Lest We Forget

Click here for other pictures of Tring remembering its fallen heroes

Poppies cascading down the church tower at Tring
Tring Yarn Bomb 2018

The Good Old Days in Tring

The Tring Earth Closet - Update

I have been very busy recently but when I have time I sit and think about my genealogy web site, and sometimes I am moved to deposit some new material in it.

Recently Allen pointed out there was a leak in the page on the Tring Earth Closet and I have removed the broken link and added a new link for any environmentally friendly reader who want to make compost.

P.S. If you know where there is a surviving Victorian Tring-designed earth closet it might make a very practical addition to the local history museum.

The origin of the Placename Betlow

I was recently asked about the origin of the surname Betlow and whether it was associated with Betlow Farm, near Tring, in Hertfordshire. I replied:

Surnames only started in medieval times and spellings only started to be standardised after the invention of printing and in some cases current spellings (both surnames and place names) may be only a hundred years old.  As a result any analysis of the origins of a surname must involve a large degree of uncertainty.
Some surnames came into existance because someone was named after the place where they came from. It is therefore possible possible that your surname "Betlow" refers back to someone who lived at a place called "Betlow."
The earliest known reference to the Hertfordshire village/manor of "Betelawe"was in 1203 with other 13th century references being to "Betelowe," " Betelaue" and "Bettelawe." The village was abandoned in the Middle Ages (possibly due to the Black Death) and for many centuries all that remained of the manor was a single farm.

The Moat at Moat Farm, Marsworth, undoubtedly dug to drain the central area for the Farm

 "The Placenames of Hertfordshire" suggests that the placename probably was a descriptive term meaning Beta's mound or hill.  The area around Betlow Farm is vey flat - so it clearly doesn't refer to a hill. I haven't visited the Farm but I know much of the area would have been very wet in the past - perhaps even marshy - although moden drainage has lowered the water table. So it is possible that there was a slightly raised area which was drained well enough to build a house.  Not many miles away there are moated sites (often with no surviving buildings, where the effect of the moat was almost certainly to leave a dry area on which a wooden farm house could be built. In the nearby Village of Long Marston the old church is on a mound perhaps 3 feet higher that the surrounding fields - with the remains of a waterfiled moat close by - possible for that reason.

Three New Local Books from the Tring Local History Museum

The Story of Wilstone - by John Painter

The Rothschilds of Tring
by Tim Amsden

In November I brought two newly published books The Story of Wilstone by John Painter and Three Tring Industries by Wendy Austin at Tring's Local History Museum, and a small but informative booklet about The Rothschilds of Tring by Tim Amsden. I had intended to review them before Christmas. The web pages and sample illustrations are ready but the review texts will have to follow next year.

Three Tring Industries by Wendy Austin

BooK: The Toll Roads of Buckinghamshire (and into Hertfordshire)

Part 1 of this newly published volume contains a detailed history of turnpikes while Part 2 gives detailed histories of the 24 turnpikes that existed in Buckinghamshire, including sections that ran into other counties. Of particular interest are two which penetrated deep into Hertfordshire - The Sparrows Herne turnpike (from Bushy, via Berkhamsted and Tring, to Aylesbury) and the Reading to Hatfield turnpike which ran through Rickmansworth and St Albans.

REVIEW

I have also updated the subject page on Turnpikes

One of my Hertfordshire Books for Christmas

Formation of the Volunteer Rifle Corps in 1860

Poem on the Volunteer Rifle Corps Meeting at Berkhamsted

 In January 1860 there were  meetings at Ashridge, Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted and Tring to form a combined Rifle Corps. For details (and the full poem) click on the poem.

For the historic background see Wikipedia

The Railway comes to Tring on Wednesday 20th September

Ian Petticrew is a local historian and joint author, with Wendy Austin, of several books, including one on this subject. On Wednesday, 20th September, he will be giving a talk to the Tring Local History Society at the High Street Methodist Church, Tring.

Tring Station is at the summit of the London to Birmingham Railway (the world's first mainline route) and his talk will cover the engineers, selection of the route, the Act of Parliament, construction contracts, illustrations of the line under construction, stations, locomotives and early timetables.

Further information on the Railways of Hertfordshire

Tring Remembers Passchendaele - The casualties

Flower Bed at the Entrance to Tring's Memorial Garden

See The Tring Men who died at Passchendaele

See Pictures of Tring's Memorial Garden

WW! War Memorial at Tring - Information wanted

Ian Pettigrew asks "Whether any of your readers has any information about any of the individuals listed in the WW1 section of Tring Memorial." 

