Tring News on 20th March, 1915

Military

While there were a large number of troops billeted in and around Tring the main military news in the local section of the paper was that there had been two concerts for their entertainment. One was put on by Mrs Williams at Pendley Manor and the other was arranged by the Soldiers' Entertainment Fund and held in the  Medical Inspection Hall (now the Victoria Hall). However in the main part of the paper, covering Aylesbury, there are indications that billeting is to end in April, and the soldiers will be moving on.

Old News

One of the soldiers, based in nearby Aston Clinton was before the court for driving a car with no lights and one can only wonder if the police were tightening up after the accident in which two soldiers had been killed a week or so earlier. One may also wonder if some of the road repairs deemed necessary were due to the wear and tear due to the number of troop movements in the area, and the construction of the camp at Halton.

Tring

In normal years local gardeners would be able to compete for prizes in events such as the Tring Agricultural Show, but many had been cancelled, However the Daily Mail had announced a grand show of vegetables in London in September, and Arthur Dye, of Tring Park Gardens, was co-ordinating entries for the area.

On the religious front the Baptist Church at New Mill had meetings supporting the Baptist Missionary Society while the Baptist Chapel at  Wigginton celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Sunday school.  There was also the usual order of services for the Parish Church.

Easter was being celebrated in a different was by W. Brown & Co, auctioneers - who were inviting entries to the Tring Easter Fat Stock Show and Sale - and they were also to sell off a baker's tools and trade utensils - including a dough mixer, a cake making machine, and a waggonette and a useful tradesman's horse.

Surnames: Ariston, Bagnall, Baker, Birch, Brooks, Brown, Clark, Curtis, Dell, Downes, Dye, Eggleton, Fulks, Gomme, Groome, Hazell, Heading, Hemmens, Hutton, Kirby, Kirk, Lang, Locke, Longman, Mather, Mullins, Page, Rothschild, Rowe, Sait-Knight, Swann, Taylor, Thorne, Ward, West, White, Wilding, Williams, Winterton

Extracts from the Bucks Herald of 20th March, 1915

Edited from British Newspaper Archive

The London to Birmingham Railway comes to Tring 1835-1846

by Ian Petticrew & Wendy Austin

Books

This online book, which has just been published, is the kind of well-written local history I have come to expect from Ian Petticrew and Wendy Austin. It is a very detailed account of the building of the London and Birmingham Railway from Euston to Tring, with an emphasis of the Tring area. In addition to making extensive use of the readily accessible sources it also reprints the text written in about 1890 by Arthur MacDonald Brown (1861-1951, son of the Tring estate agent William Brown) for a book on the history of Tring which was never published. As a result it contains some useful detail of the building of the Harcourt Arms (later the Royal Hotel) at Tring Station by the Brown family.

John was "not at home" during the 1871-1911 censuses ...

Have you ever had the problem of tracking down  a relative and find that they were not living at home on census night? I just came across an extreme example.

The Cedars, Chorley Wood by E S Brown, Rickmansworth

Rickmansworth

Having acquired a post card of "The Cedars," Chorleywood, near Rickmansworth, I decided to post a page giving the background to the post card. I discovered that in October 1861 a banker (and later MP) called John Saunders Gilliat purchased the Chorleywood Estate, pulled down the old mansion, and built a grand new house called The Cedars. He lived there until his death in 1912. The search for information was not helped by his mobility. He and his family were not in residence in 1871 -w hen he was living in a London house. They were visiting relatives in 1881 and 1891 and in 1901 and 1911 he was living at his London address, 18 Princes Gate, London.

More information.

Exploring the History of Hastoe House, near Tring.

The Account Book

Folio 105 of William Brown's Account Book  records that a Mrs Chesterman asked him to let Hastoe House and value some furniture.

Why?

William Brown also managed the property affairs for the Rev. James Williams, who lived in Tring Park. Folio 68 shows that in April 1852 the house was advertised to let. In May Mr Chesterman agreed to rent the house at £80 per year and on 16th of June Mr Chesterman brought the furniture in the house for £120. Ubfortunately he died on 1st July, 1852 - so clearly did not have much time to enjoy Hastoe House.  William Brown's Account Book shows that the Chesterman executors continued to pay the rent until 1856 so I decided to see what happened to Mrs Hannah Chesterman - only to find that in 1853 she married William Brown's brother James!

I was hooked - and I decided to see what I could find out about the other tenants. This was made possible because all the 19th century editions of the Bucks Herald (published in nearby Aylesbury) are available on the British Newspaper Archive. A certain amount of intelligent deduction was needed - helped by the fact that Hastoe House was the only property in the Hastoe area which was posh enough to employ resident domestic servants. 

The many tenants included Baron Rothschild in 1843 (he probably used it as a hunting lodge), the son in law of the Bishop of Chichester, a "retired squatter" (not what you might think), and William Brown's business partner. It seems that another tenant, a William Burns, died shortly after taking the tenancy. The only significant gap between 1841 and 1901 is that I was unable to discover the name of the tenant who was resident at the time of the 1861 census - as only their domestic staff are recorded.

For full details, including copies of the relevant sections of the account book, various press adverts, maps, and two modern views see CHESTERMAN & Hastoe House, Tring, circa 1838 - 1901

It should be pointed out that it was possible to find so much out, comparatively quickly, because Hastoe House was the only "gentry" accommodation in Hastoe, which itself had a very small population. 

Why didn't Jane Philbey pay William for work done?

Folio 81, W. Brown's Accounts

William Brown's  account book  (folio 81) shows that while he staked out land for sale, Jean Philbey of the Green Man public house in Tring appears not to have paid him. This is one of the interesting facts that emerged when Colin asked about Philbey, Tring, 1840-1864. It also emerges that the Mrs Jean Tompkins and Mrs Jane Philbey mentioned in TOMPKINS, Tring, late 18th/early 19th Century are one and the same person and owned land in Gravelly - where many houses were built in the mid 19th century.

[It is propose to input more of William Brown's accounts in 2012, with analysis of selected pages.]