Stop 3: Steine Cottage-Information
These much-modernised buildings were workers’ cottages on the Clarke- Jervoise Estate. Originally semi-detached cottages, they were built in the 1860s. Steine Farm was created on the Clarke-Jervoise Estate in about 1887. It was leased by Clarke-Jervoise to a farmer, Thomas Scutt, who lived at the bottom of Redhill Road and so no actual farmhouse was built on it. The farmland was all subsequently sold when the Golf Course was built and later the rest was sold for housing
At this time, Links Lane was still called “Dirty Lane”. Steine Cottages therefore, are the oldest properties in what is now called “Links Lane”, but they are much more recent than the brew house, now “The Fountain” on the Village Green which was by the time of their construction, already nearly 120 years old.
Steine Cottage was the headquarters of the Home Guard during World War II. There are two photographs of the Home Guard outside Steine Cottage in the photo gallery.
Many people reasonably assume that Links Lane, like the Fairway, refers to the Golf Course but it doesn’t. When Mr Clarke-Jervoise, Lord of the Manor, alighted from the train and wanted his horse-drawn carriage to take him home to the new Idsworth House, he found that Bowes Hill, then Bulls Hill, was rather too steep below Uplands Road. A better route for horse-drawn carriages is along the Green towards the golf course and then up Dirty Lane, a much gentler incline. However, there was no direct route then between the Green and the location where the Golf Club buildings now stand. The original Dirty Lane went straight on to Castle Road along the present-day footpath. So Clarke-Jervoise had a link put in to join the Green with Dirty Lane. This became “Links Lane” with the curious right angle near the golf club. I can imagine that the residents of Dirty Lane were more than happy to adopt this new name for their road.