He has put the developing piece of work online so you can see what he has already done. If you have any information, including relevant family photos and memorabilia, please let him know at webmaster@gerald-massey.org.uk 

Interesting Local History from an Estate Agent's Account Book

Last Wednesday I gave a talk about this interesting 1850s account book to the Tring & District Local History & Museum Society and all the slides are now available at:

www.bit.ly/BrownAccountBook

You will find the menu on the left gives you access to

• A page describing the Account Book
• The Calendar - which in turn allows you to view all 283 folios
• William Brown's A-Z Customer Index
• The slides for the talk (to see additional notes press the [A] button)

Bearing in mind the recent news about the Conservative Party not properly declaring their election expenses one of the slides that cause much interest was:

The 1851 election was caused because one of the MPs was unseated because too much "bribery" money had been spent wining and dining prospective voters... 

I think all the audience were distressed that historically valuable documents relating to the history of the town had ended up on ebay, and that some key documents have ended up with unknown buyers. It is possible that other less attractive looking but historically important documents may have been rubbished. At least the account book will end up in the museum collection - and the information it contains is available to all online.

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Two areas are still being worked on. The Calendar uses the headings on every page but only some pages have a supplementary list of personal names and places and it is hoped to complete this over the next few months. In addition I have still to add supplementary notes to some of the slides.

Three further books - the minute books of the Tring Agricultural Society - will also be passed the the museum when I have provided more online information about them.

In addition only a few pages have been studied in depth, and if you are interested in following up the history behind any folio (including those relating to people and places over the boundary in Buckinghamshire) do not hesitate to contact me.

The 1850s Account Book of William Brown, of Tring

On 18th May the Tring & District Local History & Museum Society will be holding their A.G.M.in the Tring Parish Hall at 8pm - and I will be giving the talk. The official introduction reads:

William Brown's client account general ledger contains a wealth of information relating to property in and around Tring, including the sale of houses and farms, valuations for probate, etc., relating to local families. A significant part of the volume deals with the management of the Tring Park Estate. Dr. Chris Reynolds is an amateur historian and member of the Society. He has lived in Tring for over 50 years, and currently runs the "Genealogy in Hertfordshire" website. This site includes many pages on Tring including a digitised copy of William Brown's account book.

 Over the next three weeks I will be preparing the talk - which will be made available on the main web site, with supporting notes, after the event. Between now and then I will be posting some advanced "publicity" information on this blog. In addition you can go online and browser through the accounts and if there are any which particularly interest you (maybe they concern a property or individual you have been researching) add a comment below and I may be able to include a mention in the talk, or add notes to the web site after the talk.

After the talk the Account Book will be passed to the Museum for safekeeping - and will possibly appear in the document display cabinet.

An 1866 Music Work Book from Prospect House School, Tring

Beth Atkinson has donated a charming school music work book that had belonged to William Henry Ewer (1852-1871) of Lilley, when he was attending Prospect House School, Tring, in 1866. This will shortly be passed to the Tring Local History Museum, and hopefully will go on display later this year.

Many of the tunes are ones we still know today, and get harder as you go through the book. I am currently trying to track down some of the unfamiliar tunes, and some, like the Aylesbury March, shown here, may well be of local origin and not recorded elsewhere. If you can identify any of them let me know in a comment below.

Click here for a full list of tunes and a copy of the music..

Details are also given of William Ewer's short life.

Hertfordshire People - March 2016

I have just received the latest copy of Hertfordshire People, - The Quarterly Journal of the Hertfordshire Family History Society, and as always it is packed with information. Items I personally found particularly interesting were:
My Favourite First World War Relative told the story of C S M Herbert Henry Stone and is an interesting example of what you can find out about your soldier relatives.

What's New at HALS - I was most interested to see that some military service tribunal records had survived, and there some farm surveys relating to the First Worl Dar

Hertfordshire Firsts ...... described the origins of steeplechasing.

As I live in Tring I was thrilled by the article A Female Pauper Apprentice's Life at Tring Silk Mill and the article paints a bleak picture of the working conditions pauper girls were require to work under.

The Book Review section covers a number of interesting volumes and I am planning to purchase two relating to the canals and the First World War - and if I have time reviews will appear on my web site.

I have also noted some Dates for my Diary - included future Society Meetings and also some others. I don't think I will have time to go to Who do you think you are at Birmingham in April but will try and make the Buckinghamshire FHS Open Day at Aylesbury on 23rd July, as my mother's family tree has Aylesbury branches going back to about 1600.

