(or a short side quest I took whilst doing some work on another project)
I was browsing old maps looking for key landscape features in the broader area when my eye was drawn to a marked difference between the route of what we now call Church Lane in Whittington and what is represented in one of our oldest decent maps.
Church Lane is a small road that loops off the A134 on Whittington Hill opposite the site of the old maltings and then approximately follows the course of the river Wissey for around 250m before looping back to rejoin the A134.
It is at the point where the return leg starts that the oddity occurs. In this corner there used to be a lime kiln complex (Whittington Hill is a spur of chalk that juts out into the lower, former, fenland); Church Lane used to be called Lime Kiln Lane and is so marked on the 1830s – 1880s Six Inch OS map where the course of the road is very similar to the modern layout.
Digging back a little further, Bryant’s 1826 map shows a similar layout to the OS maps but with curious broad area by the lime kiln corner and a short stub of road sticking out at the apex of this bend.
Next port of call is Faden’s 1797 map: that little stub of road sticking out from the corner is now shown as a track that runs alongside the Wissey all the way to Northwold, passing the Oxborough Hythe Ferry site and then entering Northwold near the Hall at West End where it rejoins the main road.
Much of this much longer route can still be seen preserved in hedge lines and rows of trees marked on the Bryant and OS maps; these remnant relics becoming much more diluted as we travel forwards to the present day but are clearly there on the post Faden maps.
The map images are better seen via the links below where you can scroll around and zoom in, so I won’t reproduce them here.
http://www.historic-maps.norfolk.gov.uk/mapimageviewer/
Just select the right tile on the Faden or Bryant map (bottom left-hand corner for each) and zoom in to Whittington.
The Historical OS Maps can be found via the National Library of Scotland website, you can select layers for different map types and eras, including LiDAR images) – I use this resource a lot, it is very good:
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.3&lat=52.56385&lon=0.53181&layers=257&b=LIDAR_DTM_2m&o=100
There is also an excellent site that has digitised versions of the Faden map with some enhancements: