A Rural Graveyard at Wilstone, near Tring

Cold Comfort for the Residents

If you drive along the Lower Icknield Way from Aston Clinton towards Marsworth and Pitstone you pass a field with a high hedge and a lych gate. If you stop to investigate you will find a small 20th century cemetery completely surrounded by fields.

This is the cemetery of St Cross, at the nearby village of Wilstone, and if you visit the church you will find it has a small churchyard - without a gravestone in sight. 

The reason is in the soil. The Vale of Aylesbury is very flat and the natural drainage is poor. If you dug a suitably deep grave at the church it would immediately fill with water! However a mile away, as you approach the Chiltern Hills, the ground rises slightly and the drainage is better.

I have posted a number of modern photographs of the cemetery on Geograph.

Was your ancestor baptised by a translator of the King James Bible?

Issue 18 of Herts Part and Present includes an article The Hertfordshire men who translated the King James Bible by Richard N W Lambert. The abstract reads:

This series of mini biographies of the Hertfordshire men who worked on the translations for the King James Bible takes us back to Jacobean Hertfordshire and the lives of eight scholarly priests. Jeremiah Radcliffe, Richard Fairclough and WilIiam Dakins were Hertfordshire born and five others, John Layfield, Francis Burleigh, John Spencer, John Overall, and Samuel Ward had links with Hertfordshire towns and villages. Learned men who shared in the work of translating from the Latin, Hebrew and Greek, many combined distinguished academic careers with a plethora of priestly appointments. One died after being imprisoned in his Cambridge college during the Civil Wars and one sailed to the New World as chaplain to the Earl of Cumberland.

It is quite possible that several of them held a pastoral appointment in Hertfordshire and if you ancestor was baptised in the right parish at the right dates they could have been baptised by one of the translators. John Layfield was rector at Graveley from 1606-1613. Francis Burley was rector of St James the Great, Thorley,  between 1594 and his death in 1619 and was also rector of Bishop's Stortford between 1590 and 1604. Jon Spencer was vicar of St Augustine's, Broxbourne, between 1592 and 1599. John Overall was rector at Clothall between 1603  and 1615 and nearby Therfield between 1605 and 1614. Samuel Ward was rector at Great Munden between 1616 and 1636.

Unfortunately the fact that your ancestor was baptised in one of these parishes at an appropriate date does not automatically mean that they were baptised by one of the translators of the best know English language bible. Often rectors did not even live in the parish, having appointed a curate to minister to the population. This is highlighted by case of Jerimiah Radcliffe who was simultaneously vicar at Shudy Camps, Cambridgeshire, Trumpington, Cambridgeshire, Eaton Bray, Bedfordshire, and Heversham, Westmorland.

A Detour into Buckinghamshire

One of the frustrations of this web site has been that I live in Tring - which is the western part of Hertfordshire which is surrounded on three sides by Buckinghamshire. I enjoy walking the countryside, taking photographs of features of historical interest and well as the wild life and farming activities. With the Vale of Aylesbury to my north, and the Chiltern Hills to the east and west there is much to keep me occupied - but most of it is in Buckinghamshire.

William Brown's Account Book

The point is that the county boundaries of Hertfordshire are in most places highly arbitrary - and mainly derive from the boundaries of Anglo-Saxon estates over 1000 years ago. While administrative history may limit itself to such boundaries they are for most purposes arbitrary lines which in some place are not even marked by as much as a hedgerow. Treating the county boundary as a rigid "no-cross" line causes significant difficulties if you are discussing local history.

One example relates to Tring as a market Town - when many of the people who used the market to buy and sell would have crossed the county boundary to do so. William Brown was an auctioneer in Tring in the 19th century and, when I have time, I am presenting details of his Customer Account Book which again deals with customers on either side of the boundary.

The Lock at Startops End

Another example relates to the Canal, its branches, and its reservoirs, where any account of its history automatically involves both Herts and Bucks - particularly the Bucks village of Marsworth.

To make it easier to cover issues which cross the county boundary it has been decided to introduce pages for Buckinghamshire parishes which are associated with the canal, plus some adjacent parishes in the Vale of Aylesbury. Each page will consisted of one or two old post cards images and links to my modern photographs, which will be held as high resolution images on Geograph. There will also be links to cross-boarder topics on the Hertfordshire web site and external links to other relevant web sites. There will be no attempt to duplicate the excellent information on Buckinghamshire GENUKI.

To get this rolling the Buckinghamshire page has been updated, together with demonstration pages for Marsworth (which includes a significant section of the Grand Union Canal) and Aston Clinton (which includes short sections of the Aylesbury and Wendover Arms of the Canal, and the site of a former Rothschilds House.) This will be considered a low priority project with perhaps one or two place pages added each month.