The Coffee Tavern Craze of the 1880s

Coffee

Around 1880 there was a wave of coffee taverns being opened all over Hertfordshire associated with the Temperance Movement. Some time ago I posted information on the Tring Coffee House, which opened in 1878, and recently I mentioned the Star Coffee Tavern at Shenley. Jon Mein sent me some information about the latter, and I decided to post a page on Coffee Taverns - giving details of some of those which opened prior to 1880, including a long contemporary press cutting relating to the Tavern at Bengeo.

I plan to add more information about the Coffee Tavern that opened in Hemel Hempstead when the British Newspaper Archive finish inputting the relevant years for the Hemel Hempstead Gazette - and would be interested to hear what any of you have about the fate of some of the other taverns.

Hertfordshire Military Records on the British Newspaper Archive

The Army & Navy Gazette is currently being loaded onto the British Newspaper Archive and so far they have loaded the years 1860-66 and 1869-71 and I expect more years will soon appear online. I did a quick check and found many such as the following which relates to the formation of the 1st Hertfordshire Battalion.

Army & Navy Gazette, 4th August, 1860

Unfortunately the machine transcription left a lot to be desired - and errors in the above example meant that it would not have been found in searches for the place names Ashridge, Hemel, Hempstead, Tring and Watford or for the surnames Dorrien, Cust, and Pearce. Unfortunately such errors occur in all automatically scanned newspaper archives and you have to use your imagination when searching and try alternative search names.

However the accuracy of the surnames and places in the following item relating to the double marriage of the daughters of the late Mr John Beale, of Cheshunt, was satisfactory.

Army & Navy Gazette, 4th November 1869

The Anchor Public House, Western Road, Tring, in 2015

This building was built before 1841 as part of the development of the West End of Tring and is recorded as being occupied by the Barber family until about 1895. It was definitely a beer house in 1851, but its position on the "new" Aylesbury Road (now Western Road) meant it was in a good position to attract passing travelers and it may well have been a beer house from when it was constructed.

Subsequent publicans prior to the 2nd World War were William Wells, Mrs Mary Wells, William Andrews and Samuel John Nightingale. The brewers have been John Holland of Wendover, Rodwell of Tring, Benskin of Watford, Ind Coope and Greene King.

Click Here for Detailed Timeline

Improved Newspaper Archive Coverage of West Herts

During September the British Newspaper Archive added copies of the Bucks Gazette between 1829 and 1849 and a quick examination shows that news from West Hertfordshire. This includes the period before the first Bucks Herald newspapers, which start in 1836.

The issue of 7th March 1829 reported the theft of money and goods from the Berkhamsted Post Office and the procession taking the Earl of Bridgewater's coffin through Hemel Hempstead to be interred at Gaddesden. During the summer there are reports of cricket matches including one between Tring and Wendover which was covered at length by the Bucks Gazette in their issues of 29th August, 5th September and 12th September, 1829.

If you can find any particularly interesting Hertfordshire stories in the period 1829-1935 let me know via the comment box below.

Heritage Photographs of Tring

Aided by Heritage Lottery money Tring Camera Club are creating an archive of photographs showing Tring as it is in 2015. This is part of the Tring 700 celebrations of the market which got its first charter in 1315. Associated with the archive is a competition which is to be voted on by the public.

So start voting now for the "Heritage"  pictures of Tring in 2015

If you have never been to Tring you can still enjoy looking at the pictures of this charming Hertfordshire town. - and as long as you have a facebook account you can still chose the pictures you like best.

There are 9 categories in the competition but if you start with one you can select the others at the bottom of the page. Tring Camera Club entries are under the following headings: Tring Street Scenes, Community & Events in Tring, Tring Landscape, CACC Wildlife in Tring. You will find non-Camera Club entries under the headings: Tring Daily Life, A Tring 700 Event, Historic Tring, Modern Tring and Wildlife in Tring. The selected pictures will be on display in the Natural History Museum at Tring from 9th October to 21st November.

Halton update - with Army Camp Photographs.

While Halton is in Buckinghamshire there was a major army camp there during the First World War and there were strong connections with Tring. I recently acquired this card and in adding it to the web site I discovered other cards of the camp and the war which had not yet been posted online. I have therefore used the opportunity to restructure the Halton page - so there are now three linked pages - one deals with Halton House and the Church, the second with the canal, and the third had pictures of the army camp.