Demolished Buildings

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Over the centuries many buildings in Tasburgh have come and gone. Some will have left no trace or record, some such as the Anglo-Saxon buildings around the church have been rediscovered by archaeologists, and some leave clues in the landscape from which deductions can be made. However, since the beginning of the 19th century, most of the evidence for demolished buildings can be found from old maps of the village, with many of the sites being re-used for later houses. The earliest map to show the village in sufficient detail to be sure of the location of buildings was the Enclosure Award map of 1818 which not only gave the names of all the owners but also identified in red those buildings which were in residential use. This was followed in 1840 by the similar Tithe Apportionment map, with the first large scale OS map appearing in 1882 and an updated version in 1906. A former resident, William Moore, wrote a memoir of his time growing up in Tasburgh during and after WW2 which took the form of a walk through the village recording the various houses and information on some of the people who lived there, and since then there have been various other OS updates as the rate of change accelerated after 1960. The following is a summary of the sites of known former buildings based on the above sources.

Church Hill

Just below the old School, the 1818 Enclosure Award map shows a double cottage facing the road with a smaller cottage behind. By 1840 the smaller cottage had ceased to be used as such, although the building was still there. The double cottage remained occupied until the late 1960s. After the buildings were demolished, a new house, Little Orchard, was built on the site.

At the bottom of the hill, on the left of the entry to Bridge End Farm, there used to be a pre- 1818 thatched cottage which stood end on to the road with a later single storey bungalow attached to its gable end adjoining the road, but these were badly damaged in a fire and pulled down in the 1960s. William Moore records that during the war a spy was discovered living in the bungalow, with a radio transmitter hidden in the chimney. The bungalow, Halloween, now stands on the site.

Further back from the road in the farmyard there was a thatched timber barn which has now gone although its right hand gable end remains as part of Peace Cottage.

Church Road and A140

Where Woodland Rise joins Church Road there used to be a small pair of cottages with a number of outbuildings behind which all were demolished before the first stage of the Woodland Rise development in 1970.

Next door to The Pheasantries, where a more modern house now stands, there used to be a pre-1818 small farmhouse known in 1906 as Cocks when it was bought by the owner of The Pheasantries. If it was still standing at the time of the 1939 Registration there was no-one living there and William Moore doesn't refer to it in his memories of Tasburgh in the 1940s and 50s although mentioning the houses on either side. Certainly it wasn't shown on an OS Map published in 1951.

Almost immediately opposite, before the junction with the A140 was realigned, there used to be a building fronting onto Church Road roughly where the village sign now stands, with a row of three pre-1818 cottages behind it at right angles stretching across the current road into the front garden of 4 Church Road. These had front gardens down to the main road, but although they were still standing in 1906, William Moore said that the cottages had burned down before WW2. Again none of them appeared on the 1951 OS Map.

In the back garden of 2 Church Road next to the main road there was a blacksmith shop which existed before 1818 as it was marked on the Enclosure Award map that year on what was common land. The entrance was roughly where the bus top sign is. Behind it, in what is now the back garden of 4 Church Road, there was another pre-1818 thatched cottage which was pulled down in the 1940s. William Moore refers to the blacksmith's as still being operated by a Mr Harry Thrower but he was by then living in one of the Council houses on Church Road.

Where the bungalow, Half Acre, now stands there used to be a pair of cottages built before 1818 and facing the road, and just beyond, were another pair of pre 1818 cottages end on to the road at the entrance to the first of the two former council houses. The commercial site opposite The Countryman was originally developed as a Little Chef but the building has since been demolished, and further along the A140 on the other side of the loke to Lodge Farm Cottage there was a stone faced cottage with gothic arched windows built at some point between 1818 and 1840. It was called appropriately Stone Lodge but was demolished towards the end of the twentieth century.

Grove Lane

At the bottom entrance to the playing field adjoining the former council houses, 1 and 2 Grove Lane, stood the old Coal House from which distributions of coal were made to the poor of the parish, and some of the older residents still refer to the hill up to the village hall as Coal House Hill. The building ceased to be used for that purpose in the early 1900s and apart from the brick footings had disappeared by the 1960s.

Opposite 3 and 4 Grove Lane, the 1818 Enclosure Award map shows two residential buildings, revealed by the 1882 OS map as two pairs of cottages. They had been demolished by the time of the 1891 census and the site incorporated into the surrounding field owned by the Rainthorpe estate, but a trace of them remains in the lilac roadside hedge.

5 and 6 Grove Lane were built at the same time as 3 and 4, but on a different alignment, the reason being that in the front garden there used to be a pair of cottages dating from before 1818. William Moore in his memories of Tasburgh describes them in 1940 as being in very poor condition and used to house evacuees. They were demolished just after the War.

