A Pint of the Black Stuff
Another day, another wander around Crawley. I’ve been living in Crawley for nearly fifteen years, and this is the first time I’m going to be walking around Broadfield. I’ve been to the Barton a few times, but always on the bus.
This time I walk down to K2 and then across the road and behind the line of trees in to Broadfield Park. A lovely space hidden away only by the trees down the side of the dual carriageway, something I’ve missed the countless times. And across the park is Broadfield House, a wonderful Grade II listed building from the 1830s and extended thirty years later.
It feels hidden away again, and in many of the walks I’ve done in the last year, searching out historic buildings there is a common theme in that they are at the periphery of our vision. It makes me think of China Mieville’s “The City And The City”, where we are almost trained not to see the old historic parts of Crawley as the residents of Beszel are conditioned not to see Ul Qoma which shares the same space. There is an expectation that, as a new town, there is no history in Crawley; something I was probably guilty of thinking when I moved here.
I moved on from Broadfield House and made my way over to Woodmans Hill, snapping away at more road signs, and I walk up the hill with a long high red brick wall on the other side of the road until there was a gap and a road into the estate behind the wall. I was particularly after more road signs and this area had a number of London based names.
What I didn’t know was that this whole estate lying between Woodmans Hill and Coachmans Drive is a Guinness Trust estate, which did explain the naming of Guinness Court,
and other names where the roads in this mini estate aren’t named after London Parks: Kensington, St James, Regents, Hampstead, Finsbury & Highgate (a park now overshadowed by its more famous cemeteries next to it).
I spent quite some time wandering around trying to find a sign for London Fields House, only to find a map of the estate on its estate community centre which indicated where it should be, only for me to find that it has been renamed as Newfield House.
Stonebridge is both the name of a London estate which is also called Park Royal; and that estate was the home of a Guinness Brewery from 1936 to 2005 before the building was demolished in 2006.
Moyne was the title of the Barony awarded to Walter Guinness in 1932. He was the third son of the 1st Earl of Iveagh (in County Down), Sir Benjamin Guinness, who set up the Guinness Trust in 1888 in London (and the Iveagh Trust in Dublin in 1890).
The roads into the estate come in from either side, but there is no through way from any of the four roads into any of the others. The way through is by footpaths only, built this way it seems less busy with traffic. The estate has the air of being tightly packed, despite the numerous little green spaces and courtyard type areas throughout. I suppose part of this comes from the signs affixed to walls near the spaces stating, “NO BALL GAMES”, which is a shame for those children who live there.
I’ve walked through a lot of parts of Crawley, and I’ve gotten some strange looks as I take photos of road signs, but I got some hostile looks as I walked around the footpaths of the estate carrying my camera ready to take photos. I definitely felt like I was intruding, and the residents were suspiciously asking what this stranger was doing in their domain. It probably didn’t help that I’d doubled back and re-trod some roads two or three times trying to find the pictures I wanted.
Once I had satisfied myself in the Guinness Trust estate, I crossed over Coachmans Drive and into an area where the signs were all about areas of London, and royal palaces and castles, starting at Enfield and working around to Fulham before coming out at Holyrood Place.
From here I wanted to get pictures of the church — Christ The Lord, a multi denominational church, that apart from the cross on the roof is hard to mark as a church, it is in such a style, that it could easily be mistaken as a school, library, or community centre, and so merges into two such buildings next to it.
Having walked around the church I now found myself on Broadfield Barton. I had thought Tilgate Parade as being the largest in Crawley, and it probably is if looking at it a single row, but the Barton is bigger, being more of a normal shopping street with shops on both side of the walkway for one half and the single aspect overlooking the car park. I was surprised how busy the Barton was, both in the number of people wandering around in it (it took ages to try and get photos with a lack of people in them), but also in how many shops were open along it.
At the end is The Imperial, closed as it should be in these Covid lockdown. I think it is the only pub in Crawley I haven’t had a drink in (not including those shut or demolished before I lived here). And if I mention it, it seems to elicit a sharp intake of breath about going in there. Which makes me smile as I’ve had some really dodgy locals in Leicester and Manchester before moving here.
There is something about the name The Imperial that appears to bring about an air of being a rough pub. It was the same in Leicester, where it is now closed and turned into flats; the one in Manchester could be described as “industrial” on a kind day; and the one near my mum’s in Morecambe has been shut more time than it’s been open due to drug dealing and violence.
My fatbit had shaken my arm quite some time before and being at the bus stops it put the idea of giving my aching knees a break and so I got the bus back to the top of my road instead of carrying on. There will be other days to explore other parts of Broadfield.
