The Cricketers Public Houses of Hertfordshire

Noeleen has written to say I found your site via Google after I could not read an address in a census. It turned out to be ‘The Cricketers’ in Bennington. In 1851 and 1861 census  Frederick  Parkins was the Victualler and a Shoemaker with his wife Sarah. He was just a Shoemaker in 1841 census. In 1861 it is listed as Cricketers Public House, Bennington Road. By 1871 and 1881 census he is Publican and Shoemaker at the Green Dragon in Waltham which his wife Sarah was head of as a Widow in 1891 census. I hope this is of interest to you and I loved the addition of a shoemakers occupation plus I enjoyed reading about Cricketers Pubs on your site, something unknown to me in NZ.

I have added her comment to the page on the Cricketers pubs I first posted in 2006, together with some relevant news items from the British Newspaper Archive.

Cricket

In addition I have added an advert relating to the Cricketers public house in Hitchin from 1836 which records that the associated cricket ground was well established at that date. I have also added a Licencing Day report for St Albans for 1884 which mentions The Cricketers in that city (which unfortunately no longer trades under that name).

More about Hertfordshire Wrench Cards

Allen Warren has written from Canada to say that he is compiling a catalogue of all the post cards by Wrench from the early years of the last century He has provided a list of all the Hertfordshire cards and I have used this to update my Wrench page. He has also provided a copy of this view of the Gates on Cassiobury Park, in Watford.

There are a number of Hertfordshire cards which he has not identified:

Bishops Stortford Nos 6289 and 6291

St Albans 6300 and 6306

Barnet 7757

Hitchin 8835 and 8836

If you can identify any of these cards please let me know (ideally with a digital copy) and I will forward the information to Allan.

19th Century Sport in Hertfordshire

Cricket

The British Newspaper Archive has just loaded copies of the Sporting Life from 1859 to 1909. 

So far I have only had time to do a very quick check to see what is there related to Hertfordshire and found the following entry from May 1860. If you find anything of interest let me, and other readers of this blog, know by commenting below.

Moss of Hitchin

In 2010 I answered a question about the shop run by Moss in Hitchin, and ther have been several updates since. One of the outstanding questions related to the number of branches and Diane, who worked for the company some 55 years ago has kindly provided a list of the shops circa 1960.

More Information

1860's CDV by Avery of Hitchin (and more on his family)

Jan contacted me and and provided additional information on George Avery, photographer, of Hitchin including a link to a useful family tree. George took over the business of Samuel Debenham in 1863 and sold the business to Thomas Latchmore in 1870.

At the same time as updating the family information on the George Avery page I have added two early photographs from about 1863/4. One, which has the hand written Hitchin address on, is of the Rev John Henry Howlett (1779-1867) who died in Kent, and the back suggests that it may have been taken in Kent at the time George was moving to Hitchin in 1863.

I would be very interested to learn of other photographs taken by Samuel Debenham (in Hitchin, Bedford or Luton) or by George Avery (in Hitchin or Kent).

[I have not investigated the history of the Rev Howlett - comments will be welcome.]

Dating Early Photographs by Latchmore, of Hitchin

Advert from Herts Express 4 April, 1867

This advert has helped me to date Thomas B Latchmore' early carte de visit as follows:

• 1865 Opened studio in Bancroft Street, Hitchin - distinctive back
• 1867 Opened a joint studio in Royston - distinctive back
• 1869? Opened another studio in Stevenage - no back known 
• 1870 Took over George Avery's studio in Brand Street, Hitchin - distinctive back. Studios in Hitchin and Royston apparently abandoned.

More Information

Samuel Debenham: An Early (1862-3) Photographer at Hitchin

I recently purchased a small pile of carte de visite by various Victorian photographers from Hitchin. In no case was the sitter identified but I set about trying to date them. Much to my surprise, and with the help of the British Newspaper Archive, I was able to date this card to between September and November 1863, although I still have no idea who the gentleman is.

So how did I do it.

