2019 - Wilcot cottages

Most of Wilcot’s cottages are now  around the Green. Here we look north across the Green to the War Memorial, and on its right a group of 17-18th century thatched cottages, 9-12 Wilcot:

This cottage, further south on the east side of the Green, dates from about the same time. It is just south of the school and teacher’s cottage built in 1841, and in the 1940s and 50s it was where Bill Miles, the Wilcot special constable, lived:

It’s easy to think of such cottages as unchanged except for the obvious modern additions; but in fact they were always being altered, extended, and rebuilt. Look at this one today, and there’s a very striking difference. Quite apart from the amazingly rapid changes in occupancy and use.

A group of thatched cottages at the north end of the Green dates from before 1779; at least two of them seem to have elements going back to 1680.

Most of these on the south side of the Green, on Back Lane, appear to be mainly from the late 18th and early 19th centuries (though perhaps with some earlier origins):

On the distant end of the row, though, is a slightly taller cottage (21 &22 Wilcot, later called ‘The White Cottage’), which appears to be an 18th century alteration of an earlier cottage. It was the village post office in 1901, and still is in this picture taken some time before 1912:

But in the early 19th century, cottages near to Stowell Park were removed, with new cottages built around Wilcot Green in stone and slate. In their uniform style, and well-placed spaciously in pairs and singletons around the expanse of the Green, these new cottages give the village its distinctive look. On the west side are seven buildings, six pairs of cottages around a central double cottage:

Some have a carved estate motif in a niche in the centre of the façade:

Another row of three pairs and a singleton line the south-eastern side of the Green. The one on the right of this picture from the 1930s was at that time the village post office:

One new cottage was built at the southwest end of the Green by the Gilbert family in about 1930: The Limes. It was pulled down and replaced in about 1965. Here is the older building:

Apart from the cottages around the Green, there are other clusters. There used to be cottages at East Stowell (or ‘East Towell’ as it was sometimes called) and at Stonebridge, but these disappeared soon after the new cottages were built around the Green.

There are still one or two cottages among the bigger houses in the old village centre around the church, and once were probably more:

A group of cottages is just to the north of the canal at Wilcot Bridge. These include, on the east side of the road, 4 Wilcot (the Forge) and 5-6 (Bridge Cottage); judging by old maps, there used to be some on the west side of the road, where Canal Close now is. The Forge first becomes visible on maps of 1803 and 1808, perhaps, and more certainly by 1839; Bridge Cottage dates back to 1642, and was used as a smithy from 1710 until the Forge took over.

Bridge Cottage is the last cottage just visible in this photo from about 1930; 4 Wilcot is distinguished by its topiary, and the forge by its stuff; the signs advertise ‘Lactifer for calves’ and ‘Chorley Cake’ (flattened fruit-filled cakes from Lancashire), and there’s a road sign saying ‘Please drive slowly through Wilcot’:

Just round the corner is Kennet House, what was 7-8 Wilcot. It doesn’t appear on the 1803 map, but seems to be on the 1808 one, and is certainly on the 1839 tithe map. It was sold by the Stowell estate in 1900 for £150.

Several cottages were built perhaps in the 19th century for gamekeepers attached to Wilcot Manor or Stowell Park. Two of these (Cannings Cottage, in the upper picture, and Keepers Cottage below in a photo from about 1900) survive:

Others such as those near the Manor’s eel stew (sometimes called ‘Wilcot Grotto’) and at Cocklebury (shown below) were demolished in about the 1960s.

From the 1920s the Council started building new houses on the west side of what is now called Alton Road. First came two pairs, called 1-4 Council Cottages, at the north end of the current terrace; then eight other houses were added in the early 1950s, and lastly, in the early 1960s, Canal Close. Here’s a view of a balloon landing on the Green in 1987, taken from amongst the 1950s houses:

And here is a view looking the other way, from the bridge, with the forge on the right of the road and the council houses on the left:

In the 1960s, the old vicarage was replaced by a new building, and some years later, its stable buildings were converted into two new houses.

Up till 2006, the Manor Farm dairy was between the Church and Wilcot Lodge:

Then it moved to north of the village, and its previous site acquired 7 new houses.

There were also outlying groups of cottages, such as those around Oak Farm (built by David Gilbert):

and some at China Cottages (now gone, but shown here as the backdrop to a family portrait of about 1905):