Just below your feet …….. a bit of the 19th century

If I am honest it is a daft title ….. allowing Eric of Needham Road to explode with the comment “of course there is history below the ground, I’ve got plenty in our back garden from the remains of a dead cat to heaps of broken pottery”.

Wilbraham Road, 2023

But it is the lead into a series of pictures taken by Peter Topping recently of Wilbraham Road during the resurfacing work.

Wilbraham Road, 2023

And this time it is those stone setts which formed the road surface during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before the widespread application of tar macadam.

And yes at one time there was a debate about whether to use wooden blocks or stone ones.

If you are lucky and it is a main road, you may well also come across fragments of tram rails, which were just covered over when trams were replaced by buses.

Beech Road, 2014

And that is about it.

Location. Wilbraham Road

Wilbraham Road, 2023

Longford Road, circa 1900

Pictures, what grandma would have walked past on Wilbraham Road, 2023, from the collection of Peter Topping, a stone sett, 2014, from Beech Road, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Longford Road circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection