and parts of the cellars. Most of the manor's auxiliary buildings still exist as private houses or in the case of the stables as Richings Park Golf Club. The ice house is also still in existence. The Golf Club now occupies the sites of the park and Home and Old Slade farms.

The Laundry

The laundry for Richings Lodge was built by the Meekings in around 1868 and was known as Shires End (at 5 North Park); it is now demolished. It was built in 19th century gothic style up a lane off Thorney Lane (now North Park) opposite the gates of the East Lodge and Main Drive. It consisted of a range of wash houses and a pair of cottages. It was serviced by a well and pump from a steam which ran from the Ridgeway, under the railway and down what is now Syke Cluan. A ditch (Shire Ditch) ran from what is now 31 Syke Cluan to 7 North Park skirting the site. It then ran along North Park to the Withy Brook. The lane petered out past the

laundry to become a path which meet the farm track leading from the Withy Brook on North Park to the bridge across the railway (Dog Kennel Bridge, built 1938) and Mead's Bridge across the canal. The laundry was not part of the 1922 purchase of the Estate by the Sykes. It seems to have been a tenancy granted for the Meeking laundry while the house was in use. It became the location of Miss Bright's infant school and then Richings Park School for Boys. The laundry remained in its original form until about the mid-1940s and still had its old wash tubs, water cisterns and drying room intact when it was converted in to a private house.

The Simmons family came from West Drayton to Richings Park, there being three brothers and a sister. One of the brothers, George, was bothered by asthma and stayed at home. He went to Richings Park School for Boys (then at 9 North Park) around 1933 and recalled coming past the laundry down the lane on the way back to school on cross country runs and

wishing that they could live there. Later his dream was fulfilled and his father purchased Shires End. George continued to live there tending the garden until his death in 2005/6.

Thorney

(incorporating information from articles by Douglas M. Rust, a former resident of 10A Thorney Lane South)

Thorney is a small hamlet, to the east of Richings Park, in the parish of Iver. Its boundaries remain essentially as they were: Bigley Ditch to the east separating it from West Drayton and the old county of Middlesex, to the south the parish boundary of Colnbrook.

When gravel was to be extracted from Thorney Farm in the early 1960s, an aerial photograph of the site showed interesting crop marks and field systems. At Thorney Farm itself there were a number of very dark rings in the soil which on excavation turned out to be Celtic and later Roman,