The following is an edited version of an article in the October/November 2024 edition of the Journal.
The Drift was called the ‘Fourth Private Road’ in the 1834 Enclosure Act. By the eighteenth and nineteenth century there were allotment gardens on both sides and ponds at the back of what is now Mead View.
(Enclosure map. The Drift is the road running south of the crossroads.)
Nowadays the Drift has seven homes in it, the oldest building being the white cottage, probably mid nineteenth century. The others have been built at various times since the 1930s. One house, called ‘The Barn’, is built on the site of the old barn. There was a huge barn in the field at the end of the Drift, and it was moved, in living memory, lock, stock and spiders, all the way across the field and down the track.
In that farmyard area were housed two shire horses, and later a donkey called Zebra, innumerable hens, duck, geese and a one-winged seagull, Cyril.
A splinter group of the Strict and Particular Baptists installed a large chicken house (as described by those who saw it) in what is now the drive at number 10. Apparently worship in the village was not strict and particular enough, so twice at least on Sundays worship was conducted there, even in the muddiest conditions.
The Drift was given a tarmac surface in the 1980s. Hitherto I had helped Harvey Pettit to maintain the surface with a tractor and harrow.
The Drift has seen a number of floods over the years. Drainage improved greatly when new plastic pipes replaced the old clay ones and a trench was dug across the Drift to take water straight into the watercourse. Later the watercourse was properly maintained by South Cambs District Council.
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