| Share page |
|
Chap. II.] A Tour round Old East-Bourne. 25
day's work was transacted at Upwick, and in the early part of the 19th Century as many as 10,000 sheep were folded there for sale in some years, but the highest number I remember seeing, or knowing of, was 3000, and that number has now I believe dwindled to hundreds. There was formerly held at Southbourne a Toy and Pleasure Fair on March 12, but as far back as 1819 that was described as " now of little note," and I cannot recall it at all.
Proceeding towards the Railway Station the houses on the left, which are now numbered as in " The Goffs," are built on what used to be called the Moat Croft" Fields through which the Bourne, which often used to be called tautologically the " Bourne Stream," ran, until it reached a large pond behind the Artillery Drill Hall where it was impounded in order to provide water for driving a water mill close by. The mill as a mill has long ceased to exist, but some part of the house, after having been converted into a cottage, called the Watermill Cottage, has now been built into a modern house known as Bourne Side. The mill-pond as I first knew it was a very large one, covering I should think at least a quarter-of-an-acre, but it was curtailed on all sides to afford dry land for the gardens of the houses on the S. side of Upperton Road, and more recently has been drained dry and made into a kitchen garden. Overlooking it and erected on the N. side was a leaden statue of Neptune. The water is now conveyed underground through a storm-water sewer built to receive it and storm-water generally, and so reaches the sea. The name 41 Goffs " originally belonged to a small group of cottages built on the site of the dairy at the turning into Upperton Road ; and the large chestnut tree which now occupies the salient angle opposite, was in the timber yard of a wheelwright, which timber yard was not swept away until the house now known as No. 1 The Goffs, was built, somewhere about 1880. This tree has always been a feature. With the exception of the cottages just mentioned, and a large barn on the site of the Drill Hall, and Upperton Farm-House, there were no |
||