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Batford in the 1950s and 1960s, recalled in 1997
Upstream from Batford Ford The ford at Batford Mill, with its beach-like gravel sloping to the water, making it an ideal playground, was always an attraction for children. Hopefully you would not have to wait too long before a motorist would try and drive his car through the ford. Paddling in the Lea at Batford Ford – LHS_001075 Car in the ford! – LHS archives, 002143 Those not in the know took the direct route and went straight into deep water, ...
Harpenden's Roll of Honour, January 1915
We have in the Society’s archives a ‘Roll of Honour’ printed in 1915. We assume this is a list of those men of the village who had enlisted – although, according to the 1911 census, one man (John Anstee) was in the Navy. Perhaps it includes men already in the forces. The Roll has been transcribed and, for those whose name is on the war memorial, information about them in Mary Skinner’s ‘Harpenden War Memorial 1914 -18’ has been added (columns D &...
Batford Memories
... Darrel Long Estimating that I was about 5 at the time of the WVS party photo it would have been taken in 1952 rather than 1954/55. I lived in Noke Shot from 1948 until 1960. Ken Frampton I think that's me 3rd from left Ed. Do you mean the 'unknown' little boy gazing at the cake - and so who is the little girl? ...
St Dominic's School
The first. temporary, Catholic Church, dedicated in 1905. Credit: LHS archives, HC 05 After Henry VIII’s charter of 1536/7, rejecting papal authority and granting Harpenden parishioners the right to bury their dead in their chapel (St Nicholas church) or graveyard, Catholicism seems to have disappeared from the area until the 1890s, when three or four Catholic families were served by a priest from St Albans – Father A Macdonell. By 1905 Father Pe...
E P (Pat) Wilson - 1910-1988
Pat Wilson at work on documents and photos – Les Casey Pat Wilson died in Cornwall at his daughter’s home on 6 November 1988, aged 78. He was a working member and in due time Vice-president of the Harpenden Society and a founder member of our Local History Society. That he should have been so arose naturally from his intense interest in Harpenden, its people, its future – and also its past, since settling in Batford [5 Salisbury Road] in the 1950...
St Nicholas School History Exhibition - Saturday, 12 July 2014
On Saturday, 12 July 2014, St Nicholas Church of England Primary School mounted an exhibition celebrating over 150 years of its history, from when it started as Harpenden’s National School, close to the parish church. General view of the exhibition and musicians. Credit: Rosemary Ross – July 2014 This was complemented by children’s activities, a quiz, traditional refreshments and musical entertainment throughout. Victorian desk with pens and ink,...
The Sherwood Foresters billeted in Harpenden, 1914-1915
“Harpenden is further revolutionised by having been made into a military depot during the past six weeks. 5000 territorials have been billeted on the inhabitants to the great excitement and considerable inconvenience of housewives.” (TJ p.135 – 26 September 1914) This is one of several references in Theodora’s Journals (TJ)- extracts from the diaries of Theodora Wilson who lived in Rivers Lodge, overlooking Harpenden Common. “There is continual m...
Scout Relief work in NW Europe
Two well-worn volumes of Cornelia Clutterbuck’s hand-written scrapbook-diaries were donated to the Society’s archives in 2013. These volumes cover the period of her work with 102 Scout Relief in Belgium and Northern Germany in hospital and re-settlement facilities close to Belsen Concentration camp which had been relieved a month or so beforehand. Written initially under censorship conditions, As with Cornelia’s many other scrapbook-diaries, alre...
Harpenden - A wartime Haven
Keith Cook was evacuated to Harpenden in July 1940. He wrote this account for our archives in July 2001 (RB 89). The outbreak of the Second World War brought just a few inconveniences to me – a nine-year-old lad. We had to abandon our holiday in Ilfracombe immediately and return by train to our home in Hastings, East Sussex, right on the South Coast. Anti-invasion girders and barbed wire were soon erected along our sea-front, and I watched our ow...
A German POW in Harpenden 1944-46
Anne Esson now lives in Greater Manchester. She recently discovered our page about the POW camp at Batford, and it reminded her of Gerhard – one of the POWs. The bracelet given to Anne by Gerhard. Credit: Anne Esson My uncle and aunt lived in a bungalow with a fairly large garden in Park Mount. Gerhard had been delegated to attend the house regularly, to assist with gardening and vegetable-growing duties. He was a delightful, charming, and kind-h...
A child's memories of WWII
I was born in January 1937 and was therefore between the ages of three and eight during the conflict. During that time my family lived at 37 Station Road, between Overstone Road and Granary Lane. My memories are rather disorganised. I remember looking out of my bedroom window, which faced south, and seeing the glow of London burning. I was always conscious of the siren on top of the metal water tower [beside Granary Lane] sounding the air-raid wa...
Evacuation from the South Coast
... Portia How poignantly written! Rita you have written this as the brave child you had to be with no moaning or selfishness but the pathos comes through the writing and the reader aches for the stolen childhood what a wonderful resource!...
F.P.& C. SPORTS & SOCIAL CLUB
An original copy of the notes below have been placed in our archives by Robert Brigham whose grandfather and subsequently his father were Company Secretary. F.P.& C stands for ‘Friends Provident and Century Life’ now ‘Friends Life’ and they had this plaque placed at the entrance to Rothamsted Park. Plaque at the entrance to Rothamsted Park. Credit: Rosemary Ross It reads: HARPENDEN URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL, ROTHAMSTED PARK The rebuilding of the Par...
