To Three Bridges and Back
After a Friday afternoon walk around Lowfield Heath, I was back out walking Saturday afternoon, this time by myself. I was aiming in the general direction of Three Bridges, but not taking the most direct route. Coming out of the back of Southgate, I walked past Malthouse Farmhouse.
Another building tucked away, and one that is up for potential local listing in May as Crawley Borough Council discuss 6o suggested buildings for listing.
I crossed over to near the Library and had a quick walk along Telford Way, just because it was there, and coming back I looked at the library longingly.
Ever since lockdown started I’ve been missing my bi-monthly creative writing group sessions, and the one coffee a fortnight I would have after the session. I’ve done a few zoom writing sessions, but they aren’t the same, I suppose it is the one thing I miss the most in these strange times.
From here I took a walk all the way up and down Spindle Lane, which isn’t much to look at, but is interesting in how these industrial / commercial areas look as if they’ve been thrown together with all the different styles and building materials used.
As I was passing I took a detour around Commonwealth Drive.
I’d never taken the time to have a walk around it. There is a mixture of buildings in there, not just the flats I’ve seen from passing it countless times in the car or on the bus. And it’s bigger than it appears from passing it in traffic as well. There must be getting on for a thousand properties in the area.
I carried on past the Harvester and the Holiday Inn, a place I stayed a few times when I started work down here before I found a permanent place to live, but the American Diner I used to get my evening meals in is long gone.
I carried on past Sutherland House and then made a right along the footpath up to the south end of Stephenson Way. Yet more industrial units, but right at the end is the Crawley Swarna Kamatchi Amman Temple.
A place of worship in the middle of an industrial area next to the wonderfully named (being on Stephenson Way) Stockwell Centre (though its sign is in need of a good clean). One converted from an industrial unit, as opposed to St Michael’s and All Angels in Lowfield Heath whose houses were all replaced by the industrial units that surround it.
I walk all the way down Stephenson Way and out onto Haslett Avenue East. Across the road is the newly painted Three Bridges Free Church.
And on the outside of the wall of the electric company’s yard is a blue plaque to the woman the road is named after.
I stop for refreshments at Charlies, home of the Scooby Burger, where the guy serving me tells me that they aren’t currently open 24/7, only from 5am to 11pm, as if he’d taken a look at my size and girth and decided that I was the right type of person who’d be turning up at three in the morning for something unhealthily fattening. To be fair if I still lived around the corner in Maunsell Park I probably would be.
I walk up Hazelwick Avenue, and past Tesco going to the furthest point of my travels today. It is to a building I’ve walked near to — especially for six weeks when I “lived” at the Ramada — and driven past the end of Hazelwick Mill Lane it sits on numerous times.
Hazelwick Grange is a Grade II listed building, believed to date from the early seventeenth century, and was a farmhouse that sat to the north of the mill pond that covered the area the tennis club and Tesco’s now sit.
I used the underpass to get across Hazelwick Avenue and meandered through tree related named streets back down to the conservation area of Hazelwick Road.
A mixture of terraces, semi-detached, cottages and detached houses from the late nineteenth century.
And at the top, just before the end of the road is the locally listed 107 Hazelwick Road, the “substantial” detached villa the Victorian-era developer built for his family.
I turned into North Road and made my way down to get some pictures of the row of nineteenth century artisans’ cottages that run along the east side of the road.
This row of much altered cottages are locally listed. Meanwhile of the other side of the road, from a similar period, is another row of impressive, but not listed buildings.
I make an about turn to head back up to a footpath through to the top of New Street, which seems a misnomer now that it is one of the oldest streets in the extended Crawley new town. Along here there are yet more late nineteenth century cottages.
Upon one of which is a blue plaque, this one to the author Richard Marsh who used to live there.
As I was taking the photo the owner of the house was repointing the brickwork of his front wall and jokingly said he’d have to charge me for the photo. We started a socially distanced conversation and he asked me how many blue plaques I’d found, and when I mentioned the one at Tilgate Lake he told me an interesting tale. He said he knew the children of the Campbell family when they owned the lake before Crawley Borough Council bought it, and he used to go swimming in it, “before anyone else in Crawley did”.
Further along New Street opposite the junction with Mill Road (Cross Road on the 1909 map) is the former Spiritualist Church.
Another building up for discussion for locally listing, but one that the inspectors couldn’t get around the back of to be able to verify some of the claims in the submission for listing.
Across the road at the end of New Street is the former Barclays Bank, another locally listed building.
After I got back from the walk I read in the Observer that the site just to the east of this of the former TSB bank has received initial planning permission to be turned into 49 flats. Though my mind boggles at how they are going to cram that many into what isn’t a massive space, and where the hell they are going to park.
Around the corner on Three Bridges Road is another row of locally listed buildings — 215–223.
Again, these date from the late nineteenth century and have the gabled central section. This section of Three Bridges Road has a number of impressive looking buildings, two pubs, and a Jehovah Witness’s Kingdom Hall.
I continued back towards town along Three Bridges Road, full of large houses in differing styles, two of which are locally listed.
89 and 91 Three Bridges Road are thought to have been farm cottages from when it was all agricultural land between Crawley and Three Bridges prior to the new town plan.
From here it wasn’t far back into the town centre. I had one more photograph to take. I moved to Crawley in 2006 on a TUPE transfer when the company I work for took their payroll back in house. Ten years ago they had seven offices in Crawley, with divestments that reduced to three, two of which had been closed in the last few years. The last of the seven, and the one I’ve been mainly based in for the last ten years closed at the end of 2020, and when lockdown in over I’ll be commuting to Portslade.
Of the seven I have worked in six of them whilst I’ve lived in Crawley, and I passed them all today. The first five in Three Bridges weren’t done intentionally, but to complete the set the last one in the town centre was.
I had only meant to pop out for a stroll, but ended up walking further than the previous day, although without happening upon any icy cold swamps. Tomorrow will be a rest day for writing these walks up.
Map Acknowledgement
The Godfrey Edition Old Ordnance Survey Maps — Three Bridges 1909. Alan Godfrey Maps, 2003.
