Whitewashing Pond

click Kiln Lane for research by Dennis Claydon published in "Tarmac and Beyond"

Research by Dennis Claydon

In hilltop settlements of the Chilterns, a long-standing problem for many generations was the supply of water for cattle and domestic purposes. In long dry summers areas were prone to periods of severe drought. If a community lacked a Parish Well, the only means of supply was water collected from cottage rooftops, stored in underground tanks, or from ponds. A shortage of water at Stokenchurch in the late 1860’s, during a period of drought, caused beer to be cheaper than water!

The Enclosure, maybe recognising the problems, made provision for nine Public Ponds within the Parish, (then the Parish of Princes Risborough). One of these was in Longwick, whilst the other eight, perhaps predictably, were in Lacey Green. Loosley Row was fortunate in that it possessed a Parish Well, whilst Speen, on the other hand, seemed to manage without either, possibly being able to survive by using private ponds.

Two of these public ponds are situated in Kiln Lane. The smaller of the two lies at the western end of Kiln Lane and is known as Whitewashing Pond. It is described in the Enclosure Award as a ‘public pond or watering place, in an allotment of the said John Grubb containing eighteen perches with a road thereto of the breadth of twenty feet from the Lacey Green Road, including the Public Bridleway No. 1’.

click Deep Pit Pond for the larger of the two. It bears a similar description in the Enclosure Award as Whitewashing, being in the “same Allotment near the Brick Kiln...containing twenty four perches’.

The fact that these ponds had a road leading to them ‘of the breath of twenty feet’ undoubtedly has some bearing on the situation today. Kiln Lane is now tarmacadamed as far as Deep Pit Pond, thereafter it is unmade and ‘unadopted’. Residents of the late nineteenth century recall a gate near Deep Pit, for which a toll was payable for passage through, thence leading into ‘Public Bridleway No 1’, as recorded by the Enclosure Award.

in the early twentieth century, a major crisis occurred. The Owner of ‘Gracefield’, in Main Road, purchased a car, one of the first in the village, which was garaged in the Coach House at Idle Corner. Oil, leaking from this vehicle, found its way into roadside ditches, eventually draining from Idle Corner into the ponds, causing severe contamination.

During the summer of 1921 there was a severe drought, water being in very short supply in Lacey Green. Whitewashing Pond was dry and in order to provide water for cattle therefore, a series of journeys, organised on a full-time daily basis, were made with a horse drawn water cart, to a source of supply in Saunderton.

Whitewashing was reserved for cattle and originally there was access to the pond from Kiln Lane. Following on from the Enclosure, administration of the ponds passed to local Parish Councils, at the time of their foundation in 1894, in this case to Princes Risborough. In turn, in 1934, responsibility was transferred to the then newly formed Lacey Green Parish Council. In the 1970’s Lacey Green Parish Council sold Whitewashing to a householder in nearby Hets Orchard as additional curtilage. The access from Kiln Lane, which had originally been between ‘Macosquin’ and ‘Holly Tree Cottage’, has since been sealed off.