| Waterhead Lane | Tollgate Cottages | Old Church Road & Melton Hamlet |
HALF WAY UP the hill leaving Melton is a small crossroads and a terrace of cottages. The lane that crosses Yarmouth Road at this point is St Audry’s Road to the left and Waterhead Lane to the right. St Audry’s Road, as its name suggests, leads to the South Lodge entrance to St Audry’s Hospital. This entrance would be where staff living in the village were expected to enter the grounds and where tradesmen delivered their goods. A weighbridge marks the spot where the carts and their contents would be checked.
Waterhead Lane is now little more than a footpath through to Brick Kiln Lane and continuing to Wilford Bridge Road. Along the lane, was the site of the Melton Town Houses, or Almshouses, that were demolished in the 1940s.
The single-storey building on the junction, Tollgate Cottage, was built in the early 19th century to collect the tolls from travellers going south from Yarmouth to Ipswich on the turnpike road. A row of six cottages was built in the 1870s, many of which were rented to workers at the hospital.
At the brow of the hill, a lane, Old Church Road, goes off to the right. This leads to Melton Old Church, the village’s original place of worship, and then on to the village of Ufford.
Click on the blue headings to see the people who lived in this part of Melton.
