Booton Road/Goose Pie Lane

Title

Booton Road/Goose Pie Lane

Subject

Church Farm

Description

A walk along the road to Booton - "Booton Green Lane" as many of us know it is a sentimental journey, recalling the first time I passed. that way in April, 1952, when the banks were bright with primroses and violets and other flowers.

At that time you could see the "new school" being built across the fields; today its low roof is hidden by the buildings since erected along the Norwich Road. I went down the lane during the first week in March - the month came in like a rather gentle lion, by the way! It was early for wild flowers, but there was a great display of "ladder ferns" and the shiny dark leaves of cuckoo pint - "lords and ladies".

We would sometimes take a nature walk from the school through Goose pie and down the lane to Thirtle's Moat, an attractive long pond where we dipped our nets for sticklebacks, beetles and other water creatures. Sadly the dear old moat proved too useful as a dumping place when mains drainage came to Cawston, and artists are denied that striking view of the Church with water in the foreground. I was interested to find "Thirkell's Greene" on a map made about AD 1600; we do strange things with surnames in Norfolk!

I once spent a fascinating hour at the Castle Museum with the late Mr. R. Rainbird Clarke, curator and leading archeologist, who interpreted for me a set of aerial photos of Cawston. He quickly identified a number of bomb craters between the Booton road and Jerry's Lake to the west, where Roman pottery had been found. The late Mr.Tom Sayer believed there was a Roman settlement in that area, having seen interesting "crop marks" in one of his fields. Mr. Clarke also pointed out other circular marks in the field near the copse, where the power cables cross the road. These, he said, were probably Bronze Age barrows or burial mounds, levelled and ploughed up over centuries. The soil in that field is noticeable on account of its variations in colour. Another link with the Bronze Age was the finding of a burial urn containing human remains not far from the school entrance in 1960.

Just beyond the copse it is encouraging to see that the unsightly rubbish dump has been tidied and fenced off. Let us hope that this will put an end to the desecration of one of the more attractive and interesting parts of our village.

From the Parish Magazine around the 1980's by John Kett,

Note: Booton Road lead to Green Lane and Jerrys Loke named due the number of bombs dropped during WW11. (see map)

The Memorial for the Lucky Strike plane crash and the Bomber Plane Crash at Bluestone Plantation is by the Church Wall.

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