Photographer updates

Post Cards

Updates, in most cases involving new CDV images, have been made to the following Victorian or Edwardian Photographers, to help with dating examples of their work.

Atherstane Basebe of Hertford, Hemel Hempstead and Watford
Misses M & A Austin of St Albans
Thomas Milburn Cooper of St Albans
Fred Downer of Watford
Thomas Benwell Latchmore of Hitchin
William Norman of Royston
Samuel Glendenning Payne of Aylesbury, Thame and Tring

July at HALS (Herts Archives & Local Studies)

Threads of Time II

Textiles inspired by Delme-Radcliffe Collection

Special Exhibition: Ends 11th July

Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo

Display: Ends 27th July

The Radcliffes of Hitchin

Display: Ends 27th July

Bookbinding for Beginners

Craft Workshop: Monday 6 July (9:30-16:00) £50

Reading the Past

Reading Group: Tuesday 14th July (18:00-19:00) £5

Behind the Scenes at the Archives

Tour: Thursday 16th July (10:00-11:15) £5

Hitchin Priory Park :An 18th century designed landscape

Illustrated Talk: Tuesday 21st July (18:00-19:00) £5

Check the HALS web site for latest  details 

and making bookings where appropriate

Review of "A History of Preston in Hertfordshire"

Philip Wray has done an excellent job in bringing together different aspects of the history of Preston, a tiny village near Hitchin. He first became interested when researching his ancestors and as his family tree grew he discovered he was a blood relative to almost half the villagers listed in the 1881 census. For this reason he expanded his interests to cover the whole village, and in 2007 he launched the History of Preston in Hertfordshire web site. He then ventured into on-paper publishing and has now ended up writing this book.

MORE

Can you help identify this house - near Hitchin?

This is a detail from one of 8 photographs of this house and impressive garden taken by Latchmore of Hitchin circa 1920? It is presumably somewhere in Hitchin or the surrounding villages.

See all pictures

The story behind an charming Carte de Visite from Hitchin

This CDV is by Thomas Benwell Latchmore, who was Hitchin's most significant photographer. Like the majority of such cards this one is is undated - but fortunately it has the names on the back.

So who were Lucy Hensley & Agnes? a quick check online shows that Lucy Hensley was born on  3rd July 1859 and baptised on 10 August at Hitchin. Gertrude Agnes Hensley was born 14 April, 1864, and baptised on 18 May. My estimate of Agnes's age is about six months - which means that the photograph was taken by Thomas Latchmore in about October 1864 - which means  it was one of the earliest photographs he took in his Bancroft Studio - providing a key date on Thomas Latchmore's time line.

The girls baptisms were carried out by their father - who turns out to have been the vicar of St Mary's Hitchin between 1856 and 1905. I therefore decided to draw up a detailed time line  for Lewis Hemsley to demonstrate  how useful the British Newspaper Archive can be is reconstructing someone's life. One sad incident was that when a daughter was born the birth notice was sent off to the papers immediately - only to be followed the next day by the daughter's death notice.

One interesting observation is that, despite being vicar for virtually 50 years he is hardly mentioned at all in Hine's books on the history of Hitchin. Admittedly Hine concentrated on the non-conformist churches - but it suggests that the Rev. Lewis Hemsley may have noy play a significant part in the life of Hitchin as a whole.

More Information of Thomas Benwell Latchmore and his photographs

More information on Rev. Lewis Hemsley and his family

Royal Engineers at Hitchin in First World War

More Pictures

Brief Notes on Other Activities in September

Fewer posts upfront last month - but over 6,400 page views on the Newsletter and while the number of visitors to the main site is less than in September 2013, the number of pages views was higher. I was involved in a lot of activity in the background (see below), including some computer problems with upgrade to Windows 8.1 and entertaining our Australian visitor - with visits to Bletchley Park and the British Schools Museum.

Karaktus. I have acquired another card in this distinctive series by an unknown St Albans artist but half a dozen of the series still escape me.

