# Darlton Gaps Farm, nr Tuxford - July 08



## 85 Vintage (Jul 29, 2008)

This was the first place I went to after dropping the 'rents off. It's on the side of the road so easily noticeable.

I went onto the OS site and looked at the map to see if the farm had a name. All I could see was the farm then 'Darlton Gaps' under it. So guessing the area is called Darlton Gaps, maybe the farm was, Darlton Gaps Farm? 

The house itself has suffered a fire at some point, but looked to be in the roof space, as one end the roof was gone completely gone and could see into the roof at the other end from inside. The 1st floor floor in the more intact end was gone completely aswell. But the fire didn't look like it had damaged the 1st floor that much and the ground floor at all. There was nothing left inside at all though.















































Some fancy looking gutterign supports





Small pens, for chickens? 















Rest are HERE


----------



## losttom (Jul 30, 2008)

The pens look like what they have in catteries/boarding kennels
Was there an inside area as well?


----------



## Foxylady (Jul 30, 2008)

Nice explore. Love seeing the wooden beams against the brickwork and the fancy guttering supports are great.
I did think at first that the pens could be pig sties but they don't look quite large enough.
Cheers


----------



## 85 Vintage (Jul 31, 2008)

losttom said:


> The pens look like what they have in catteries/boarding kennels
> Was there an inside area as well?



No there wasn't. The pens pens were covered and in the 1st pic of them you can make just see the full height wall starting, was 3 sided. So only movedment was forwards into the half wall height and through gates/doors that had been taken off.

It was very over grown so didn't have a look, but could get down the left side. Not sure what was down there, pic taken from inside the house






but it would have led to this building and behind that wall.


----------



## RichR (Mar 10, 2021)

I grew up here, 1956 - 69. Sad to see it like this. My father and mother ran it as a dairy farm: 32 acres and a herd of Ayrshire cows. There was an orchard: Victoria plums, bramley apples and conference pears. A magnificent horse chestnut grew at the end by the entrance. Under its shade shade we sold the plums to passing motorists. The hawthorn hedges, dog roses and oaks, all ripped out now, the surrounding countryside devastated by agricultural policy and greed. Bleak in the winter, featurless in summer. After we left it was converted into a kennels. Cobb, the farmer next door, bought the land, ripped everything out and put it down to arable. So much lost.


----------



## TJacko (Dec 15, 2022)

RichR said:


> I grew up here, 1956 - 69. Sad to see it like this. My father and mother ran it as a dairy farm: 32 acres and a herd of Ayrshire cows. There was an orchard: Victoria plums, bramley apples and conference pears. A magnificent horse chestnut grew at the end by the entrance. Under its shade shade we sold the plums to passing motorists. The hawthorn hedges, dog roses and oaks, all ripped out now, the surrounding countryside devastated by agricultural policy and greed. Bleak in the winter, featurless in summer. After we left it was converted into a kennels. Cobb, the farmer next door, bought the land, ripped everything out and put it down to arable. So much lost.


I do remember it well been up there did you have something to do with model aircraft Also there was an old milk churn many years ago so sad


----------



## Foxylady (Dec 16, 2022)

RichR said:


> I grew up here, 1956 - 69. Sad to see it like this. My father and mother ran it as a dairy farm: 32 acres and a herd of Ayrshire cows. There was an orchard: Victoria plums, bramley apples and conference pears. A magnificent horse chestnut grew at the end by the entrance. Under its shade shade we sold the plums to passing motorists. The hawthorn hedges, dog roses and oaks, all ripped out now, the surrounding countryside devastated by agricultural policy and greed. Bleak in the winter, featurless in summer. After we left it was converted into a kennels. Cobb, the farmer next door, bought the land, ripped everything out and put it down to arable. So much lost.


I totally understand your feelings about your old home. My dad had an orchard, just a small one, but it supported 20 odd peasgood nonsuch apple trees, several conference pears, plums, damsons and blackberries, plus he kept 5 bee hives so we had our own honey all year round. Then sometime in the late 60s it was compulsory purchased to make a ring road for a new town. Devastating!


----------



## Mearing (Dec 16, 2022)

Foxylady said:


> I totally understand your feelings about your old home. My dad had an orchard, just a small one, but it supported 20 odd peasgood nonsuch apple trees, several conference pears, plums, damsons and blackberries, plus he kept 5 bee hives so we had our own honey all year round. Then sometime in the late 60s it was compulsory purchased to make a ring road for a new town. Devastating!


