Norsey View Drive

A Short History
By Jennifer Brown

Dirty Hall Map

Perry Street is unmade in this photo just as Norsey view drive was

Stock Road - On the left is Orchard Ave. leading onto Perry St. (c.1910)

This photo is very likely Norsey View Drive but is typical of houses originally built in the area.

Norsey View Drive – sounds quite posh doesn’t it?

Well think again – this area during the 19th Century was known as DIRTY HALL FARM!!

Dirty Hall Farm buildings stood until1934 at the south corner of Norsey View Drive – a range of weather boarded and thatched barns, stables and pigsties. Just how and when the name “Dirty Hall” came into being has not been discovered but the name is shown on a map of the area dating back to 1772. By the time of its demolition in 1934 it certainly deserved the name!

The area know as Dirty Hall Farm was eventually sold for £2000 in 1929 becoming Newhouse Farm Estate. It was to be divided into 279 housing plots to become New Hall Estate. The layout of this new estate included Norsey View Drive, Central Avenue and Tylers Avenue . The development was only one third completed by 1939.

From the early forties the area began to look like we know it now although land was bought, old properties demolished and new ones built. As the map shows which dates from 1967 (not that long ago) none of the houses had numbers – they were all given names which meant a lot to their owners like Thistledo and Stroke-o-luck – some of which you can still see today. (Can you find your house? Did it have a name once?) Note there is no Buttsbury Junior School yet on this map, just Buttsbury County Primary School in Perry Street.

Perry Street/Norsey View Drive

Author

Jennifer Brown

Page added:

26/02/2024

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That’s so interesting. My aunt and uncle lived just off the edge of the map on plot no. 241 Perry Street, though their property included the plots marked 235, 237 and 239 as well, from the old telephone box to what is now Graham Close. From memory, Graham Close was built around 1961-ish, and I remember it was just fields when we came to visit in the fifties and up to 1963. My uncle died and my aunt moved back to London, so my family moved into the old bungalow, 241, known as Ivy Oaks. Norsey View Drive and Tyler’s Avenue were completely unmade roads; the dustmen wouldn’t go down them, so huge metal containers were parked on the corner with Perry Street and the residents of Norsey View had to put their refuse into those each week. I attended Buttsbury Junior School from 1963-1965.
By Ian Firth (27/02/2024)