Crockham Hill June 2025 Newsletter - Flipbook - Page 28
In the 1890s three brick-built, tile-hung, corbel-chimneyed, steep-roofed
cottages were built on the south side: Rosemary Cottage as a gardener9s
home; Bowden and Achinta for professional gentlemen. These cottages
are architecturally balanced by the stone-built Hop Cottages and Stone
Cottage opposite. They collectively form a superb example of a mixed
Victorian/ancient streetscape. The lane9s north side continues with hedges
to the fields beyond.
The most influential character in the development
of Oakdale Lane as we see it today was the
remarkable Alexander Innes Shand, who,
following a life of travel and writing books and
remarkable memoirs, in 1865 married Elizabeth
Blanche, the granddaughter of Elizabeth Fry, the
social reformer. Around 1890 he purchased land
along the lane and on it built Oakdale, together
Alexander Shand aged 73
with a gardener9s and a domestic staff cottage,
now Little Grange. He named the house Oakdale
due to the four large
oak trees in the
grounds. Thus, the
former un-named track
became Oakdale Lane
in the Ordnance Survey
Map of 1910. His book,
8Memories of Gardens9
(1908), is fascinating
both as a read and for
reference, about a
Oakdale was Shand's home fro 1879-1907
most
remarkable
journey probably unrepeatable today.
In 1918, Oakdale was purchased by Charles Knight Rogers, who also had
the original Stubblefield built for his daughter, Agnes. She owned a riding
school with up to 16 horses, attracting riders from near and far and
facilitating the building of Stubblefield Cottage for her groom. Around this
time, during the Great Depression of 1929-30, the only stone bridge in the
village was built by local labour. It crosses Kent Brook at the west end of
the lane, providing easier access to the farmland beyond where stood the
ancient, now demolished, Crockham Barn, then an asset of Grange Farm.
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