Ben Tomlin discovered the page on the photographer Samuel Glendenning Payne, and we discover we share Rolls family ancestors, starting from William Rolls (1726-1798) and Mary Devonshire (1729-1804) of Bicester, Oxfordshire.

I have added an attractive post card of the Old Red Lion public house, High Street, Bushey, from about 1910 by a Watford stationer, Jackson & Co.

I have had several queries recently where people have asked for help who appear to have never read a general guide on family history, have never brought a birth, marriage or death certificate to check details, and have limited their activities to the indexes on one or two web sites. As a result they had made a very elementary mistake of assuming that is a name and date are approximately right it MUST BE MY ANCESTOR!!!! Perhaps I should insist that everyone should look at Right Name, Wrong Body" before asking me a question.

I have added a post card from about 1910 showing two thatched cottages in Widford.

I have added information about Grove School, Watford, in  1932

Gatward Clock

I have added a note about the 250 years booklet about Gatward, Jeweller, of Hitchin.

John has written that he has some post cards written to Mary Burrage of Abbots Langley and asks if anyone is interested.

I have updated the link to FreeBMD (no longer part of Rootsweb) and also the link to the Football Club History Database on the Apsley Football page.

To see what happened I have pinned a picture of the Apsley Football team on Historypin. As the picture has Apsley parish church in the background the location can be identified to be in one corner of the car park attached to Sainsbury's supermarket. As expected Historypin insisted in moving the pin from the correct position onto the London Road - demonstrating that the package is unsuitable for accurately recording historical data on a map.

There have been some additional replies and retweets on @HertsGenealogy

I have had several requests for high resolution images, which have been supplied and I have sent about half a dozen other emails on minor points ...

British Schools Museum - First World War Exhibition

The School Front - Exhibition Display

Schools

On Thursday I visited the British Schools Museum at Hitchin with a party from the Genealogy Group of the Tring U3A. I had previously visited the Museum in 2010 and have added a report of the latest visit to the earlier report.

The visit was well timed as the Museum had just opened an exhibition on the First World War. Only days earlier they unveiled a war memorial in one of the classrooms with the names and regiments of the pupils who had lost their lives in the conflict. In addition the book Remembered with Pride, by Jean M Handley has been published - and gives detailed biographies and war time histories of the casualties. 

Military

Read My report on the Museum and the Exhibition

(which includes details of the book, which can be brought from the museum)

The Museum Web Site

Why did George Nichols employ so many photographers?

From Photohistory of Sussex

Photographers

Bob wrote to ask if Thomas Owen Rolph could have worked with George Albert Nichols in Croydon, before George moved to Wormley and later Hitchin. On re-examining the census returns I found an error in FindMyPast indexing and George's 1871 census entry actually continued over the page. The household included one [photographic artist] apprentice and five photographers. If we include George Nichols and neighbour Thomas Rolph we have eight photographers - a very big photographic organisation for 1871. But a search on google and ebay failed to produce any photographs produced by the business, which was taken over by Jesse Holloway a few years later. When George arrived in Hertfordshire he was clearly working on a far smaller scale - did he have financial difficulties that caused him ti leave Croydon?

As this involves out-of-Hertfordshire research I will not be following this up myself - but it would be interesting to know more ...

Information on George Albert Nichols

Month End Report (May 2014)

A busier month than I had planned - in part because of a lot of extra email-driven activity especially early in the month - and while my current plan is to post about 15 times a month I somehow managed 26!

I am tweeting @HertsGenealogy to notify people when I post something new and  currently have 49 followers - and quite a few of my tweets have been retweeted - definitely bringing in some extra traffic to the Newsletter and main web site. However, as the visitor from the Ukraine has highlighted, quite a lot of traffic is generated by criminals and I have taken a close look and estimate that perhaps a third of the traffic shown in the graph does not involve a real human viewing the blog. I suspect that some of the most "popular posts" on the Newsletter have only been there for week after week because of this unwanted computer generated activity. There is no way of flagging that an active post should not be included in the "popular list" and I have temporally withdrawn several "top posts" so that other posts have a chance to work their way to the top of the list. As the withdrawn information is also on the main site users can still find it if they want it.

