Wild garlic is apparently getting much more widespread, especially in damp places. We have it on the path to the Old Avenue above Major's Lake. You may be able to smell it!
Wild garlic is apparently getting much more widespread, especially in damp places. We have it on the path to the Old Avenue above Major's Lake. You may be able to smell it!
I love the old names for places in Bearsted. I didn't know about the "Old Avenue",but it reminds me of a story someone told me about Major's Lakes. Some years ago, before there was running water in most houses, Mote House and the fields all the way down to the stream used to belong to a Major Somebody-or-rather. He very kindly allowed the villagers to walk across his land to the "well" near the stream. Whether there was a real well constructed there, or whether it was just a clean spring that runs into the lake, I don't know. To make it clear to the villagers just where on his land they were allowed to walk, he constructed the avenue of ash and hawthorne that is now growing the wild garlic.
I was alsot told that it was the Major who dammed the Lilk stream to make a lake, so he could shoot the mallard ducks there. Hence the old names, "Major's Pond," or "Daddy Drake"s well.
Any more local names?
I think "The Old Avenue" (highlighted below) was the name given in 2004 to that path by early members of BWT, to distinguish it from the new BWT Oak Avenue. Daddy Drake's Well appears on ordnance Survey maps of 1870, 1898 and 1906, but the 1842 Tithe Map marks it simply as "Well." In 1842 is was indeed on land belonging to Major Wayth, although the Major didn't own (or lease) the fields in between Major's wood and Mote House. This 1906 map makes it clear that access to the well was made from the footbridge below Gore Cottage.
1906 Old Avenue NOT the way to well.JPG