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Prize for Harpenden Station gardens, 1949
“Glowing flower-beds and window-boxes at Harpenden Midland Station, which have been greatly admired by travellers, have now received praise from a higher quarter”. In August 1949 they were awarded second prize in the London section, Midland area, station gardens competition – to the surprise of the station-master Mr W J Bland. Two years previously the railway staff, headed by the station foreman, Mr S Buckingham, sought permission to make flower ...
John Frye Bourne (1912-1991)
John Frye Bourne putting the finishing touches to “The Resting Land Girl”, 1948 John Frye Bourne was the son of the former Congregational minister, the Rev. A A Bourne of 32 Milton Road, Harpenden. Born in Hampstead in 1912, he studied at the Royal Academy and had his first portrait exhibited at the Academy in May 1932, and a second one a year later – according to a cutting from the Harpenden Free Press (HFP) on 15 October 1948. The HFP article w...
The Lines Family in the Lea Valley
Emily Lines, aged 17, at The Folly I have this charming photograph of my maternal grandmother, Emily Lines. Emily was born in St Albans in 1875 and the photograph was taken in 1892, when she was 17, in a field at the Folly, Wheathampstead. Her parents were Anne and (Alfred) George Lines. George was born in Sandridge in 1852, the youngest son of John and Anne Lines and worked as a labourer at Turners Hall Farm at one time. Emily, her mother and si...
Harpenden Air Crash
On September 3rd, 1953, my girlfriend, (later my wife)and I were cycling past Aldwickbury Farm towards Wheathampstead when we heard the scream of a high speed jet aircraft. As we looked up an RAF jet came out of the light cloud in a vertical dive. Seconds later we were blown off our bicycles as it nosedived into the ground just behind some trees to our left. A Huge Crater When we picked ourselves up we rushed into the grounds of the farm and we...
Ernest Hasseldine (1875-1944) - drawings, sketches, family photos etc
... A biography of Ernest Hesseldine by his grandson Des Summerson can be found in the section on People, together with an appreciation by Pat Wilson and a contemporary obituary. ...
Tollgate Cottage - Tollgate Hotel
... George Wolfe I know that my grandmother Mabel Wolfe lived in one of the Tollgate cottages with my father Edward Wolfe during the 1930s and maybe in wartime. Her late husband was a relative of the Lydekkers. ...
Victory In Europe - 8 May 1945
Harpenden began to anticipate VE Day on the Monday, when the end of the war had been announced. The Old Bell stayed open very late that evening. My father had been a ‘regular’ all through the war, and I sometimes used to accompany him down the alley way when he went for a drink. That night I got as near as I ever had to being allowed into the doorway of the Saloon Bar – hallowed ground. On the morning of Tuesday 8 May my mother told me about the ...
'Woodlands' In Wartime
The former grounds of Woodlands, looking towards Wood End Road. Credit: Rosemary Ross, August 2012 Fred and Doll Wright lived at ‘Woodlands’, a large house in its own grounds at the corner of Roundwood Lane and Wood End Road, with an attached flat and outbuildings. Ever hospitable and generous, the Wrights held open house for any passing service personnel, people temporarily without a roof, and suchlike. Having ample accommodation to spare they u...
War Comes to Roundwood
It was a Sunday morning and my Uncle Len and Auntie Elaine from London were staying with us. After much radio tuning and thumping of our ancient loudspeaker, the Prime Minister’s voice was heard announcing that we were at war with Germany. Twenty minutes later war broke out in Roundwood Park. Mr Stretton ran along the road wearing his ARP armband and blowing his air raid whistle. My aunt went upstairs and came down with her standard issue ear plu...
Alec Shanks and 'The Three Minute Rule'
Among the many theatrical personalities who lived in Harpenden in the 1940’s were Alec Shanks and his partner Roy. Regular weekend patrons of the Old Bell, they shared a bungalow at the top of Roundwood Lane. Those were the days when Alan Turing and John Gielgud could be pilloried for inappropriate gender liaisons. Yet the social mores in Harpenden and other places at that time was ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and if you avoided the police and behaved...
The Boys of Saint Hilda's
... George Wolfe There were also boys in earlier days as my father Edward Wolfe was pupil there around 1911 before he went away to prep school. ...
Air Raid Warnings in Harpenden
The structure of Harpenden air raid warnings was quite elaborate. Top of the list was a ‘red’ warning when all the sirens sounded and you took immediate action. If enemy aircraft were not imminent but in a neighbouring district, there was a ‘yellow’ warning. Only the civil defence, police and other authorities were told about this, though Red Cross nurses on call might be summoned. As systems became more developed there was a third category, a ‘p...
