Category Archives: Clappers Lane
Clappers Lane Drainage, Episode LXXVII
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Clappers Lane Closure
Please note that Clappers Lane will be closed between Badger Brook and Waltons Farm for two days from Tuesday 14th July, while drainage work is done. Click Public Notice for more detail.
Call My Bluff Wine Quiz – Summer 2015
Fulking Social Committee announces as a prelude to the Fulking Fair, a Call My Bluff Wine Quiz on Friday 24th July 2015, at 7:00pm for a prompt 7:30pm start, in the marquee in Downside Meadow (entrance between Cabbage Patch and The Conifers) off Clappers Lane, Fulking. Plenty of parking available.
Quizzers: Toby Peirce, Bill Schaeffer, Bob Rowland
Tables of eight guests each at £15 per ticket, plus an exciting raffle. Award winning Quaff will supply 8 wines to consider. To reserve tickets or a table phone Bob on 271 or email bob.pamrowland@btinternet.com.
Early booking essential to avoid disappointment.
Residents’ car parking at Preston Nomads
Readers are reminded that there are half a dozen car parking spaces at Preston Nomads which are reserved for Fulking residents. The grounds are normally locked but those with parking spaces get their own keys and there is a lift-and-lock pole on each space. For legal reasons, there is a small fee to pay. Full details can be obtained from the Head Groundsman, Brian Sandalls, at the grounds.
To judge from the state of the grass (see above), only one of the six spaces is in current regular use.
Bluebells at Furzefield
The Bluebells at Furzefield should be good from this weekend for a while (depending on the weather).
Do please come up and have a look – but it would be good if you could ring 857271 beforehand.
No dogs and children under control, please.
Bob & Pam Rowland
Badgerwood House
Badgerwood House was originally a bungalow, built by Captain Lawrence Clayton, [the architect] Charles Clayton’s son. Captain Clayton was also an architect and took over his father’s business when he died. In a 1934 auction, Dr. Beresford, a surgeon at Brighton Hospital, then purchased the house and grounds, which at the time included Furzefield to the north, along with fields on the west side of Clappers Lane, up to what is today Badger Brook. This combined holding was then called Badgerwood Farm. The bungalow was enlarged to become a house and subsequent owners added extensions to this. During the Second World War, Henry Harris farmed all the land (except what is now the bluebell wood at Furzefield) under the Government War Cultivation programme, to produce food. After the war a large pig farm was established on the site and this was later converted to stabling. The pig farm was later divided up and sold off as smaller parcels of land. Graham and Rosemary French purchased Badgerwood House, but sold off the parcel of land known as Furzefield in the early 1990s. The house has since been altered and extended and a recent owner has also added several features. At one time, a droveway through the grounds of the property provided access from Clappers Lane to Holmbush Lane.
Tony Brooks
[Copyright © 2015, Anthony R. Brooks. Adapted from Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design, page 74-75.]
On the market
Oldwood occupies the south west corner plot at the junction of Bramlands Lane and Clappers Lane. Originally part of a large apple orchard, it was the third of the five-acre plots bought by Ernest Black. In 1912 an attractive thatched cottage made from an old railway carriage was originally situated on the site, but this burnt down in 1933. Ernest Black then sold the property to an American who used it as a holiday retreat. It was purchased next by Harold Alfred Manhood (1904–1991) — an author noted for his short stories who named the place Manhoods and for some years lived there first in another railway carriage and later in a bungalow with a garage that he had built on the site. Villagers recall that H.E. Bates and Harold Manhood were great friends and it is thought that Bates wrote The Darling Buds of May (later to become a successful TV series) while staying with Manhood in 1958. .. On Harold Manhood’s death the property was sold to a retired farmer who added a barn to store his collection of old, working, farm machinery.
Passage quoted from Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design, page 71.
Preston Nomads – Reply
Keeping the Peace
We should like to comment on Bobservation no. 2 – Preston Nomads, published in Pigeon Post at Christmas. The gist of it was that there had been a “mini-furore” over the recent licence application and that the club was architecturally attractive, wasn’t a nuisance and that we should “count our blessings and see if we cannot appreciate the club more”.