Badsey - High Street Culvert

Grid reference 070434. Culvert carrying a small brook draining Badsey Field under the High Street adjacent to British Legion. Water is then culverted to Badsey Brook. Until the 1960s, a tributary of Badsey Brook ran westwards on the site of the present-day Manor Close and Manorside, but it was then piped underground when Manor Close was built. (During the cold winter of 1963, all the corrugated drums for keeping rain-water belonging to the houses in Green Leys, blew their tops; Alan Marshall, who owned the land on which Manor Close was built, used the drums to pipe the brook.) Until the mid 20th century, a brick bridge known as the old school bridge (backing on to the old school) existed on the west side of the High Street near the entrance to the present-day Manorside; it had no arch and was made of massive Cotswold stone about 500 cwt each. It was open and was a gathering place for the youth of the village to sit and talk and smoke. Today, the brook emerges from its current underground location on the east side of the High Street.