This was the last time the land opposite our house went under the plough. The year is probably 1896 and the field was Row Acre. I can be pretty sure that the chap at the plough was Alfred Higginbotham whose family had farmed here since the 1840s. Row Acre stretched down from Cross Road to what is now Acres Road and was divided into strips. Along with the Higginbotham’s parts of Row Acre were farmed by the Bailey family, Thomas White and John Brundrett, and perfectly echoed the medieval idea of a community each working a strip of land. And of course the plough reminds us that we were a farming community.
Picture; Ploughing Row Acre before it became the Recreation Ground, 1894 from the collection of William Higginbotham