Having once again been invited by the Farnham Society to participate in the September Heritage Open Days programme, we decided to offer a slight variation on the walk that we last did in 2015: “The Bourne – Change in the Village”.
On the due date (19th September) the weather was good and sixteen walkers and a Jack Russell met up with Richard Sanders and Noel Moss outside St Thomas’ Church at 2.00pm. Having heard about the geology of the area and the building of the present church from Noel, the group moved on to the Old Churchyard where Richard described the social changes that took place at the end of the nineteen century which had been so well recorded by George Sturt.
With the kind agreement of the owners, the group entered the garden of Vine Cottage, Old Church Lane, where Noel read a passage from Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer about George Sturt and Fred Grover working together in the garden on a damp afternoon. The tour stopped at the cottage Little Willows, where Fred and Lucy lived for a while, and at the end of Sturt Walk before moving on to hear a reading about William Cobbett playing with his brothers on the slope below Middle Bourne Lane.