Bulletins
The Society publishes a monthly bulletin up to ten times a year. Each bulletin has a section about 'News and events' followed by a short article about an aspect of the history of Wheathampstead, researched and written by a member of the Society. Each of these could be the basis for more substantial research.
Printed copies of each bulletin are distributed at the Society's meetings.
To read a bulletin online, click on its title.
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2025
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Number |
Date
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Subject |
Abstract |
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77 |
January |
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The 1870 auction particulars for the sale of the “Valuable Estate” of Sarah Thrale, like all such documents, prompt research. Born in Kimpton in 1804, Sarah married Henry Sibley in 1834. He owned the house in the High Street that we now know as White Cottage, together with a number of arable fields in various parts of the parish. He died in 1848 and Sarah married William Thrale, a baker, in 1852. The particulars state that the Valuable Estate is known as “Malting Farm” and include the “Genteel Residence” (White Cottage) with the 10 quarter malting, about 71 acres of “very superior arable and pasture land”, and “14 cottages & gardens” in East Lane. The land is, again, in various areas of the parish and had other owners in 1841. This suggests that Sarah Thrale was a keen buyer of land. |
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78 |
February |
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A small black account book in the Society's archive records the accounts of the Wheathampstead Nursery Fund from 1924 to 1952 and has prompted research into the history of Wheathampstead's charities. The Victoria County History (1902) lists (in addition to the James Marshall Fund) four charities in Wheathampstead, dating “from time immemorial” to the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. In 1938, these were merged to become the Wheathampstead United Charities (WUC). The Wheathampstead Welfare Group was founded in 1967 and the two charities worked side by side for many years. The Group changed its name to the Wheathampstead Community Group in 2008. WUC transferred its funds to the Community Group in 2023 and closed as a registered charity. The James Marshall Foundation was established by the will of James Marshall in 1719. |
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79 |
March |
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The recent disruption in the village caused by a burst sewer pipe is the latest chapter in the chequered history of waste treatment in Wheathampstead. Until the 1870s, houses and cottages depended on cesspits and “night soil carting” to dispose of their waste. The first, very basic, sewage treatment works was opened in The Meads in 1876 and developed in stages over the years until 1976 when it was converted into a pumping station to pump sewage to the treatment works in Harpenden. The Parish Council bought the site of the old works in 1983 and the land was restored to create The Dell. |
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80 |
April |
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The frontage of The Reading Rooms is a familiar sight in the High Street but this early 19th century listed building has had many different occupants including carpenter's shop, Reading Room set up by the Church of England Temperance Society, saddlery, harness maker, draper's and ironmonger's. In 1964 Stuart Bishop opened a men's outfitters there. After a slow start, the shop flourished, offering men's and boys' clothing, school uniforms, a tailoring service, dry cleaning, shoe repair and dress hire, as well as acting as agent for coal orders. Mr Stuart, as he was known, was a founder member of the Horticultural Society and attended many village functions. He retired in 1988. |
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81 |
May |
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Lambert Osbaldeston was twice appointed rector of Wheathampstead and twice dismissed. His first appointment, in 1637, was just one of his many benefices. In the following year, letters written by him to the Bishop of Lincoln were found in which an unnamed person was described as “the little urchin” and “the little meddling hocus pocus”. It was obvious that the person so described was the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. At a trial in the Star Chamber in February 1639, Osbaldeston was stripped of all his ecclesiastical positions (including Wheathampstead) and heavily fined. He fled from the court and went into hiding. In 1641, he successfully petitioned the Long Parliament to be relieved against the “heavy sentence” and resumed the rectorship at Wheathampstead in 1642. Having later publicly criticised the lengthy proceedings of the Long Parliament, he was again relieved of many of his benefices, including Wheathampstead, in 1659. |
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82 |
June |
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The Society's exhibition in the Memorial Hall on 10 and 11 May, “Wheathampstead during the Second World War”, was attended by upwards of 800 people and was a great success. Visitors included two of the evacuees who were billeted in the village during the war, the sons of the licensees of The Bull and The Swan at that time, and the four grandsons of Dr Robert Leiper, who was Chair of the Parish Council throughout the war. Many people asked if there would be another opportunity to see the information in the exhibition so the main posters were displayed at Village Day on 12 July and again at an exhibition to mark VJ Day on 16 and 17 August. |
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83 |
July |
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In the latter half of the 20th century, there were two companies based in the village, Murphy & Son and the Murphy Chemical Company. Albert Murphy registered the company Murphy & Son in 1918, based in Nottingham and developing and selling the chemicals needed in brewing. Having become interested in horticultural and agricultural chemicals, he bought Wheathampstead House in 1928 and installed the Murphy & Son head office and research laboratories. He then registered the Murphy Chemical Company as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Murphy & Son and built a factory in the area behind Wheathampstead Place. The company became a major employer in the village but not without controversy caused by the “noxious smells” from the works and heavy lorries blocking the High Street. Murphy Chemical was bought by Glaxo in 1956 and sold on to Dalgety in 1977 who closed the factory in about 1983. Murphy sold Wheathampstead House in 1989 and moved Murphy & Son's technical team and laboratories to Nottingham. |
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84 |
September |
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The recent consultation about the proposed improvements at St Helen's Church was a reminder that the last major alterations to the fabric of the church were overseen by Canon Davys in 1865. While an ironwork frame was installed “round the tower of the church” in 1784, Canon Davys's works in 1865 were far more substantial. The architect's specifications include “Take off the roof of the nave, transepts and chancel, also the sacristy and south porch and west lobby”, “Clear away the building now in front of the south porch and used as an engine house”, “take down the upper part of the north and south walls of the chancel…for the fixing of the new high-pitched roof…”. The builder is given detailed instructions about replacing the roofs, raising the walls, cleaning the internal masonry, taking down the monuments and memorial tablets and replacing them when the work is finished, repairing window mullions and replacing entire windows.
