MY STREET CHALLENGE - OKEBOURNE PARK

I realise that some of my Street Challenge blips have been rather long, but this one will be much shorter – mainly because this street doesn’t have the history that others have had.  In fact, we didn’t even need to get up that early to go out and take photographs, because this street is only about 5 minutes from where we live and it was dark at 6.45, so Mr. HCB tells me!
 
I was alerted to the reason for the naming of this street by the secretary of the Richard Jefferies, a lady who knows a great deal about this particular area.  You may recall my blip about Jefferies Avenue and the fact that it was named after John Richard Jefferies, a local naturalist and prolific writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels.  Therefore, it is highly likely that Okebourne Park was named after Okebourne Chace, a place that appears in a novel written by Richard Jefferies entitled “Round About a Great Estate”, where the fields and surroundings of Coate Farm, inspired much of his writing. 
 
In fact, it is thought that Okebourne Chace is modelled on Burderop Park, a private agricultural and sporting estate on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, not that far from Coate Farm and it is said of Richard Jefferies that he “knew every inch of ground, every tree and every hedge” in the area where he lived and spent most of his childhood and some of his adulthood until 1875.
 
If you were to walk north easterly from Coate Farm where Richard Jefferies was born, you would come to Okebourne Park, so this makes me wonder if Okebourne Chace, as mentioned in his novel was somewhere he visited on many occasions, but of course, the houses that are there now weren’t built at the time the novel was written in 1880. 
 
This small estate of houses is a tree-lined, crescent-shaped road with small cul de sacs off and walkways through from the main road and from a large square in the middle, but sadly this area has been neglected over the years and now looks rather unkempt.  Okebourne Park consists of individually designed houses, most of which are very well kept – but there are one or two that need a little TLC! 
 
Some of the houses are a little “boxy” in their design, but they date back to the early 1970s when they were first built, and would have been very modern at the time.  It appears that when the then Swindon Borough Council needed land upon which to expand in order to meet the increasing demand for housing and commerce, it took over the area of about 1,500 acres, known as Dorcan, which at the time was mostly farmland.  Most of the area was given over to housing and developed either by the Council or private building firms and the land at Okebourne Park was sold in plots to individuals who then built houses to their own design, subject, of course, to planning permission – maybe one of the first “Self-Build” projects in the town, although I cannot be sure of that.
 
Mr. HCB and I have had cause to walk through this small estate on several occasions lately as it is on the pedestrian route to our local hospital and it is a very pleasant walk.
 
Snodshill or Dorcan Brook runs very close to Okebourne Park and then on to the lake at Shaftesbury Avenue and/or Coate Water;  Overbrook, another street near us, is probably named after the brook.  As we walked this morning, we were looking for a way through to the brook and eventually found it between two houses –  it opened onto a huge field with some mature trees that looked glorious in their autumn colours;  it felt strange to think that Richard Jefferies may very well have walked here in his youth.  At the back of one of the houses, and just across from the brook, was a beautiful and well-kept garden with some wonderful dahlias – what a treat!
 
We know that the name of the street where we live is also taken from a classic children’s book, written in 1882 by Richard Jefferies – and it has been interesting to find out more about this man, who had a real affinity for the area in which we now live whilst researching the history of some of the streets in my Street Challenges,
 
The lover of nature
     has the highest art
          in his soul.
   
Richard Jefferies


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