SINCE there was nothing on the letters pages last week in answer to Bill Place's request – T'woods gone posh! (Keighley News, January 19) – for information about the Fell Lane area can I, as an offcumden of similar age, say what I have gleaned from various historical maps.

Higher and Lower Holme House Woods are named as such on the very first six-inch Ordnance Survey map published in 1852. They lie along the line of the Laycock Beck that runs east from Goose Eye and joins North Beck. There is a footpath adjacent to the beck where it runs through the woods, so it would have been easily accessible to the Fell Lane kids.

The area between Fell Lane and Wheathead Lane (known earlier as Wet Head Lane) would have been open fields in the 1940s but that is now all housing.

As for the duck pond, Chapman’s Fold and Workhouse Farm, none of these can be found on this or later maps.

In 1852 and on some subsequent maps there is however a track shown between Fell Lane and Wet Head Lane joining near Wet Head Farm. Would that be Workhouse Farm?

On the modern map there is a public footpath that roughly follows the same line but much of that is now on a paved road. There was also a footpath which has long since disappeared from Fell Lane joining Wet Head Lane near Hole Fold . Would that be the elusive Chapman’s Fold?

ROGER CHAPMAN

Thwaites Brow