Lye’s Green.
Introduction.
Lye’s Green (or Lyes Green or even Leighs Green
on some older census returns)is a hamlet in the larger
Corsley
itself has a history dating back at least as far as Billy the Conq, where it is recorded in his book "Billy's Big
Book of Britain", as Corselie, Corsleyghe, also known as
the Domesday book. It is almost certain that the
rudiments of a settlement have existed in the area for an awful lot longer, a
mile away is Cley Hill, an Iron Age Hill fort,
containing two Bronze age barrows, (now popular
with UFO spotters, not sure quite why aliens would want to come and visit a
windswept hill top when just down the road are the Lions of Longleat). On the
subject of Longleat, owned and run by Lord Bath or
More Specific our House.
The map which covers Corsley show that our house was in private ownership in 1784. The next notable event in the last 200 years was its sale in September 1947 at an auction of Longleat Estate properties to raise cash to pay death duties. At the time of the auction it had no electricity and no running water. The water was supplied from a well in the front garden. This property and next door were sold as a pair and fetched the princely sum of £200. Using the thickness of the original bricks in the remaining part of the fire place, 2.25 inches, would give a date in the early 1700's. Thicker bricks, 2.5+ inches were more common from 1725 to 1784 when a brick tax was introduced.
We are interested in any information on the following people who have lived in our house at various times, the dates are when they lived there (approx.) (also interested in any genealogical information about ANY Corsley residents, this may help sort the many loose ends and relationships between families we have to solve in order to sort out house genealogy) :-
William Hunt 1784-?
Joseph Yendall or Udall or Udell 1850 ?Post Office
Frederick Charles Fricker ?1866-1907, was then Corsley
Post Office, and he was the sub postmaster.
Agnes Hacker
1927-1954 (tenant)
Joan Lennox (nee ???) 1977-1992 (owner)
Us
1997 -
A Mr. Knight of
?Bournemouth bought the cottage in 1947, at the auction, with Agnes as a
sitting tenant (we're not sure if Mr Knight was buying them for himself or
acting as an agent for someone else as he also bought other property’s at
the auction). She left or was offered alternate accommodation in 1954, records
show she was living in another property a few hundred yards away in 1954. Mains
water and electricity were installed in 1954, and so presumably was the septic
tank and indoor plumbing. It is at this date that we believe he did
all the "modernising" which resulted in the destruction of many of
the nice "olde worlde"
features including a very nice beamed inglenook fireplace.
We think the joint property
evolved thus;- a very small single storey thatched
house, with solid stone walls, which later had a partial brick facade added, to
thicken the wall and aid in supporting the second storey, and then the lean-to
added to this on the lefthand gable end. The other
lean-to (no 94) may be as old as the original house,
this end of the house is shown tight against the adjoining boundary in
the 1784 map. This is how the cottage
looks at the moment, taken October 2000.
In 1977 both houses came onto the market
and Joan Lennox bought both of them but immediately sold the even smaller
cottage (94) to her friend Gordon Barnes. Some time after this she became
involved with the local charity "Cats In
Care" and provided a home for abandoned and orphan cats. When the
cats, which couldn’t be found new homes, popped their clogs Joan buried
them in the garden. We have been gradually digging over the garden to add a
vegetable patch and lawn areas, so far we have un-earthed the remains of 84
cats!!! (found skeleton number 85 on 19/11/00 whilst
digging alongside the pig-sty) There are also 3 dogs buried in the garden, but
so far we haven't found these (we found one of the dogs in
July 2001 when were widening the driveway). Since digging along side the pig-sty I have also
found traces of the house rubbish dump. So far we have un-earthed a few earthen
ware jam pots, an ink jar and several bottles of “Eiffel Tower fruit
juices” along with the remains of a carbide lamp an Elsan
loo seat and glass cased storage battery’s. These were apparently used by
Miss Hacker to power her DC wireless set. I’ve been told that the local
post-office used to run a recharging and replacement service and you exchanged
your flat battery for a fully charged one.
We purchased No 95 in December 1997 and then
purchased No 94 in June 2009, with the intention of reuniting the two
properties.
The Corsley Pippin.
This “new” apple was recently re-discovered in a Corsley garden. Each autumn our local nursery, Barters
Farm, holds an apple Sunday. In 2000? Mrs Margaret
White? took along a specimen of an apple growing in
her garden. The apple expert couldn’t recognise it so took it away for
further study. It remained unidentified despite this further study. As it was
an unknown species Mrs White was allowed to name it. It has now been named the Corsley Pippin. What is the connection with our house? Mrs Whites husband, when much younger, used to pick apples for
Miss Hacker, he also took some cuttings from the apple trees in the garden and
planted them in his garden. So the Corsley Pippin
came from our garden albeit a good few years ago. Although where it came from
originally nobody knows. The Pippin has been re-grafted and many new trees produced,
we have two of them and plan to plant them in the garden soon.
More Corsley Stuff.
We are always interested in any information about Corsley, Lye's Green, or its previous inhabitants.
