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Minley Estate, Cove
1949 to 1959
Minley Estate consisted of only three roads. Twelve Acre Crescent included wide grass verges which were useful for ball games but had no other special features. Broomhill Road lived up to its name and the slopes were good for roller
skating and soap box races. Cripley Road was well known to all the estate’s children because it led to the woods and Sandy Lane, when it actually was a sandy track, and to the army’s Hawley Lake on which they played with amphibious vehicles
and demanded a licence fee from the public who wished to access it. For some reason local residents called it Minley Lake and it was popular for picnics and paddling. Few paid the licence fee and sometimes a hasty retreat was called for if someone with
a peaked cap approached. For all these reasons Cripley Road was well used by the ragamuffins of Twelve Acre who got to know their counterparts in that road. This was helped to some degree by the fact that several of our mothers had become friends
through their membership of Mother’s Union and
Young Wives Group. A certain amount of
birthday party interchange took place too and most of us went to
the same school in Fernhill Road.
The ‘Twelve Acre’ and ‘Coronation’ photographs were taken on simple Box Brownie and folding Kodak cameras between 1949 and 1956 and processed by the chemist in Cove. The ‘Cripley Road’ photographs are from
the album of school friends, John and Philip Fouracre and the later ‘Minley Estate’ photographs are the result of Malcolm
Knight’s investment in his own camera and some home made developing equipment and
a tendency to snap away at anything that moved and quite a lot that didn’t.
If you have arrived here from the
Historic Farnborough website you should note that this site was designed to illustrate my family’s history and may not be laid out in the best way to explore
this part of Farnborough.
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