IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Orsino Close, WARWICK, CV34 6FP

Heathcote Park, entrance, right, is a mature park homes site Image, established many years before the Warwick Gates estate, left. Now new estates are springing up along the south side of Harbury Lane. It's a race track: amid this creeping suburbia the speed limit remains 50mph.

This mobile home estate has been developed over recent years at Heathcote near Warwick.

A site for permanent mobile homes: Image It was transferred here from Myton to allow the construction of Europa Way in the 1980s.

Oakley Grove is one of the smaller new estates being developed along the south side of Harbury Lane. The developer is local company A.C.Lloyd. In a daring break with tradition all the road names are derived from varieties of potato with royal associations – King Edward Drive, Pentland Crown Place (pictured), Lionheart Avenue, etc – entirely appropriate for a greenfield farm site, it cannot be denied.

All the streets on this large modern housing estate have been given names that come from Shakespeares plays. Calpurnia appears in Julius Caesar. There is also a character of this name in the film "To Kill A Mockingbird"

For years the south side of Harbury Lane had a couple of farms and a long-established static caravan site, Heathcote Park Image Planning permission was granted to Gallagher for a business and industrial estate near Europa Way, route to the M40, but it was never implemented. In recent years a number of housing developments have appeared and more are being built. The view is from the new road that will access a site at Grove Farm: Bishops Gate? Oakley Grove? Meadowsweet Farm?

Almost all the streets on the Warwick Gates estate are named after characters from Shakespeare's plays. Greater familiarity with the Bard's creations might have signalled caution: but, no, we have Timon View, Macbeth Approach, Toby Belch Drive, Cressida Close and - Caliban Mews. "The isle is full of noises" that do not delight: 4-wheel drives, motorised scooters, light aircraft, lawnmowers, ice-cream vans, drumkits…

Seen from the corner of Cicero Approach. The identity of this area is in flux. The gazetteer says 'near to Whitnash', which is true, but this corner of Warwick Gates is in the parish of Bishop's Tachbrook, the village to the south. The name Warwick Gates creates an association with Warwick's heritage but the whole estate feels like a further extension of south Leamington. Politically, though, most of the estate is in the Warwick South ward.

Nigel Mykura went a bit further Image and Colin Craig went further still in 2009: Image and Image A full-blown sewage works for Leamington Corporation is first shown here on an OS map of 1939; the house not till 1968. The site is on a low summit, allowing effluent to drain into the Tach Brook, thence to the River Avon above the village of Barford. It became redundant in the 1970s after the opening of the sewage works at Longbridge southwest of Warwick, built to serve both towns (and now operated by Severn Trent Water). It's not clear how the sewage reached the works. From 1871 Leamington Board of Health had by necessity pumped sewage from the works at Edmondscote Image by a rising main to the Earl of Warwick's land at Heathcote, a rise of 20m over a distance of about 3km, where it was reportedly treated and sold to farmers. Treatment may have consisted of being spread on the land to be naturally irrigated by rain. Old maps show no feature that can be interpreted as a pipeline, yet there were reports of bursts. If it was underground, where did it come to the surface? Did it supply the 1939 works? Alternatively from 1871, could it have been only a short length to an area where solids could be loaded on to carts and conveyed to Heathcote? Refs: Lyndon F. Cave. Royal Leamington Spa, a history; Phillimore, 2009 ISBN 978-1-86077-505-5 Contemporary newspapers, town council minutes, www.old-maps.co.uk

Heathcote Park is a static caravan site. The trees have grown up on the disused Heathcote sewage works to the southwest: see Image The view is from the end of Royal Avenue on one of the new residential developments along the south side of Harbury Lane. 'Royal' is a reference to Jersey Royal potatoes: see Image