Blue Boar Lane

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This road derived its name from the public house on Wroxham Road which was virtually opposite the start of this lane. Early Ordinance survey maps show the whole area as being completely rural surrounding the old village of Sprowston prior to the area known as New Sprowston being developed closer to the City of Norwich. Within the space of a century the road has changed from being a sleepy country lane to a realigned busy through route that seems to be an unofficial outer ring road taking in White Woman Lane, Barkers Lane, Church Lane and Blue Boar Lane. Prior to the diversionary route instigated in the early 2000s to facilitate the increase in size of Tesco's supermarket and a new housing development the junction with Wroxham Road had been controlled by traffic lights. This set of traffic lights were unusual as the entrance to the Blue Boar Public House was also control by traffic lights. Leaving the Wroxham Road, Blue Boar Lane originally ran between agricultural land, however by the 1930s there was a number of residential dwellings being built including a group of council houses. Beyond these it was purely agricultural although much of the land was a rather poor sandy nature and areas were given over to woodland. Boar Plantation, Sawmill Plantation, Cottage Plantation and Harrison's Plantation. Just beyond Boar Plantation came the road junction to Laundry Lane which led to what had been the laundry connected to Sprowston Hall and Whitehouse Farm. Around this junction were gathered a timber yard, agricultural workers housing and the entrance to a sports ground originally set up by Bolton and Paul Ltd in the 1940s. After the many changes this has become the Sprowston Sports and Social Club. Whilst it might not have been a problem in the old days, this junction coincides with a considerable bend in the road and has been over the years the site of many quite horrendous accidents especially in inclement or frosty weather. Since the 1970s the whole structure of the road has changed as the housing development between Mousehold Lane and Blue Boar Lane was completed when Linacre Avenue finally joined up with Blue Boar Lane this was soon followed by the opening of Bugdens Supermarket replacing the original shop on Wroxham Road. The Bugden Supermarket was short lived however as within a few months it assumed the name of Tescos Supermarket. The year on year increase in traffic soon made traffic lights at the Wroxham Road junction bottleneck essential, this was truly brought to a head by a vociferous campaign in Rackheath to prevent HGVs using Green Lane pushing all the traffic for the Rackheath Industrial Estate onto the already overused Blue Boar Lane. It would appear the re-routing of the Lane allied to the Tesco expansion and new housing development will soon be superseded, once again housing developments are taking place further into the countryside and access will be via new roads linking to both Salhouse and Wroxham Road.