graze, and the evidence of this scattered everywhere - but imagine when the Buttercups and Daisies bloom or the pretty Milk-Maids and clover appear and are soon to be picked and taken home to mum.

Imagine, this meadow also has a giant oak at its center, but this one has no foliage, it stands stark against the sky, bark stripped, grey and silver and black, struck by lightning many years ago. Directly to your front, imagine climbing over the stile and stepping onto a dirt path, wide enough for only one person, stretching in front of you and curving to the right as it wends its way to the brook, the River Blackwater. Imagine the path bordered on the right by a grass verge and thick stinging nettles, then an overgrown ditch, deep and wet and then a high bank, probably medieval, and crowning the bank, the first large oak tree and then more at intervals along its length.

Imagine, affixed to the trees, strands of barbed wire which separate the meadow on the other side, but hidden from view by the abundance of trees, bushes and undergrowth growing along the top of the bank - Pussy Willow, Holly, Hazelnut, Hawthorne, gorse, bracken, Blackberry and stinging nettle and much more.

Imagine, as you follow the path, the fence at the bottom of the meadow on your left with Old Lane on the other side which leads to Deadbrook Lane. As the path bears to your right, imagine another wooden stile which you climb over and are faced with the footbridge, which has a concrete base and tubular steel hand-rails, which you step onto and look at the silent, black water flowing beneath you.

Imagine, as you stand on the bridge and look around you, Old Lane with, on its right, the overgrown and tree-lined fence which marks the boundary of Deadbrook Farm, now unused.

Imagine, as you look right, Shawfield Lane, leading to Ash and bordered on the left by another meadow, through which the brook wends its way, snake-like, and on the right by a sunken, flooded area with trees and bushes blocking the view of the meadow beyond. Imagine all the different birds which nested in the grass, bushes and trees as you made your short journey - a journey never to be followed again - except in the imagination.

North Farmhouse, home to the Collet family. Standing back from “The Lane”, on the left at the junction with North Lane and opposite ‘the allotments’. It stands today, empty and in a terrible condition. The fine Oak tree behind has been felled, adding to the desolation.

The tree marks the line of the lane, they stood in a hedge with strung-out barbed wire and a ditch below carrying water from a culvert under North Lane. A stile stood here, between two meadows.

The River Blackwater by the bridge where some brave souls jumped and landed in deep, black slime! Open fields were on the right with a hedge containing hazel nut trees.

The footbridge, (not original) with path to Ash. An old man lived alone in an old caravan in amongst the trees on the right.

Shawfields Lane, from the bridge. To the right looks the same but an open meadow was to the left.

The footpath to Deadbrook Lane. Both sides used to be open meadow with ditches, and barbed wire fences with a hedge on the right.

The Lanes Map — Above: Old map of the Lanes.