I understand that feeling of loss only too well. My fathers small holding had just under two acres of land which I remember ploughing with an elderly Fordson tractor, next door was a 600 acre mixed farm . I could access it from our land when I worked there. It's all housing now. The other loss was around Bletchley where I travelled to many farms as part of a threshing team, that's all now under Milton Keynes, nothing recogmisable now. Suppose I'm a dinosaur but it all seems a great loss under the heading progress!
As Foxylady says, devastating.


----------



## Hayman (Dec 17, 2022)

Mearing said:


> I understand that feeling of loss only too well. My fathers small holding had just under two acres of land which I remember ploughing with an elderly Fordson tractor, next door was a 600 acre mixed farm . I could access it from our land when I worked there. It's all housing now. The other loss was around Bletchley where I travelled to many farms as part of a threshing team, that's all now under Milton Keynes, nothing recogmisable now. Suppose I'm a dinosaur but it all seems a great loss under the heading progress!
> As Foxylady says, devastating.


It is strange that totally inanimate objects - land, buildings, tunnels, bridges, railway locomotives, cars, tractors (even Fordson Majors with their blue paint faded), ships, aeroplanes, etc - can be so emotive. I've long felt that things retain something from the people who have lived in, used or otherwise been connected with them. My wife came from Winslow, near Milton Keynes. We once visited a small pub in the town - and she was horrified with how it had been refurbished. All the old atmosphere had been destroyed by the seating being replaced with bright red plastic. Yuk!


----------



## Mearing (Dec 17, 2022)

Hayman said:


> It is strange that totally inanimate objects - land, buildings, tunnels, bridges, railway locomotives, cars, tractors (even Fordson Majors with their blue paint faded), ships, aeroplanes, etc - can be so emotive. I've long felt that things retain something from the people who have lived in, used or otherwise been connected with them. My wife came from Winslow, near Milton Keynes. We once visited a small pub in the town - and she was horrified with how it had been refurbished. All the old atmosphere had been destroyed by the seating being replaced with bright red plastic. Yuk!


Yes I agree. Incidentally I knew Winslow well, many years ago ( nearly 70!) I courted a girl from fairly close by,she lived at the Verney Arms in Verney Junction! No railway junction there now sad to say, it was a very isolated place even in those days. Still have happy memories of riding my competition Matchless 500 back to Leighton Buzzard in the early hours!


----------



## Hayman (Dec 17, 2022)

Mearing said:


> Yes I agree. Incidentally I knew Winslow well, many years ago ( nearly 70!) I courted a girl from fairly close by,she lived at the Verney Arms in Verney Junction! No railway junction there now sad to say, it was a very isolated place even in those days. Still have happy memories of riding my competition Matchless 500 back to Leighton Buzzard in the early hours!


----------



## Hayman (Dec 18, 2022)

The pub in question was The Boot in Granborough Road; 'garish' was the word to describe the red seating. Yes, Verney Junction always was a lonely place; many railway junctions that were just that; no village or town, just a few sets of points, signals and a signal box.

My wife's family home was 33 Sheep Street. She had been born there, along with her sister. Their mother died before I met her, but her father still lived at No 33 in the 1980s. He had worked for the local council, and had been a volunteer fireman during WWII. Tragedy struck Winslow in 1943 when a Wellington bomber on a training flight crashed on a row of cottages. Two of those killed in the cottages were my wife's father's parents.

I've had another recent connection with Buckinghamshire. I was given a collection of hardback Hammond Innes books, all published by Hazell, Watson & Viney in Aylesbury. And my wife's sister made pocket money while still at school proof-reading for H W & V.


----------



## Mearing (Dec 19, 2022)

Hayman said:


> The pub in question was The Boot in Granborough Road; 'garish' was the word to describe the red seating. Yes, Verney Junction always was a lonely place; many railway junctions that were just that; no village or town, just a few sets of points, signals and a signal box.
> 
> My wife's family home was 33 Sheep Street. She had been born there, along with her sister. Their mother died before I met her, but her father still lived at No 33 in the 1980s. He had worked for the local council, and had been a volunteer fireman during WWII. Tragedy struck Winslow in 1943 when a Wellington bomber on a training flight crashed on a row of cottages. Two of those killed in the cottages were my wife's father's parents.
> 
> I've had another recent connection with Buckinghamshire. I was given a collection of hardback Hammond Innes books, all published by Hazell, Watson & Viney in Aylesbury. And my wife's sister made pocket money while still at school proof-reading for H W & V.