What happened on this site in April

Towards the end of March I decided to give the site a “holiday” while I had three minor operations. This affected the user statistics in the short term, as during this period (which includes a week of April) the number of page views to the Newsletter dropped by about half. However they rapidly increased after I started posting again on April 6 and by the end of the month had reached 4028 page views, compared with 3012 in February and 2870 in March. The number of visitors to the main site is also up, and it looks as if it could have well over 250,000 visits in the complete year (First 4 months 93,036).

The only disappointing area is on the donations to help the mentally ill of Hertfordshire which, after starting off like a rocket in January almost dried up – with no donations at all in February and March – partially made up by two generous donations in April. If you haven't yet made a donation ask yourself whether the help I have given was worth the cost of a cup of coffee and a cake at Starbucks? I know some of you may be finding things a bit tight - but the economic situation is causing many people severe mental distress - so the Herts Mind Network has more work to do to help them and needs every penny it can get.

During part of March and April there was a problem with the Ask Chris and Tell Me facilities due to a fault relating to the code to minimise spam. This meant that I got fewer questions than usual. It has now been corrected but another “spam trap” could mean that one or two of the messages I sent out didn't get through. As a result I may have to reorganise how I handle emails on my P.C. If you were expecting an email from me and haven't had one please let me know.

(B.T.W. - Two of the operations were very successful – and I am delighted with the improvement of the sight in my right eye. The third operation has been delayed – and in addition I am also in the queue for a cataract operation for my left eye. I don't expect to take another "medical holiday" but instead I am currently planning on an average of five “routine” postings a week, plus extra posts responding to your messages and comments as required.)

Who has been stealing from my bird feeder (off topic)

Goldfinches

I regularly feed the birds in my garden, with hanging feeders, fat balls, ground feed and apples for the blackbirds. (The apples were a great bargain - our Tesco overstocked on a special offer and I got 20 bags at a greatly reduced price.) The sunflower hearts prove very popular from the hanging feeders - with regular visitors such as goldfinches, greenfinches, blue tits and great tits, robins and even the occasional chaffinch - which is normally a ground feeder. However they are very fussy and all tended to avoid the green topped feeder, despite the fact that it contains the same food.. That is until a few days ago when the level of the seed dropped suddenly.  A thief had been at work ...

Thoughts from a Country Churchyard

A typical late 18th century gravestone

When this you see remember me

And think now I am gone,

You may walk out and seek about

And not find such a one.

Memorial Inscription from the Churchyard at Ardeley

Recorded in Cream of Curiosity

Eliza Jane Deards is tracked down at St Pauls Walden

In 2003 Brian wrote asking about Eliza Jane Deards of St Pauls Walden and I gave what help I could with the records available at the time. Two years later David contacted me with some more information about the family. And now Michael has definitely tracked her down - using resources which were not available to me nearly 10 years earlier. I was interested to note the marriages at St Pancras as quite a few Hertfordshire people took a train up to London to marry at St Pancras, rather than marry in their local parish church.

I always appreciate messages like this. If I have helped you in the past let me know how the search continued, If not, but you can still update the story tell me about it - so that others can benefit from your experiences. 

What every country cottage near Tring needed in 1872

In 1872 the Herts Advertiser carried a report of the Tring Agricultural Show which included details of a useful piece of equipment every county cottage should have.

Click here for details.

Another Post Card solves the Mystery with a Kiss!

5th Howitzer Battery in Action, Lydd Camp, 1909

Last November I reported on a very faded post card of of guns at a military camp, sent to a Miss M Rowe by "J" and suggested the likely identities of  Miss "M" and "J". 

Now another card has turned up, showing guns at Lydd Camp, also sent from Watford to Berkhamsted. This shows that the "M" I suggested was Miss Margaret Rowe was called "Madge", while the "J" I provisionally identified as James Humphries was called "Jim." In addition Jim attended a "drill" which supports the idea that he was in the Territorial Force. For more details see Mystery Military Photo

However I also discovered I had missed a clue with the original card - by not wondering why the stamp had not been stuck on straight. When the second card turned up with the same configuration I started to investigate and it turns out that in the "Language of Stamps" a stamp stuck on in this way can mean the equivalent of "love and kisses."

More about Thundridge Old Church, near Ware

Murray saw my post What did your parish church own in 1552 and asked what it said about the old parish church at Thundridge - which was demolished in 1853. I have added a page giving details of the 1552 holdings and also updated the page on the church, which is well worth a visit because it is a demonstration page  A Comparison of Early Printed Sources illustrating where you can find information on the older Hertfordshire Churches.

I also looked for any new online materials to link to and found some old memories and the following video which shows the churchyard and the outside and inside of the tower :

You will see that the blocked doorway has had a large hole cut through the wall and there are other signs of vandalism. It is all very sad.

B.T.W. I do not have time to monitor sites like YouTube for amateur video of tours of interesting Hertfordshire historic buildings.  If you know of any which I should mention in this newsletter, or link to on the main web site, please let me know - perhaps as a comment below including the relevant URL.