The Welney Website

Tipps End/Tipsend ............?

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To the north-west of the village of Welney is a hamlet of nearly 60 houses and several farms. Click the map above for a larger view.

The following article written in 2002 by David Lewis, now in Australia but then living at Forge Barn in March Road, Tipps End, describes some of the quirkiness of the area. It was first published in the Welney News in issue number 29, Oct-Nov 2002.

"Where Is Tipps End?

My wife and I moved to Tips End just in time to celebrate the millennium. As newcomers to the area, it struck us as curious that Tipsend was regarded as so insignificant that someone had drawn the county border right through the middle of it. This border runs along the road past my house. My neighbour opposite and I both live in Tipps End but are in different counties and have different MPs. I’m told that the border even runs through someone's garage.

Tipp's End, we concluded, is an anomalous sort of place. For a start, it doesn't have a definitive spelling. I have encountered all of these in print: Tips End, Tip's End, Tipps End, Tipp's End and Tipsend, and one must assume that they are all correct (the latter seems to be the Post Office's preferred version). On the road nameplate by the telephone kiosk I read: 'Wisbech Road (Tipsend)'. This sign is old, faded, and not visible to a driver. Down the other end of the Wisbech Road, at Lakes End, is a clean, modern sign pointing to 'Tipps End', but this is usually half-obscured by a bit of tattered cardboard advertising a horse show. This is the only sign that directs the traveller. Short of getting out of the car and asking, there is no way of knowing when you've arrived. There is no sign. Everyone who lives there has experienced the desperate phone call from a head-scratching delivery driver or visitor who has driven right through the place and ended up in Welney, Manea or Christchurch.

Why is it that there is no sign to tell you when you are entering Tip's End? Why are the authorities so coy about where it actually is? Is it because erecting a sign means you have to decide on a spelling, and no one knows what the correct spelling is? Or is it that no one knows where the boundaries are? At this point one has to confront the fact that Tipps End has a split personality: it is part Norfolk and part Cambridgeshire, partly the responsibility of Fenland district, partly that of King's Lynn & West Norfolk, partly in Christchurch parish, partly in Welney. Tips End shares with large cities the privilege of being represented by two MPs: it lies on the border of two parliamentary constituencies. This explains why some of us got the wrong election literature last year. And how many places in the country can boast two MEPs? We must be unique! Odd, isn't it, that on each side of the county boundary the exact location of Tipsend is such a secret. Even Lakes End (entirely in Norfolk) is thought worth a sign. Can it be that each authority is so mean, so penny-pinching, that it hopes the other side will take on the expense of erecting the two or three signs that would put the matter to rights?

Who cares about Tipp's End? Only people living less than ten miles away know where it is; go fifteen miles and they haven't even heard of it. Three Holes they'll admit to knowing, even Lakes End. Go any further and people start giggling when you say where you live. By the time you get to Cambridge they're falling about with hilarity and can't believe such a place exists. Mention it on the telephone and people wonder if you're being rude. All the more reason to put up signs to show people where it is and let them know when they've reached it. Interestingly, almost every road atlas shows where it is; they may not agree on the spelling, but they acknowledge its existence, so two cheers at least for the AA, the Ordnance Survey and the AtoZ.

The trouble with Tipsend is that it isn't even a parish in its own right, hence the boundary problem (but that didn't prevent Lakes End from having a sign). There's no church, school, post office or shop, so it would be giving itself airs to call itself a village. It once had a pub, a chapel even, which, though now a dwelling, still proclaims 'Zion' to the 21st century heathen from its gable end. I suppose the most it can aspire to is the status of hamlet (two hamlets, perhaps, one for each county). As if splitting the place in two weren't enough, I find that although I live in Fenland, my rubbish is collected by West Norfolk who issue a much meaner wheelie-bin than Fenland. To add to the identity crisis, my postal address is Tipsend (Cambridgeshire/Norfolk) in Welney (Norfolk) whose postal town is Wisbech (Cambridgeshire). If the EU had dreamed up this arrangement, the Daily Mail would have had a field day. But it's nothing to do with Brussels; it's just a good old British botch.