The crash of the Wellington bomber in 1943 killed 17 people in total, four crew memers and thirteen residents of Winslow, one crew member survived. Tragic that your wifes family members were victims. Reminiiscent of the Lockerbie disaster when the Pan Am 747 fell on the town.

Hazel Watson & Viney rings a bell as I had friends who had worked there at one time and another.

Referring to the original subject the encroachment of housing developement into the countryside is inevitable of course and I recognise the need but it does destroy many once familiar places.


----------



## Hayman (Dec 19, 2022)

Mearing said:


> The crash of the Wellington bomber in 1943 killed 17 people in total, four crew memers and thirteen residents of Winslow, one crew member survived. Tragic that your wifes family members were victims. Reminiiscent of the Lockerbie disaster when the Pan Am 747 fell on the town.
> 
> Hazel Watson & Viney rings a bell as I had friends who had worked there at one time and another.
> 
> Referring to the original subject the encroachment of housing developement into the countryside is inevitable of course and I recognise the need but it does destroy many once familiar places.


I phoned my wife's sister yesterday - to confirm that she was still at school when she did the proof reading for H W & V. She was 15 at the time, and - not surprisingly - went on to be a teacher of English among other subjects.

We tend to see the way things are from the days of our childhoods, hence our resentment at open land being built on. But without such construction there would be no abandoned sites to visit! When my parents sold off part of the three acres of the grounds of my childhood home Bossell, in Buckfastleigh, I felt it was like having something amputated. The long non-productive apple orchard was bought by a local builder who put up two bungalows where the daffodils we sold to the town's Co-op had previously grown.


----------



## Mearing (Dec 19, 2022)

Hayman said:


> I phoned my wife's sister yesterday - to confirm that she was still at school when she did the proof reading for H W & V. She was 15 at the time, and - not surprisingly - went on to be a teacher of English among other subjects.
> 
> We tend to see the way things are from the days of our childhoods, hence our resentment at open land being built on. But without such construction there would be no abandoned sites to visit! When my parents sold off part of the three acres of the grounds of my childhood home Bossell, in Buckfastleigh, I felt it was like having something amputated. The long non-productive apple orchard was bought by a local builder who put up two bungalows where the daffodils we sold to the town's Co-op had previously grown.


Perhaps it has always been thus, older people bemoaning the loss of familiar places from their younger days.
It's been said however that nostalgia is not what it was!

I soloed five years ago aged eighty six at Long Marston airfield near Stratford upon Avon. It has now been designated a developement area and already has some 300 houses, so no more flying from there now! Inevitably it leaves a sense of loss. Hopefully the folk who purchased homes there enjoy fulfilling lives.

Things move on. T.S Eliot the poet summarised it in one of The Four Qarrtets,,East Coker,first lines if I remember correctlty.

Note to self, "stop rambling"!


----------



## Hayman (Dec 20, 2022)

Mearing said:


> Perhaps it has always been thus, older people bemoaning the loss of familiar places from their younger days.
> It's been said however that nostalgia is not what it was!
> 
> I soloed five years ago aged eighty six at Long Marston airfield near Stratford upon Avon. It has now been designated a developement area and already has some 300 houses, so no more flying from there now! Inevitably it leaves a sense of loss. Hopefully the folk who purchased homes there enjoy fulfilling lives.
> ...


Mention of Long Marston has me thinking of the Royal Engineers stores depot there. Although I never visited it, the Central Stores Depot was one of the addresses I put on Consignment Notes when on my Clerk (Movement Control) BIII course at the Movement Control School, Longmoor Camp in 1959. As with the Longmoor Military Railway, Long Marston had a number of Austerity 0-6-0 saddle tank locomotives. They were replaced by diesel shunters, until "the MoD depot facilities were run down in the 1990s leading to eventual closure".


----------



## Mearing (Dec 20, 2022)

Hayman said:


> Mention of Long Marston has me thinking of the Royal Engineers stores depot there. Although I never visited it, the Central Stores Depot was one of the addresses I put on Consignment Notes when on my Clerk (Movement Control) BIII course at the Movement Control School, Longmoor Camp in 1959. As with the Longmoor Military Railway, Long Marston had a number of Austerity 0-6-0 saddle tank locomotives. They were replaced by diesel shunters, until "the MoD depot facilities were run down in the 1990s leading to eventual closure".


