Landed Families of Hertfordshire (and elsewhere)

Ayot House in 1905
(Later became a silk mill)

I have just discovered the excellent Landed Families of Britain and Ireland blog run by Nick Kingsley. 

Current posts with detailed references of pictures and information of houses in the Hertfordshire are:

Alington of Little Barford Manor House and Letchworth Hall

Ames of Bristol (and other places including Ayot House)

Altham of Mark Hall, Oxhey Place and Timbercombe

In addition there is extensive genealogical information on the selected family that lived there for a time. In addition many families which were mainly based elsewhere have links to Hertfordshire. For instance I found this engraving of Pishobury House in the information on the Alston of Odell Castle page.

Pishiobury House from Neale's Views of Seats, 1821

A First World War Exhibition at Bushey

Clay Hill War Memorial, Bushey

Herts at War

Bushey Museum and the Bushey Academy are putting on an exhibition between the 4th and 24th August, 2014, based on the war time experiences of the people who lived in Bushey. It will include a display of work on the First World War by students of the Academy. Details are given on the BusheyWorldWarOne web site. 

A sign to appear on houses in Bushey during the Exhibition

An interesting idea is to display this sign on houses in Bushey where a soldier who died in the First World War lived. Perhaps other areas could take up the idea, perhaps even including the name of the soldier.

Bushey is famous for the number of artists that lived there. In the 1880s Hubert Herkomer, a Bavarian artist, opened an Art School in the village. Over a period of twenty years it was attended by about 600 international students. A number settled in the village and during the First World War they contributed to life on the Home Front and by serving overseas. Some examples of their work are given on the BusheyWorldWarOne web sit. There is an archive page with biographical details of some of the casualties, including Lieutenant Arthur Langton Airy (a Herkomer student) and Bertram Prewett, a renowned Bushey bell ringer, and further contributions relating to Bushey at the time are welcome. 

War Memorials

Bushey

In addition there is an appeal for help if you have information (photographs, letters sent home from the front, etc.) relating to anyone remembered on the Bushey war memorial at Clay Hill or the Church war memorials at St James, St Matthew, St Peter, St Paul, and the Bushey Methodist Church.

Oxhey - The History of a Parish - Informative Booklet

 The Booklet "Oxhey: The History of a Parish" by Marjorie Bray was published in 1979, in the centenary year of St Matthew's Parish, Oxhey, It provides a useful history of the church, plus a good backgruond of the history of the parish, a list of vicars, etc. and at the time of writing second hand copies were available online. The land on which the church was built was donated by Jonathan King of Wiggenhall, which  I mentioned on this blog recently.

Oxhey was formed from the parishes of Bushey, Watford and Northwood (Middlesex) and I have used this opportunity to give Oxhey a proper "home" page.

Note that I can only afford to include reviews of new books and booklets relating to Hertfordshire if I am sent a review copy.