I have no idea whether it is more advantageous to live in Cambridgeshire or Norfolk, in which county the council taxes are worse or the services better. But surely it is time to allow Tips End its own identity. Perhaps a local referendum would allow the inhabitants to decide in which county they would like to be situated. At the same time people could vote for their preferred spelling, and this decision could be celebrated with the installation of three smart new signs at the newly identified limits of Tips/Tip's/Tipps/ Tipp's End (or Tipsend!) and perhaps a couple more direction signs at Welney and Christchurch. Or people could choose to keep the spelling flexible: each sign could have a different spelling, just to make the point; this would be the 'cool' option.

Sadly, I am on the point of leaving Tips End. But I shan't be far away. And I, - like the swans who know where the campaign to protect them started, - will always care about Tipps End, wherever it is and however it's spelt.

David Lewis"

 

Thanks David, I chuckle every time I read that. Things are still very strange in these parts. In late 2004 or Jan 2005 two road signs appeared, one in Wisbech Road on the way from Lakes End, the other on March Road approaching from Welney. Both were (I believe) erected by Norfolk County Council's highways dept even though the March Road one is on the Cambridgeshire side of the road. To add to the mystery, a report of a Parish Meeting for Welney stated "there is only one sign" (the one on March Road), and it had been "paid for by Welney Parish Council". Even odder, the Parish Council's accounts show no evidence of that. Sometime in 2006 a sign appeared on the approach from Christchurch and Manea, presumably provided by Cambridgeshire County County who previously said they were not prepared to finance it despite the intervention of local MP Mrs Gillian Shephard. The first two signs are positioned so that some properties previously considered part of Tipps End are now left in an apparent no-mans land, neither Welney, Lakes End or Tipps End. To add to this oddity, and the irritation and frustration of some residents, those living on the Norfolk side of the boundary are faced with very restrictive planning laws, whilst their neighbours across the road in Cambridgeshire can build just about anything.

Farming is obviously the predominant commercial activity. The Goodger family have provided some interesting details of their varied business based at Pates Farm. The area also has a number of small stud farms, a go-kart track, a haulage business and various smaller service businesses.

Below are a few of the more notable local properties. Photos below were taken in 2005 or 2006 except where shown. Additional photos will be added during the summer of 2006.

Rutland House, once the Rutland Arms public house, where the last pint was pulled in 1967. To the left of the house is a modern pay-phone, & next to that, just out of the photo, is a post box. To the right of the house is the one and only street light in Tipps End.

Chapel House, formerly a Calvanistic Baptist Chapel, was built in 1878. The Zion sign is above the porch

White Hall Farmhouse in 1978.

The wing on the left, and the wash house on the right were demolished a few years later.

Mains water was installed in the early 1950s. (1952?). Until then, rainwater was was collected from the roof and stored in two underground concrete tanks (catch-pits), and drawn up by hand-pump for drinking cooking and washing.

One tank was in the front garden, the other at the back of the house underneath an outbuilding.

photo © 1978 Henry Bond & Son, and William H. Brown & Son,  Auctioneers & Estate Agents

White Hall Farmhouse in 1992. Between 1980-82, the house was extensively altered with new windows, front door, porch, garage and rendering over the old bricks as seen here. In 1999 (?) a rear door was added and a lobby constructed in part of what was once a dairy.

The "well" beneath the tree in the front garden covers one of the underground water tanks.

Under the mortar cladding the brickwork is much as it was in 1978, indeed much as when the house was built c1860. The origins (and part of the present house) go back even further - a building is shown here on the 1810-1820 OS map. From 1910 to 1978 it was part of Norfolk County Council's Welney tenanted holdings estate. The Council sold the house when Mr Fred Markham retired and re-distributed the land to other tenants.

Photo courtesy of Charlotte Cox

Poplar Farm, March Road, built in 1901

Chestnuts, Wisbech Road.

Sunnybrae, March Rd

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