John Edward Cooper’s Notes
Limebrest Farm, Thornton Cleveleys
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This is mentioned or implied in the following stories: I meet Peter GoodingThe three large images, below, were derived from Lancashire County Council Maps and Related Information Online. The first is an aerial photo from the 1960s, which closely matches my memories of how things were when I first got to know Peter Gooding in the autumn school-term of 1962, and afterwards to about 1965. The second image is a present-day map, which shows how everything I knew from then was later swallowed up by housing; and the third is the aerial photo with the outline of the map superimposed. When I first knew him, Peter Gooding lived with his parents in a caravan [mobile home] named Beech View, on the Limebrest Farm caravan site [trailer park] that I’ve labelled “caravans” below. It was too large to be drawn behind a car as a touring caravan, and had probably been transported there on a flatbed lorry [truck]. Later — though I don’t remember this as clearly as the original one — the Goodings replaced it with an even larger mobile home, which was in two sections bolted together, end to end. Access to the caravans was gained by a drive which led to the right (approximately southwards) off Limebrest Avenue, and opened out, just past the farmhouse which was on the left, into a yard. There were outbuildings, also to the left, and beyond them (approximately southwards) was the caravan site. Then to get to Peter’s you turned left, and his was one of the first that you came to, perhaps the middle one of the three that can be seen at the north end of the area that I’ve marked “caravans”. If you continued without stopping to turn into Peter’s home you came to the entrance to a field. That was where, I think, “Peter produced some Dinky Toy models of earth-moving plant and we played at making roads with them on the small bank of bare earth which was at the shrub-lined boundary fence of the caravan site” (Early days with Peter Gooding (1): The environs of Peter’s home). In the photo below you can see the “shrubs” lining the field, where Peter discovered the “stash of ‘girlie’ magazines”. In the field itself we took turns on the “stripped-down bike that he used for track cycling”, and to the south of that was “where preparations for building or civil engineering work had begun”: presumably the extension westwards of Tarnway Avenue. “There were several upright wooden posts that had been driven into the ground” — some of which I relocated! That was also where I injured my finger on the makeshift “discus”. In Early days with Peter Gooding (2): Peter’s dad’s car, I mentioned that “he garaged it in one of the outbuildings of Limebrest farm”, perhaps the building that I’ve marked “garage”. 
The only familiar features in this photo of Limebrest Avenue from 1978, taken from School Road, are the bungalows on the left, which were there in the 1960s, and the wooden fence on the right marking the position of the drive into Limebrest Farm. I think the road itself was paved with compacted stones and gravel, not tarmac; it continued up the rise beyond the bungalows as a narrow track. The bungalows on the right weren’t there, nor were the houses ahead; in fact, these latter mark the position of a sand or gravel quarry (not very deep, because they’ve built houses on it!). I don’t recall Limebrest Farm actually doing much farming, but they did have at least one tipper lorry to transport the materials from the quarry, and they must have had other plant too to dig and load it. The view of the entrance-drive to Limebrest farm and the farmhouse in this 1978 photo looks exactly as it did in the 1960s, apart from the new wall on the right. The drive and buildings have since then been replaced by Wren Close and new houses. When I took this 1978 photo, Tarnway Avenue had been extended, and houses had been built along it except at the end of the caravan site, where the original trees and shrubs at the boundary remained. That is where I took the photo from, looking through the foliage. As you can see from the modern-map overlay, the whole area since then has been built on. |
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Do you remember John Riley he had 5 ERF tipper trucks parked at limebreast farm I used to go with John Riley in the trucks back in 1983/84
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