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Methodism in Harpenden
The first mention of Methodism in Harpenden is on 6th September 1790, when a group of people applied, under the Toleration Act of 1689, to have their meeting house licensed: eighteen months later it is recorded that the house of Thomas Robinson “is set apart as a place of religious worship of Almighty God for divers of His Majesty’s Protestant subjects commonly called Methodists”. This was one of a group of four cottages on West Common, which sto...
Ursula Bloom, cinema pianist
The White Palace cinema opened in the summer of 1913. Ursula Bloom was employed as pianist. In one of her memoirs, Youth at the Gate, published in 1959 she wrote: “The hours were fatiguing. In pre-war days nobody had any compunction in overworking an employee. The continuous programme began at half past five, ending at ten thirty. On matinee days it started at two-thirty. My hands felt like flat-irons at times, and the only possible refreshment h...
St Margaret's Crossway
In 1914 St Margaret’s Orphanage was the only building in Crossway. (It had moved from Willoughby Road where, in 1909 it was described as ‘St Margaret’s Home for Friendless Little Girls’). It was still there in 1913, though ‘Friendless’ had been dropped from its title in 1910. St Margaret’s in 1931. Credit: LHS archives – copy of cutting from the Herts Advertiser, 20 November 1931 St Margaret’s was a High Church institution presided over by a tall...
Insanity
One of the most common forms of this disease unfits the Patient for general society, but still more unfits him for that strict confinement to which he must be necessarily exposed in a large asylum. There are many also, who having been thus confined, are so improved that a change into the green fields and country air would probably restore them quite. Their friends are unable, however, to procure this for them without risking their safety, and dep...
Cloak and Dagger at Rothamsted Manor
On 3rd May 1995 there was a reunion for six ex-servicemen who served at Rothamsted Manor when it was a Top Secret Army Intelligence Centre and it was interesting to hear at first hand what really went on. Local people certainly wondered: there were sandbagged windows, armed pickets and patrols, dispatch riders coming and going day and night, many hundred-foot radio communication aerials. Up to 400 personnel were based there, many billeted in the ...
Royal Visits to Harpenden
This article first appeared in Newsletter 82, May 2000 Queen Elizabeth II visited Rothamsted in 1993 – see below. Credit: LHS archives The first Royal visitor to Harpenden was George, Prince of Wales, later to become Prince Regent. As a young man he was friendly with John Bennet Lawes (father of the agriculturist) who owned Bennets in Leyton Road from 1789 and lived there intermittently until he moved into Rothamsted Manor in 1801. The Prince cam...
The Institute, Southdown Road
This article was first published in newsletter 37, May 1985. In the spring of 1886 the Harpenden Lecture Institute and Reading Club were looking for new premises, without much success. Their lease on an upstairs corner room of the coffee shop, which stood where Barclays Bank now stands, had expired and although the Committee had agreed to rent rooms from a company who were planning to build a public hall, the scheme had fallen through. Mr Henry T...
Rose Cottage, High Street
In 1874 my grandfather Oliver Jewers took his bride Hannah to live at Rose Cottage in Harpenden High Street. Close by on a green was the Cock pond with its ducks sharing the water with cattle and horses taken there by local farmers. In those days Rose Cottage, with its bedrooms running over the drapery store beneath, extended to Thompson’s Close. My first memory of it in the 1920’s as a young child is of lying in bed at night listening to the rus...
No 95 Batford Prisoner of War Camp
Sketch plan, showing location of the camp. Credit: Les Casey In 1942, after the British successes in North Africa, there were thousands of Italian prisoners, and camps were needed to house them. In January 1943 the War Office compiled a list of possible sites in Britain, (the threat of invasion had passed,) and at the beginning of February told the Harpenden Urban District Council that they intended to requisition a site at Batford to the north o...
First Aid Post, Vaughan Road
I have very happy memories of time spent in this building, now the library, when it was used as a First Aid Post during the 2nd World War. I was a young Red Cross volunteer, one of a number who helped to man it. The Post was manned day and night with a minimum of three members on duty at one time. We dealt with minor injuries, accidents, out patients, blood donor sessions, Army clinics etc. Occasionally we joined forces with the Civil Defence, Ho...
The Great Northern Railway Station
The first railway to come to Harpenden was the Great Northern Line from Hatfield to Dunstable, which opened in 1860, eight years before the Midland line was opened. In 1923 the Great Northern was merged into the London and North Eastern Railway Company and later, in common with all the other Railway Companies, it became part of British Rail. The line, which had at some time been extended to Leighton Buzzard, was closed in 1965 as part of the Beec...
A West Common Walk
The Directors House Number 1 West Common, known as The Director’s House, was formerly the home of Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert when he was working together with Sir John Lawes to found Rothamsted Agricultural Experimental Station. Have you seen this? Sir Joseph`s Walk A strip of the garden of The Director’s House became the access road to the development at the rear, and was named Sir Joseph`s Walk in his honour. However, as he was always known as ...