Next door, The Maples, was the site of a building which in the early 1800s was a forge and wheelwright's premises belonging to Simon Rayson. The building survived into the 20th century but by the 1940s just a couple of clay lump walls remained and it does not appear on an OS map of 1957.

In the corner of the front garden of Holly Tree Cottage immediately adjoining the road, there was a small building with its own enclosure built sometime between 1818 and 1840, and which was still there in 1906. It may originally have served as the repair shop of Stephen Alexander, a boot and shoe maker, who owned and lived at Holly Tree Cottage from 1807 to 1858.

Next door, the current house, Linden, built in the 1960s, stands on the site of a pair of semi-detached cottages built before 1818, but OS maps show they had been demolished at some point between 1882 and 1906, when they were part of the Rainthorpe estate.

Low Road

In the Middle Ages, a Rectory was built between Low Road and the river where Glebe Cottage now stands. In 1629, it was described as having eleven rooms, and would have been one of the most significant buildings in the village, but by 1800 it had ceased to be used by the Rector himself and became so derelict that much of it was pulled down. One end wing remained which was let out by the Rector, and now forms part of Glebe Cottage.

A 1772 map of the Rainthorpe estate prepared for its owner Robert Wright, shows that a cottage stood end on to the road where Howard and Colwyn cottages are now. They must have replaced the original cottage at some time before the Enclosure Award map of 1818, when the pair were shown as owned by John Gay of Rainthorpe Hall.

Opposite Mill Barn where the two 1970s houses, Kylestones and Seeonee, were built, there used to be a group of three cottages known as Shearings Yard.

Tasburgh's windmill used to stand in what is now the back garden of Hill House over-looking the stone pit that is now Burrfeld Park – see the entry under Buildings/Mills for further details.

The space between Wayside Cottage and Greenmore Cottage used to be the site of Wayside Garage, which was started by Harry Bright and his son Peter in 1962 in what was the garden of Wayside Cottage where they lived. In addition to carrying out repairs and maintenance work the garage also sold petrol and diesel but with little passing trade and increasing competition from supermarkets, sales of fuel ceased in the 1980s and other business declined to the extent that less than 20 years later the garage had closed. The site was briefly rented and used for second hand car sales but following a fire, the main building became unusable and the site was cleared in 2018 for development.

At the time of the Enclosure Award in 1818 a cottage stood in the front garden of Malthouse Farm, now known as Tasburgh Grange, but by the time of the Tithe Apportionment in 1840 the cottage had been demolished. Also in the grounds of Tasburgh Grange, opposite what is now the front door there was a long barn, maybe the malting, which was demolished in the early 1900s when the house was enlarged and the current brick frontage added to the main house.

Across the meadows from Tasburgh Grange, the ancient parish boundary, which was originally the line of the river Tas, was diverted in medieval times to include a moated enclosure and burial site. These are thought to have been the site of the Uphall manor house and St. Michael's Chapel. Another extension of the natural parish boundary to include an area to the south of the Hapton road, including the current Hall Farm, might suggest that site of the manor house could have subsequently moved to higher ground, but if so, no trace of it has been found.

Saxlingham Lane

In the front garden of Sedgefield, next to White Cottage, there used to be a single cottage built sometime before 1772. It was referred to as Teapot Cottage by William Moore in his memories of Tasburgh on account of its shape so perhaps had a mansard roof at each end with a central chimney. It was demolished shortly after WW2, with a pair of semi-detached houses built in the garden

On the other side of White Cottage, but set further back, the 1818 Enclosure Award map shows a residential building, so one or possibly a double cottage, facing the road in what is now the garden of Thornley Barn. It belonged to the Rainthorpe estate but at the time of an auction of the estate in 1852, it seems the building was no longer being lived in, and by 1882 it had disappeared altogether. Indeed the Tithe Apportionment suggests that they may even have gone by 1840, in which case the 1852 auction map was incorrectly drawn.

In the corner of the garden of Orchard Cottage, next to its driveway entrance, there was a double thatched cottage which had stood there from before 1772, but a fire in July 1948 completely destroyed the roof, and the building was so badly damaged that it was pulled down.

The White Horse Inn was a timber building which adjoined White Horse Cottage, and has its own separate entry on the web-site under the Buildings/Public Houses section. It was badly damaged by fire in about 1927 and never re-opened.

Between Rainthorpe Hall and the river stood an earlier Rainthorpe Hall which burned down in about 1500. Even though it lay on the northern side of the Tas, the parish boundary, which elsewhere follows the line of the river, had been diverted so as to include the site, whereas the present Hall lies just over the boundary in Flordon.