The Lanes

by Jem Croucher

Part of the ‘Past to Present’ series from Jemverse

Up at the top of Buckingham Road
the elms, mature, still stand
a reminder of the distant past
when the manor house stood grand
part of a bygone Shoreham
a remnant of 'The Lanes'
with triangle of trees and shrubs
is all that now remains

©Jemverse

Postcard – from the author’s collection

[The image on this postcard shows ‘The Lanes’ as they were in the early 1900s. A local Shoreham historian, Michael Norman, said the elms were planted by the Lord of the Manor as part of a considered plan to provide timber for shipbuilding. Others say that they were seeded during the Napoleonic wars to provide gunstocks for the army. All that remains now is an overgrown triangle of trees at the northern border of Buckingham and Old Shoreham roads].

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