If one walks through Waitrose in Wantage starting from the Wallingford Street entrance past their checkouts, out the carpark entrance and follows the green path down the slope towards Wantage Library one is following the original line of Little Lane in Wantage. The present road named Little Lane was created when the supermarket was first built in the early 1970s. If you were making this walk in the 1960s, as Dr Val Hulse did when she took these photos, you would have found that the entrance to Little Lane was between Badgers Department Store and Roberts who ran a large store with drapery, outfitters and furnishing departments. As you walked into the lane, on your left was the Wantage Telephone Exchange. On your right towards the end of the lane which came out in Stirlings Road lived the Wornham family as shown in the photo here. To the left were some cottages and Smiths Yard which was located at the Stirlings Road entrance of Little Lane. Many older people in Wantage will remember the wall on the eastern side of the lane was etched with numbers (see photo). This is what gives Little Lane its alternative name the Rope Walk. In the 18th century Wantage was a centre for sack, cloth and rope making. As late as 1830 five sacking manufacturers were listed as working in Grove Street. The Town Commissioners minuted in 1855 that 'Mr Lawrence be allowed to use the lane between Mr Beach’s and Mr Pumfrey's houses for making ropes provided he does not interfere with the public passing along the lane'. When Roberts and Badgers were demolished in the early 1970s and Waitrose built, the numbered bricks were saved and can be seen today in the Vale and Downland Museum in Wantage.