Hidden Henley

THIS crumbling old building is in a meadow near Pishill.

It was clearly properly built with brick walls and a pitched and tiled roof but it is very small even compared with cottages in the area.

Its purpose is unclear. It looks like somewhere built for agricultural workers to use for shelter but I have been told two other possible explanations.

One is that it was one of the resting places for patients on their way to the former W H Smith isolation hospital in Fair Mile, Henley. Most of these have now gone.

My late aunt Edith Cook (later Wheeler) would often recall that when she was a young girl going to be treated there, she was taken by horse-drawn ambulance.

The other explanation is that these structures were built around water pumps for the farms in the area.

Does anyone know if either of these is correct or if there is some other reason for the building’s existence?