Behind the Main Road

In 1924 Covington's brought to auction the property called Winches.  This former tiny farm and development opportunity was not just another site on which houses could be built.  It lay immediately beyond the city boundary and therefore in the Rural District, which meant that the future occupants would pay lower rates (now known as Council Tax).

The farmhouse and rear fields were acquired by the Institute for Tropical Medicine; the narrow field to the west of the access drive would later become the plot for a public house.  It was the front field which attracted most attention, and most of us travelling along Hatfield Road associate the development with a parade of shops and a line of semi-detached homes.

If we have noticed the side road at the eastern end, the majority of us have never travelled along it – at one time there was also a through access from the western end, but that has long since been blocked off.  There had always been a notion that the western end had never been fully completed; whether true or not this is the road known as Wynchlands Crescent.

The line of shops had always provided a useful range of retail both for everyday and specialist needs, and anyone who has attempted to park outside will have discovered that the former grass bank is just as challenging now that there is a double-height kerb!

Street party parade at the western end of Wynchlands Crescent in 1945  COURTESY ANTHONY MEYRICK

Recently we showed a photograph, one of a series submitted by Tony, with children enjoying themselves on a parade at the western end of Wynchlands Crescent.  The occasion was either VE Day or VJ Day.  Next to the end house, number 44, then owned by Mr & Mrs Brimble, was, and still is, the low fence protecting a small electricity transformer supplying power to the houses in the development.  The bystander at her front door, the right-hand porch of number 40, was undoubtedly Mrs Taylor.

When Stewart recognised the houses and one or two people, it is because he used to live just around the corner in one of the Hatfield Road houses.  He wondered whether he had been part of the street party; and it does seem possible as it would not have been possible to close Hatfield Road for such an event.

'City' Garage owned by Messrs Flowers & Etches who lived in the adjacent
properties.  
COURTESY TONY BILLINGS

The council had always retained a small depot at the eastern end of the Crescent, against the Oaklands boundary, but what was stored there I have no idea.  One further property, between that depot and the first of the even-numbered houses, was a large garage for storing a few small buses.  The owners were the partnership of Mr Flowers and Mr Etches, whose families lived in numbers 2 and 4.

New properties, The Acorns and Woodland View have now replaced those former uses.  Next time you are Oaklands way, pause at the shops and then explore Wynchlands Crescent.  Maybe even Winches Farm Drive; the old farm house can still be spotted among the homes of the new estate.