Green Lane, The (Meadowbank, Crandalls, Wyndham)

GREEN LANE:  MEADOWBANK AND CRANDALLS – LATER WYNDHAM

Until the 1950s, the only cottages at Green Lane were on the corner – namely Cherry Tree cottages.  Wyndham Avenue and Close, Meadowbank and Crandalls did not exist.  However, at a Parish Council meeting on 8 January 1948 it was agreed that the road should be named “The Green Lane”.   The OS maps show that by 1957 the new police house had been built in Green Lane.   Pre-fabs were built after the war and located in the area that became known as Meadowbank. In fact, in 1948, the PC was discussing the delay in building of these pre-fabs.  They do not appear on the 1948 OS map.  The pre-fabs at Meadowbank were eventually replaced by permanent housing in 1984.   The Parish Council continued to discuss issues of housing (rented) and there were objections to new houses in Green Lane in the early 1950s.  However, by 1956/57 Wyndham Avenue and Wyndham Close were built.  By 1957 the police house in Green Lane was built.

Meadowbank- building of the new houses at Meadowbank 

Bungalows nos. 1, 2 and 3 would built in the late 1950s on land which was originally owned by Leigh’s Butcher, Donald Eric Whitehead.  At that time it was part orchard – someone calculated that the Bramley trees were a hundred years old – and partly a field.  He used the field for the cows and sheep which were to go to the slaughterhouse on the corner of the Green, near where Crandalls is today.  However, on 17 December 1958 he sold the plot to A E Driscoll Limited of Tonbridge.  Subsequently, the bungalows were built.  A E Driscoll Limited sold the first bungalow in October 1959, 10 months after acquiring the plot.

The housing at Crandalls was built in about the 1970s – principally for rented accommodation but some have now been bought. The estate named after the Crandall family who lived in the village and used to rent the fields on which this housing was built.

Joyce Field (May 2021)