All that is left of Thorpe Top

I'm staying in Louth in Lincolnshire with G. and B. who have been friends of mine since the early 1970s. We've been remembering some of our related histories, linking friends and families from many parts over the decades. Today the weather was rather dank but nevertheless B. wanted to drive about ten miles into the Lincolnshire Wolds, the gently undulating hills of the county.

We dropped G. a couple of miles away as he regularly loves to walk across the countryside , and we would meet up later in another place. B. then drove on to the site of Thorpe Top, which was a house she and G. rented a few years after they were married where they brought up their two children, sharing the house at times with other friends.

After about ten years they moved home to Walsall and then on to jobs in various parts of the country, including latterly Cumbria. After retiring they returned to Louth which is a town they love.

Thorpe Top was a pivotal home for them and I visited here several times whilst I lived in west London. The house became a nodal point for many friends of ours some of whom moved to the area and rented other small homes.

G. and B. planted a tree in their front garden some years after they left in memory of S. who sadly died just a few years ago. Today she wanted to see how the tree was growing, because she knew that the farmer's family who owned Thorpe Top had demolished the house with a view to building a new house in its place.

Sadly that hasn't happened and the view shown in my blip shows in the foreground where the house once stood. The farm buildings in the back have been developed by the farmer's family lump of the building has been and a strange bit of the building has been isolated for no apparent reason. But we were pleased to find the hornbeam tree they planted in the hedgerow near the road was thriving and was now abut twelve feet high and doing well. This view somehow evokes in me the flat farming landscape, which is how I seem to remember the countryside near Louth. 

After a short stay we drove on to rendezvous with G. at a beautiful remote former agricultural hamlet B. and I wandered around the small abandoned church. B. loves to sketch and paint while G. walks, so I took the opportunity to play with my new camera and lens both in the churchyard, and then down by the for and the beck. I watched three little egrets for some time, although they weren't keen when I came too close. Sadly I can't use the camera pictures while I'm away as I don't have a card reader. I'll have to view them all when I return home.