Southdown Women's Institute Choir
... Dinah Castle lent her family albums to the Society in early 2012. These included a number of group photos of Southdown Women’s Institute Choir, winning trophies in the 1950s. Annie Weston nee Tuffin is identified in some, as are Mrs Ackroyd, Florrie Starkins, and Mr Byard, organist of High Street Methodist Church. Do you know any other members of this choir? If so, please add comments or contact us. ...
The Morning 'Nickey Train' at Roundwood Halt
Each morning my mother and I would settle down to breakfast in the front room, watching the road come to life. The ‘Nickey’ train would arrive from Hemel Hempstead at Roundwood Halt at ten past eight. It would connect with the main London express which left Harpenden at about half past. Since many London offices opened at nine thirty, with the bosses arriving at ten, the morning Nickey was very much a Top Person’s train. Most of the passengers w...
The Centre-Pieds and the Cobra Club
Features of Harpenden life in the 1930s through to the 1950s were the clubs and societies for young people, who in pre-television and wartime days largely made their own entertainment. One of these, a ‘singles club’ called the ‘Centre-Pieds’, was open to young people between the ages and 16 and 30. In addition to social activities it would raise money for the Nursing Centre in Luton Road, hence its name. When Harpenden Memorial Hospital, ’The Red...
Harpenden Red Cross Society First Aid Post
An important feature of Harpenden in the war years was the establishment of a First Aid Post, at the top of Vaughan Road in the building which is now the Public Library, run by Harpenden Red Cross Detachment (‘Herts 48’). At the beginning of the war volunteer nurses were recruited from anyone with nursing excperience or who was willing to pass examinations in First Aid and Home Nursing – essential pre-requisites for being allowed to wear the red ...
125 years of Barclays Bank
Though 2012 will be remembered more for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee, Barclays Bank is celebrating its own more locally-specific event: the 125th anniversary of its Harpenden branch. It was initially a sub-branch of a local St Albans bank, Marten, Part & Company and opened for business in May 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. For the first few years it was open only on Tuesdays and Fridays. But as business grew, so did the o...
Jubilee and coronation celebrations in Harpenden
Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887 was celebrated in style by the people of Harpenden. An organising committee, chaired by Henry Tylston Hodgson of Welcombe (now Harpenden House Hotel), raised £194.17.5d and laid on a full programme of processions, feast, sports, tea, speeches, fireworks, and the planting of an oak tree in Rothamsted Park, and the report to subscribers noted “it is hoped may prove a lasting memorial of the day.” Golden Jubil...
Quaker Wilfred H. Brown
Relatives of Quaker Wilfred H. Brown of Harpenden, I am looking for your help in tracing my English ancestors and relations. Wilfred H Brown – c. 1947, from a press profile You and I share Quaker ancestors from the 1600’s, and I’m hoping you may have the answers to some long standing questions about our Browne family…their name has changed slightly over the years. These ancestors of mine are your ancestors as well. I came across the name Wilfred ...
Julius Harrison - 1885-1963
Julius Allan Greenway Harrison (1885-1963) was an English composer who was best known as a conductor of operas. He was born at Stourport in Worcestshire in 1885 and studied at the Birmingham and Midland Institute of Music. He studied conducting and established his reputation as an opera conductor. In the 1920’s he was a conductor for the British National Opera Company, and then became director of opera and professor of composition at the Royal Ac...
Raphael Salaman - 1906-1993
Raphael Arthur Salaman (1906-1993) came from an old-established Anglo-Jewish family which had many connections with both science and the arts. His father Dr. Redcliffe Salaman had written the standard work on the history and the social importance of the humble vegetable, the potato. Raphael followed his father’s example of scholarly research on simple objects of everyday use. Raphael was born at Barley in Hertfordshire in 1906 and developed his e...
Charles Hill - 'The Radio Doctor' - 1904-1989
Charles Hill (1904-1989) studied medicine at Cambridge and London, gaining the degree of MD. He was Deputy Medical Officer of Oxford in 1930 and later Secretary of the British Medical Association from 1944 to 1950. During the second world war the Ministry of Health wanted to broadcast messages in the most effective way possible, and Charles Hill became the “Radio Doctor’, part of the radio programme ‘Kitchen Front’ broadcast every morning. He bro...
Hans Kalmus
Hans Kalmus (1906-1988) grew up in Prague in the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although from a Jewish family he was brought up as a Protestant and belonged to the minority of German-speaking people in the city. At university in Prague he first studied Biology and then changed to Medicine and began research on comparative physiology. With the rise of Nazism in Germany he was aware of the dangers for anyone from a Jewish background, a...
Harpenden's former Norman parish church
This extract is from The Beauties of England and Wales, published in 1808 St Nicholas Church, 1839, by J C Buckler FSA. Scan of print of watercolour painting from Harpenden, A Picture History, WEA 1973 Harden Church is dedicated to St Nicholas and, as appears from the style of the architecture, was erected in Norman times. It is built in the form of a cross, with a towere at the west end: the arches at the intersection of the nave and transept ar...
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