Background Activities Include

Sally's family tree included Shadrach, Meshack and Abendigo and she wondered how common these names were or if her Day relatives from Harpenden and Hitchin were related to the similarly named Barber brothers from Tring. I replied: The names Shadrach, Meshack and Abendigo were unusual in the general population - but Old Testament names were used by some groups of non-conformists. It is very likely that you Day ancestors from Harpenden and Hitchin belonged to the same religious sect as the Barber family of Tring, and there may be a common link via a minister or a particular chapel.  In such families non-conformists (before 1837) would have had to marry in a parish church, and might sometimes be buried in the parish churchyard (possibly in an area separate from Church of England burials). However their children are very unlikely to have been recorded in the parish registers and many non-conformist baptism records are lost. This can make tracing their families very difficult!

Robert has brought the information on the Pubs in London Colney up to date.

Jon has provided additional information of Henry Jeffries of St Albans.

A check showed that a number of links were missing and broken. These have been corrected and information relating to the following pages should now be easier to find:

 Thomas Meadow's Mausoleum, Watford

Starkey Railway Family of Watford

St Albans Union

Some Hertfordshire Photographers from circa 1870.

Post Cards

For many families the earliest surviving pictures of the ancestors are the Victorian Carte de Visite (CDV) and I have been collecting examples by different photographers to help you date the old portraits from the details printed on the back.

An unknown House by Fred Downer of Watford

Frederick Downer of Watford started out as a photographer in 1862. He started from his father's shop in Watford High Street, before opening a photographic studio in Loates Lane. This picture of an unknown house, and two portrait pictures, were produced before the Loates Lane address appeared on the back of his CDV - so are probably from about 1870, or earlier.

The Basebe family were artists and photographers and Athelstane Basebe was probably the one who took photographs in Hertford in about 1872. He left the county to return to Hemel Hempstead in about 1890, (I have no examples of this period) and Watford about 1900.

An unknown group by Cooper of St Albans

Thomas Milburn Cooper moved to St Albans in about 1865 and practiced as a photographer until his death in 1901. I have added three additional examples of his work, and have arranged 5 different backs into probable date order. This portrait group is believed to be from about 1870.

Samuel Rudd (died 1871)

Thomas Benwell Latchmore of Hitchin started out as a photographer in 1865 and took over the business of George Avery in 1870. The portrait of Samuel Rudd of Hitchin gives the pre-1870 address and the dating is supported by the fact that Samuel died in 1871. The back reveals that he also has a studio at Royston in the early years.

If you have examples with different backs, or known dates, I would love to hear from you - so I can improve the timelines for these , and other, Hertfordshire photographers.

Read the story of Percy Buck's Post Card - and find out how you can help

Military

Hitchin

Herts at War are researching the backgrounds of the Hertfordshire soldiers who died in the First World War, and to do this they often need the help of living relatives - who hold vital information, often as photographs and letters. One of their success stories recently appeared in the Daily Mail under the title Photo clutched by WWI British soldier as he died on the Western Front was returned to his family ... by the German who killed him.

I will not duplicate the very interesting story here but will say something about Percy Buck's background and end with suggestions as to how you can help with the research currently being carried out in England.

A Church Procession at Hitchin in 1911

In the days before the National Health Service town hospitals, such as the one at Hitchin, regularly held event to raise money, often having a procession through the town once a year.

St Michael's College Band Marching in the Hospital Procession 1911

Schools

Hitchin

St Michael's College was a Roman Catholic School which opened in 1903 and closed in 1968. It was built on a site adjacent to the Church of Our Lady Immaculate & St Andrew. The following card showing the church interior was published by Lofthouse, Crosbie & Co which specialized in producing sets of school photographs. 

See Hitchin Hospital 1929 for details of another fund-raising event.

The Church of Our Lady Immaculate & St Andrew