War Memorial, New Mill Baptist Church, Tring

First World War Memorial, New Mill Baptist Church

I recently visited the New Mill Baptist Church, Tring, when they were celebrating their newly refurbished church hall, I used the occasion to take the above photograph of their war memorial. For other pictures I took of the church (inside and outside, with some other memorials and gravestones) see Pictures on Geograph.

Click on picture for more information on the Baptists in Tring.

Goodbye to First World War Army Hut at Tring

The site of the New Mill Social centre, a former First World War Army hut which came from Gadebridge Army Camp, Hemel Hempstead, circa 1922, for use as a church, has now been cleared so that six new houses can be built.

Story & Other Pictures

First World War Army Hut moving from Herts to Essex.

The Old Army Hut before Demolition had started.

Preparing to Remove the Roof

This First World War Army Hut was built as part of the Gadebridge Army Camp, Hemel Hempstead, in 1915. After the war it was purchased by Tring Parish  for use as a district church, St George. It later became  the New Mill Community Centre. The site is now to be redeveloped for housing and arrangements have been made to move the Hut to a site near Bury St Edmund where a reconstructed Army Camp is being built. Work has just started and the site will be cleared to be ready for the builders by the end of September. I visited the site this afternoon and had an interesting talk with Taff Gillingham, who is moving the hut.

More Information

Wanted - Pictures of Gamnel Farm, New Mill, Tring

I have just has a request from Elizabeth for a picture of Gamnel Farm, New Mill, Tring, before the fire. Her great-grandfather, James Parker Wilkins was farm manager there as farm foreman in 1901 and a history of the farm was recently printed in the Tring & District Local History & Museum Society Newsletter.

I had taken some photographs after the fire, and before the demolition of the house, the demolition probably being undertaken to prevent the unoccupied house being used as a drug den. After taking the photographs I posted them on the web site Geograph - including high resolution images for anyone who wants them. The picture are:

• Gamnel Farm, Bulbourne Road, Tring - After the Fire (2009)
• Gamnel Farm, Bulbourne Road, Tring, awaiting demolition (2012)
• Former Farm Buildings at Gamnel Farm, Bulbourne Road, Tring (2012)
• Gamnel Farm, Tring, is no more (2014)
• The Former Farmyard of Gamnel Farm, Tring (2014)
• Mosaic Wall at back of Gamnel Farm Demolition Site (2014)

There are a lot of other pictures taken by people who had entered the house in the years after the fire and these mainly show that the last occupier had decorated it extensively with mosaics - providing an interior totally at odds with the what one expects to find in a Hertfordshire farm house. You can find these pictures at the following places on the web.

• House of Mosaics, Bulbourne Road, Tring - April 2013
• Gamnel farm (The Mosaic House)
• House of Mosaics, Tring - From the Landie Archives

While these sites concentrate on the unusual decoration, and on evidence of the vandalism, they also include some pictures of the buildings, such as this one.

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Southside Assassin.

However the farm house was decorated before - on the outside - and the only picture I can find is on Geograph - taken after the fire by David Sands.

At least on the wall adjacent to the road the plaster panels were covered with pargeting - pictures and patterns carved into the wet plaster when it was applied. I know that this pargeting is comparatively new (and rather crudely done) as I remember in the 1960s or 70s there was far better, and undoubtedly much older, pargeting which was lost when the farmhouse was modernized and the outside re-plastered.

So please - if anyone has pictures of the old farm and farm house before the fire - and especially of the original pargeting - please let me know, and I will pass details on to Elizabeth.