Manor Farm Road – work finally done!

I posted under the title “What’s Going On In Manor Farm Road” back in October last year. At that time there were two lots of work going on, one at Home Farm and the other at what used to be known as The Red House and is now called Water End House. There was mud and mess everywhere!

I am happy to say that both lots of work have now finished and the road is open and all clean again. [At least, as clean as it is ever likely to be given the amount of farm traffic it carries. Just today, when walking up the road, a huge tractor with tracks went past, leaving great lumps of mud everywhere. Manor Farm, please note.]

At Home Farm, they have relaid their front drive, rebuilt the wall by the entry gates, which are now electric and have done an excellent job rearranging the front garden while at the same time slightly reducing the size of the fish pond as well as adding a new jetty. It all looks much improved.

The work at The Red House, sorry, Water End House, is on an altogether grander scale. It seems that the folk at Waresley Grange purchased Water End House last year. Now Water End House had quite a large garden, but it also had a lake covering somewhere around 2 acres. This was not visible to those going along Manor Farm Road as it was behind a fence, but it seems that it was clogged with weed and fallen branches. This lake bordered the grounds of Waresley Grange, so when the owners of the Grange purchased Water End House, they moved the boundary between the two properties so that the lake became part of Waresley Grange. They then set about dredging the lake and restoring it to its former glory.  A new entrance for the water at the top end of the lake, where the water flowing from the spring-fed pond high up in the main garden enters the lake, means that the water now runs down a small series of steps under the trees, so creating a lovely waterfall effect. The banks of the lake were reinforced and a new, small, jetty built at the top end of the lake.  The surface of the lake is now clear, and ducks and moorhens have arrived.

At the same time as this was going on, they pulled down the fence along Manor Farm Road and constructed a new entrance to the Grange. They also re-directed the drive to the Grange so that it now runs along the side of the lake and out through a new entrance gateway on Manor Farm Road. The old entrance, next to 1 and 2 Manor Farm Road has been blocked off and screened with laurel bushes so that it is invisible.

All this work took about 6 months and has been executed to a very high standard. The view from the road towards the lake is truly stunning. This is a much-overused word these days, but in this case, it is well deserved.

At this point, it should be remembered that most of this land was once part of the old Waresley Park. For those not familiar with Waresley, this was an early 18th-century country house. It was substantially modified in the mid 19th-century when it was owned by the Duncombe family. The main house was largely demolished in the 1930’s after the whole Waresley Park Estate was broken up and sold by the Duncombe family in 1932.

However, in 1792, the then owner, William Nedham Esq. (pronounced Needham), engaged the noted landscape gardener Humphry Repton to survey Waresley Park with a view to possible “improvements”. Repton’s famous Red Book of Waresley survives to this day in the Royal Horticultural Society library. Waresley Grange is one of the remaining buildings of the old estate and the designer of these alterations has done a remarkable job in reflecting Repton’s ideas, not only for the residents of Waresley Grange but also for the rest of the village, whose vistas from Manor Farm Road have been immeasurably improved.

A view of the refurbished lake from Manor Farm Road, showing the new gates and drive to Waresley Grange. The drive goes around the lake to the left. The new waterfall water entry can be seen at the top end of the lake, just left of the centre of the gates. 

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