The Back Lane

I thought the back lane would be empty but there is excitement afoot as there is a wedding reception in the New Village Hall and many have returned to attend.

Back lanes mark out the boundary of the village, what the experts call a regular, planned settlement. Via the paddocks at the back of the houses these back lanes would have given access to the Open Fields prior to 1772.

How old are these back lanes? Possibly 900 years, give or take a century or two.

I often stand at the bottom of the garden and wonder what it would have been like to look out over open fields where the inhabitants of the village would have been tending their strips.

Sometimes I have to shake myself out of the past!

I wonder if anyone else has mentioned "enclosure" in a blip!