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Kay Collins 2007 |
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Court Estate
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COURT ESTATE is the top of Bedford Road, the top of Newton Road, Avenue Road & Higham Park. It has close links with Newton Bromswold as the residents went to the village school and church. The name refers to the Manor Court for Rushden which used be held at the Bailiff's Lodge near Avenue Road (previously called Court Avenue) off the A6 road to Bedford. Bencroft Grange is a farmstead at the southern extremity of the town, and it lies alongside Higham Park, an ancient deer park, and is close to the county boundary in Bedford Road, where the tollgate at West Wood once stood. The top of Newton Road, now beyond the new Rushden eastern by-pass road, was a few farms and small holdings but from its junction with Avenue Road there is now a ribbon development of houses and bungalows stretching back towards the town. Most of the properties on the north side of the road were built in the 1930s, with infilling on the south side, followed by dividing of the small holdings. Avenue Road was just a few small-holdings around 1900 but a large land sale saw plots of around 6 acres sold to other small-holders who kept a few hens, a few sheep, a pig and perhaps a cow and were self-sufficient with fruit and vegetables throughout the two World Wars. Since 1945 these have gradually been divided into smaller plots and new buildings have filled the gaps. In the last 15 years several rather large properties have dwarfed the older buildings and several bungalows have been converted into houses. More recently gardens have been detached to form new plots for new buildings. In Rushden town itself, the trend has been the opposite, with flats and small town houses being the main new builds in the 1990s but now in 2007/8, to get more on the plots, the trend is to erect three storey properties such as "Church View" off John Clark Way, the link road into town from the by-pass. |
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