Yes,the depot is interesting,,there was/is a large rail network within its perimeter, I often flew over it when approaching the main runway from a southerly direction, there appeared to be a great deal of stored passenger rolling stock on the tracks.

A recent news item featured a hydrogen powered train that was under developement there.

The site is now surrounded by recently constructed housing estates naturally!!

There is another similar local depot at Edgehill which includes the site of the civil war battleground. This one has a connection to the main rail network as once did the Long marston depot before the Beeching cuts removed the seven miles of track between Stratford and Honeybourne, a mistake because it severed the more direct connection to London, the wayleave is still intact but our regrettable local MP Nadhim Zahawri does not endorse re-opening, I suspect because of local opposition from some constituents who amongst othe things do not relish the prospect of losing their convenient dog walking route!


----------



## Hayman (Dec 21, 2022)

Mearing said:


> Yes,the depot is interesting,,there was/is a large rail network within its perimeter, I often flew over it when approaching the main runway from a southerly direction, there appeared to be a great deal of stored passenger rolling stock on the tracks.
> 
> A recent news item featured a hydrogen powered train that was under developement there.
> 
> ...


Yes, the sidings on the depot were used to store both rolling stock and locomotives that were cut up by scrap merchant Bird's.

So many lines that should have been retained were lost under Beeching. And so many deliberately built over so they could not be reopened. You are probably right about the dogwalkers. Other lines that have become cycleways but could well accommodate both reopening and an adjacent cycle track - because railway companies often bought up more land than was needed - also suffer the same NIMBY attitudes. And cycling is one of the new religions.

I've read about the hydrogen-powered trains, to be used where overhead electrification is considered too expensive. But the continuing cost of providing the plants to produce the hydrogen seems not to be factored in, just as do the environmental costs of building and replacing wind turbines.


----------



## Mearing (Dec 21, 2022)

Hayman said:


> Yes, the sidings on the depot were used to store both rolling stock and locomotives that were cut up by scrap merchant Bird's.
> 
> So many lines that should have been retained were lost under Beeching. And so many deliberately built over so they could not be reopened. You are probably right about the dogwalkers. Other lines that have become cycleways but could well accommodate both reopening and an adjacent cycle track - because railway companies often bought up more land than was needed - also suffer the same NIMBY attitudes. And cycling is one of the new religions.
> 
> I've read about the hydrogen-powered trains, to be used where overhead electrification is considered too expensive. But the continuing cost of providing the plants to produce the hydrogen seems not to be factored in, just as do the environmental costs of building and replacing wind turbines.


I was wrong when stating that the Long Marston depot had no connection to the main railway network. In fact it does connect via Evesham and also Moreton in Marsh.
Only the stretch beyond the depot to Stratford on Avon was dismantled,a mere seven miles thus disconnecting Stratford,that seems a pointless economy to me!
As you say,cycling is the new religion! Nothing wrong with that but until there is a completely dedicated cycle network cyclists will continue to cause hold ups and be at risk of fatal collisions. Further I dont understand why cyclsts have no displayed means of identification or third party insurance. Cue predictable outrage from cyclists that I dare suggest it! I expect to be cancelled whatever that means!


----------



## Hayman (Dec 22, 2022)

Mearing said:


> I was wrong when stating that the Long Marston depot had no connection to the main railway network. In fact it does connect via Evesham and also Moreton in Marsh.
> Only the stretch beyond the depot to Stratford on Avon was dismantled,a mere seven miles thus disconnecting Stratford,that seems a pointless economy to me!
> As you say,cycling is the new religion! Nothing wrong with that but until there is a completely dedicated cycle network cyclists will continue to cause hold ups and be at risk of fatal collisions. Further I dont understand why cyclsts have no displayed means of identification or third party insurance. Cue predictable outrage from cyclists that I dare suggest it! I expect to be cancelled whatever that means!


Here in Bournemouth, a main road now has a cycle track either side of the lanes for motor traffic. Each cycle track is the same width of the adjacent motor traffic lane - and barely used. The motor traffic lanes are just wide enough for a bus.


----------



## Mearing (Dec 22, 2022)

Hayman said:


> Here in Bournemouth, a main road now has a cycle track either side of the lanes for motor traffic. Each cycle track is the same width of the adjacent motor traffic lane - and barely used. The motor traffic lanes are just wide enough for a bus.


It would seem reasonable that if a cycle lane exists it should be mandatory to use it. Here in a country district with narrow lanes it is not possible because of reduced road width to comply with the revised rules regarding the amount of seperation to give cyclists when overtaking.


----------

