SP8181 : Newham Close
taken 14 years ago, near to Rothwell, North Northamptonshire, England
This was a town farm sandwiched between Wales Street, Fox Street and High Hill Avenue, with the fields a few kilometres to the west towards Harrington. In the 1950s, before the days of combine harvesters, corn was cut with a binder, the sheaves stacked in stooks in the field to dry, and then brought back to the farmyard and built in to corn stacks to await threshing in the winter, when the mobile thresher visited. Tractors were still fairly new technology, at least on this farm, and horses were used to cart the corn back to the farmyard where the stacks were built. The farmyard and garden have gone, to be replaced by houses [Newham Close]. The farmhouse, 16 Wales Street, has had a makeover, and I suspect the florally decorated lavatory bowl, with neat squares of Radio Times on a string nearby, has been replaced with more modern fittings.