Rushden Lodge

This building had lately been the home of Mrs Rachel Lee	These pictures by Clive Wood, were taken following an anonymous telephone call to tell him that the Lodge was about to be demolished. Clive was well known as a conservationist; he was a leader in the campaign in the 1960s to save Rushden Hall from being demolished. Mrs Lee, the last owner of Rushden Lodge was, by then, living in a care home.	The kitchen had been little updated except for an electric cooker
Mrs Lee was a rather eccentric lady. She had been at Bletchley Park during the Second World War but never spoke of her work there. I visited her just once & was shocked to see, in the fireplace, a rather long piece of wood stretching out into the room. As it burned Mrs. Lee would push it further into the hearth. On the day I visited her in the 1970s, delivering an order fom the local shop, she had skeins of wool drying along the mantle piece. She was in the practise of unpicking old hand knitted garments and re-using the wool to knit fingerless mittens for the local milkmen.

The old scullery shows the many stages of change over its life but it was just used as a store at the end

Rushden Lodge - shortly before demolition

The demise of this building was recorded by Clive Wood following an anonymous phone call to him.