Mr I S Smith's Preparatory Academy, Harpenden
Advertisement for Mr I S Smith’s school. Credit: LHS archives – copy of document in Bodleian Library, reproduced in NL 43, May 1987 In Newsletter 43 (May 1987), it was reported that a member of the Society had discovered an engraving in a catalogue of ephemera at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The article asked: “Was there really a building like this in Harpenden with chimneys at each corner? Or has a standard engraving of a school been used for t...
Joan Moore OBE (1920 - 1986)
Drawn from information in Brief Biographies of Mycologists, compiled by Geoffrey C Ainsworth, published by the British Mycological Society PO Box 30, Stourbridge, West Midlands DY9 9PZ, U.K. ©British Mycological Society 1996, ISBN 0 9527704 0 7, and from the History of Harpenden Horticultural Society – 1946-1996. After schooling in London and Exeter, Frances Joan Moore graduated in botany from University College, London in 1940 (then evacuated to...
Margaret Holden ( c1922 - 1998)
An appreciation of a founder member of Harpenden Local History Society drawn from Newsletter 77 (September 1998) and the History of the Harpenden Horticultural Society (1946-1996) (LHS archives BF 7.2c) Margaret Holden was perhaps destined to be a botanist from her earliest years. As she learned to speak, her father included in his infant daughter’s vocabulary the Latin names of plants; it was not until much later that she learned their common na...
Claygate Orchards
Fruit-pickers in 1947. Scan of cutting from Harpenden Free Press, March 1955 – BF 16A/17a The closing down of one of Harpenden’s foremost local industries recently has been a serious loss to the town in which places of local employment are few and far between. Claygate Orchards in Townsend Lane were the producers for a number of years of a fine selection of eating apples, including the famous Cox’s and Ellison Orange varieties. Many thousands of ...
Harpenden's 'Dry Valley'
Bruce Campbell’s proposition that there was once a river Kin, prompted us to trace the shallow dry valley which runs through Harpenden from its source on the dip-slope below Blows Down near Dunstable to Smallford in the basin of the river Colne. Rivers of the Chilterns During the Ice Age, the rocks and soils of the Chiltern Hills were frozen into impermeable ‘permafrost’. When the ice-sheet began to melt, water poured over the still-frozen ground...
Memories of the NCH printing school
The printing school, 1945. Credit: Alan Hamblin From its founding in 1871, the National Children’s Home & Orphanage* attached great importance to vocational training. When the Harpenden branch of the NCH was opened in 1913, the printing technical school attached to the previous headquarters building, in Bonner Street, Bethnal Green in London’s East End, was relocated to Highfield Oval in Ambrose Lane. Former NCH Printing works, refurbished by YWA...
Edward Wilson (1872-1912), Explorer, Naturalist and Artist on Scott's Polar Expeditions
Dr Isobel Williams with her book – Credit: Hilde Browning, April 2014 Dr. Isobel Williams’ excellent talk was illustrated with slides of Wilson’s family, of his paintings and of the Expeditions. She began with Wilson’s local connections: Pat Wilson, his near relative, was a Harpenden resident and the architect of All Saints’ Church. Apsley Cherry Gerard, his fellow explorer and dear friend, lived in Wheathampstead. Edward, a hospital doctor’s son...
Methodists' 130 years at Batford
Methodism in Batford dates back to 1884, when a few cottages on the road between Luton and Wheathampstead housed workers at local farms and the flour mills on the banks of the River Lea. A footbridge had by then replaced what had, since Roman times, been a ford over the river at Cold Harbour. There lived a Mr and Mrs Josiah Smart, who were devoted Wesleyan Methodists and who, with their children, would each Sunday make their way up Ox Lane, down ...
WWI reflected in Connie Howard's "Kinsbourne Green: My Childhood Village"
Extracts from Connie Howard’s memoirs, with page numbers. There are copies in Harpenden Library and our Archives. The outbreak of war through the children’s eyes In the First World War, 1914-18, Kinsbourne Green women knitted Balaclava caps as well as sock and mittens for the men in the trenches overseas. (P.19) Soon after the 1914-18 war began Teacher Stella made a stiff brown paper soldier hat for each boy in the little room, and each girl had ...
Links to Local History Projects and Activities
There are many groups working on local history project. Here are links to just a small selection: St Albans Guided Walks – https://www.stalbanstourguides.co.uk/ Talks at Rothamsted International on Soils and Climate Change: https://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/news/soil-is-life Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS) – https://www.hertsdirect.org/services/leisculture/heritage1/hals/ What’s on at HALS – https://www.hertsdirect.org/services/leisculture...
George Howard Herring - c.1891-1956
A sketch of George Herring, drawn from newspaper reports in his cuttings books and photo albums, passed to the Society’s archives from the collection of his daughter Betty in 2014. George H Herring, photo by F Thurston, repeated in many press cuttings. Credit: LHS archives – Herring cuttings BF 52.3 George Howard Herring was the second son of John Herring, who had come from Staffordshire as stud groom to the Hertfordshire Hunt around 1900 and was...
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