1888 - Lanes

Lanes, with their puddles and potholes, growth and ghosts, are glorious on a summer’s day, but on dark winter nights …  These lanes were once all the roads there were in the village.

Some of Wilcot’s old lanes led from one old village or cluster of houses to another. Let’s follow the old lane that runs south of the Green from the Golden Swan cross-roads, down Back Lane, to the church, and then south to the Eel Stew in Wilcot Manor’s grounds. This is the lane that villagers from Oare, or Stowell, had to follow to get to Wilcot and to church before the Oare church was built in the mid-19th century:

 

 

From the Golden Swan cross-roads and the Pewsey road, the lane also turns left, or north, to the old village of Stonebridge, and here is called Nanny’s Lane (whether because the nannies used to wheel their charges from Stowell down to Wilcot that way, or because of an older derivation from Neni or Nawni):

The entrance to Nanny’s Lane from the Pewsey Road

Here is what the Reverend Sykes recorded in 1906 of Nanny’s Lane:

Then the lane goes (crossing over the canal, built in 1810, by the Dredge suspension bridge of 1845) on to the old settlement of East Towell:

Another muddy lane led and still leads along the west side of the Green, here seen in a photo of around 1900: