Sunday, April 21, 2013

A Query about Brickfields near Ware

Help Desk
Brickmakers
Regular visitors to my site will know that I am interested in brickmaking in the St Albans area of Hertfordshire, but occasionally answer questions about other parts of the county -such as Jane's question about Bricklayers & Builders of Ware, Early 19th Century in 2009.

Ware
Wendy has just sent me the following query, which is really more appropriate to the web site Our Hertford and Ware (associated with Hertfordshire Memories) but some of you may know the area around Ware better than I do and be able to help. She says:

I wonder if you can help me?  As a child I lived on the banks of the River Lea in a couple of old gypsy caravans.  This was about 1944.  I think the area was called the Brickfields.  I don't remember any evidence of bricks, but it had certainly been a rubbish dump - probably during Victorian times, as our chickens were always unearthing clay pipe-stems and bowls, and tiny china dolls-heads and legs.   We were living there during the 1946/47(?) winter which was very cold and the river froze over.                 
Last year I returned to England and made a fleeting visit to Ware to try to find the whereabouts of the site of my caravan home.  Without success.  Although we walked alongside the river from the lock, past the playing fields, and on, nothing served to jog my memory.  
Can you throw any light on the possible site? It was quite a walk from Ware, across a few little bridges and streams, as I recall.      We were beyond a pig farm, owned I think by a Mr. Stanyon, which had a never-to-be-forgotten odour as the pigs were fed on lorry-loads of pea-shucks from the Fropax(?) canning factory.

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