farlows lake, the end maybe???

[Paul Boote]

Yes, from the haute monde to hemp in only a generation or so.

It was all so very different - Iver and the surrounding area - and rather grand (Royalty - the Kents - and the several other great estates and mansions) and racy (Sid James living in Iver Village, my parents often drinking with him and the entire Carry On films cast in The Swan at Iver - or in The Black Horse at Fulmer, with a little, early 1960s me either in the car with a Coke and a packet of crisps or brought into the dining room to eat if they were eating...).

Check out a book by John Harris, a local lad (born in 1931 or thereabouts), No Voice from the Hall: Early Memories of a Country House Snooper, about the area when he was a kid. I know a lovely old fella, quite a bit older than Harris, in Hillingdon, who worked in service at Huntsmoor Park, eventually becoming a gardener. The place was demolished in the 1930s.

 

[David Hall]

remember the trout farm paul, ford lane?
so i'm told.

 

[Paul Boote]

Only saw its remnants and caught a few trout in the area when younger.

I met another elderly gentleman, now living in West Drayton, on a river-walk we were both doing four years ago, who grew up on a smallholding by Little Britain and who remembered the formidable River Keeper employed by the Thorney Weir trout fishery. He stomped about several miles of river dressed in tweed Norfolk jacket and plus fours and carrying a double-barrelled 12-bore. Trout were still stocked in the 1930s, arriving from a trout farm somewhere by train at W.D. then taken down Trout Road and also up to Ford Lane, being stocked at the Little Britain ford / Iver Ford itself.

 

[David Hall]

some fella back only 6 or 7 years ago with a fish in a bag, i asked, i caught a rainbow, really, can i have a look, it was about 5lb...nice, still the odd one gets caught.