The growing village (3)
... Roger Clark * The Festival of Britain "soap box derby" was easily won by Terry Hunt and Freddie Luck. I was second ably pushed by Roy Oggelsby. In third place were the Gray twins, the grocer's sons, with a proper soap box. ...
Jarvis the Builder
In October 1974 the firm moved its offices from Vaughan Road to Jarvis House Station Road, Batford. Jarvis Builders Yard Oct 1974 The staff newsletter said: “This is an opportunity to recall the history of our previous Yard and Offices in Vaughan Road. Mr E C Jarvis bought the lower part of the yard at No 13 in 1909, and on it he erected various wooden buildings for the joinery shop and storage of materials. His office was also just a wooden hut,...
Children's Country Holidays
During July, August and September 1890, a large number of scholars belonging to National School and Board Schools in London, had the pleasure and benefit of a fortnight’s holiday each in Harpenden. The first party of 33 children arrived on July 12th, and the ninth and final party returned to London on September 13th. From the slums to the fields St James’s, Ratcliffe, and St George’s in-the-East, and neighbouring parishes, sent 191 children; St G...
Basket Making at Batford
Wickerwork, the making of baskets and other items from willow (“withies”), rushes and other natural fibres, was known to Neolithic man. Its importance as a craft was recognised by the establishment of a livery company, the Basket Makers Company in 1569, which finally gained Royal status in 1937 (www.basketmakersco.org). The growing of willow canes (rods or osiers) was recognised as a crop from 1800 with the industry peaking in the 19th century. T...
The growing village (2)
‘Opening up’ at the common Before the car invasion The coming of the motor car caused changes in the appearance of the village. Cars started to appear in the early years of the century: there were complaints about speeding in 1913. It is recorded that cars, ‘opening up’ at the top of the common, had frequently reached a speed of 40 miles an hour by the time they reached the Old Bell. Comfy Cars Comfy Cars bus The first bus service was started in ...
Harpenden's Railways
Harpenden to Kings Cross via Hatfield The Act for the first railway through Harpenden was passed on 16th July 1855, for the Luton, Dunstable & Welwyn Junction Railway, linking the London & North Western line at Dunstable to the Great Northern line at Digswell (Welwyn). The Dunstable to Luton section was opened to passenger traffic on 3rd May 1858. However, the section between Luton and Welwyn had hardly been worked on and in fact the ceremony o...
Sir Frederick Bawden FRS (1908-1972)
Bawden pioneered research into plant viruses, and later became Director of Rothamsted, and a fierce campaigner for long-term research and the need to eliminate world poverty. Born in Devon and studying at Cambridge, his first work was with Raphael Salaman at the Potato Virus Research Station in Cambridge. He moved to Rothamsted in 1936, collaborating for ten years with Norman Pirie. He became Head of Plant Pathology in 1940, Deputy Director in 19...
Self-help in Nineteenth Century Harpenden
Not everyone subscribed to the philosophy of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act: that poverty was a crime not to be encouraged. Rothamsted Allotment Club The Lord of the Manor, Sir John Bennet Lawes, started or supported many local institutions. He provided the first allotments in 1852: one eighth acre at 5 shillings per annum. In 1857 the Allotment Club House was set up by Sir John, as a place where allotment holders could meet for beer and tobacco...
Harpenden Paupers
The Act of Settlement in 1662 made it clear that each parish was responsible for maintaining those born in it. Pushing people over the boundary … The Harpenden Overseers of the Poor accounts include two entries, in 1708 and 1710, for “the charges with a great Belled (bellied) woman of 3 shillings and 5 shilling & 6 pence respectively” – almost certainly payments for dumping a pregnant woman in another parish just before the child was born. The pl...
Looking after the Poor
... Kitty Ross Prior to 1800, the Alehouse was a major source of loans for the working man. It was a place to hear about jobs. The alehouse keeper acted as pawnbroker. The alehouse was a social meeting place. It provided accommodation for itinerants and vagrants. Sometimes it provided shelter for 'rogues'. ...
Drunkenness in Harpenden
In the seventeenth century alehouses were licensed and controlled, among other reasons, because they became the only places where the unwelcome unemployed could find refuge. Hertfordshire JPs tried to close unlicensed houses and to maintain order in the licensed ones, but it was not easy. Harpenden seems to have had more offenders than Wheathampstead. For example William Catlin was presented to Quarter Sessions in 1621 as an alehousekeeper, fo...
Harpenden in the 1860s, recalled in 1935
St Nicholas Parish Church, pre 1862. Credit: Herts County Archive St Nicholas Parish Church, pre 1862, from the north. Credit: Herts County Archive The village of Harpenden in the eighteen sixties consisted of little more than the present High Street, the Bowling Alley and the hamlets of Top-street and “Kingsbourne” Green. With the coming of the Midland Railway in the early ‘seventies’, the village began to increase, and has continued to do so in...
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