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85 |
October |
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Mrs F. Hulks, the author of this little booklet published in 1924, was Lily Hulks (born 1895), who married Frederick Hulks in 1923. He was a grocer's assistant at Tingey & Sons, grocer and provisions merchants in Wheathampstead. Why did Lily publish The Wheathampstead Cookery Book in 1924? Perhaps the newly-married young woman, eager to support her husband, suggested to Mr Tingey that such a publication would promote his business? Most of the 100 recipes are aimed at the working class, with simple, affordable ingredients. They include familiar dishes such as potato and leek soup and apple crumble, and “hearty dishes” such as stews and casseroles. Frederick Hulks took over Tingey's in 1929 but died in 1931 leaving Lily with three children under six years old. She gave up the shop and in 1939 was a lodging-housekeeper in Cambridge. She died in Maidenhead in 1861. Frederick and Lily are buried together in the St Helen's churchyard.
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86 |
November |
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2024 |
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67 |
January |
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Nearly 25 years ago, Wheathampstead resident Brian Joyce began to build a community website for the village. This became known by its address, 'Wheathampstead.net' and developed into an important source of information about local events and the many businesses and voluntary groups in the village, and a major repository of material about the history of Wheathampstead with particular emphasis on families and people. When the site went offline after Brian passed away, all this content was saved by the History Society. It has been converted to a suitable format and will be uploaded to the Society's website in the coming months. |
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68 |
February
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The Garrard family are well known locally. They owned the Lamer estate from 1608 until Apsley Cherry-Garrard sold up in 1945. What is less well-known is that, as well as running the large Lamer estate, the Garrards also leased the whole of Wheathampstead manor from Westminster Abbey who had been lord of the manor since 1060 when Edward the Confessor gifted it to Westminster. The Garrards managed the Wheathampsteadbury farm estate and also the mill. Documents in the Westminster Abbey archive may suggest that the Garrards held this lease from the early 1610s until at least 1685. |
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69 |
March
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Wheathampstead Parish Council was established in 1895 when the duties of the centuries-old Vestry were divided between the secular Parish Council and the Parochial Church Council. A new list of past chairmen of the Parish Council is in the hallway of the refurbished Marford Memorial Hall. They are an interestingly mixed bunch. |
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70 |
April
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We are grateful to Mike Martin for his generous gift to the History Society of an account book dated June 1794 that relates to the House family of Wheathampstead. He acquired this from an antiquarian bookseller in York. The accounts are concerned with the proving of the will of wealthy landowner Isaac House who had died on 5 April 1794 at the age of 37. He was owner of the Grove Farm in Pipers Lane with its malthouse, barns, stables and outhouses, arable land, orchards, fields and woods. His wife died just three weeks later aged 27. They had been married for only two years and left two infant children, John Isaac and Mary Ann. The original will document is held at HALS. |
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71 |
May
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May 15 is “Straw Hat Day” in the USA. In the mid-19th century, the peak production of straw hats, and the straw plaits from which they were made, was in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire where this cottage industry dated from at least the 18th century. In Wheathampstead in 1851, 31% of the total occupied population were straw workers, nearly all of whom were plaiters, only 28 being described as hat-makers or sewers. For much of the 19th century, many children attended “plait schools”, producing plait to be sold by their parents who paid as little as a penny a week for their plaiting “education”. |
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72 |
June
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Until recently, historians thought that the placename 'Thorp', as in Mablethorpe and Scunthorpe, was associated with the Danelaw and referred to a minor settlement. However, there is also an Old English version 'Throp'. Gover et al. The Placenames of Hertfordshire (1938) says that "... the placenames Thropfeld, Thropmulle and Thropmanland have been noted in Wheathampstead, pointing to a lost thorp or throp in that parish." In this bulletin, Mike Smith suggests where it may have been located. |
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73 |
July
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Sir Samuel Garrard, 4th baronet, inherited the estate of Lamer in 1701. He was an established merchant in the City of London. In 1709 he was appointed as the Lord Mayor of London for a year, where one of his duties was to sit on the judges' bench at the Central Criminal Court of the Old Bailey though he did not participate in the hearings. He will have witnessed at first hand the era of the ‘Bloody Code' when punishments, including branding with a hot iron, were harsh and the death sentence was imposed for a wide range of offences, some of them trivial by today's standards. The odds were stacked against the defendants whose impotence, insignificance and disgrace contrasted strikingly with Sir Samuel's power and status. |
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74 |
September
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William Alsup Grigg, who had been the tenant of Castle Farm since 1845, sadly committed suicide in 1860. A report of the inquest was published in The Hertford Mercury where it was stated that he “indulged too freely in drink”. On the night in question, he had retired to bed at 7 o'clock and soon afterwards was found to have shot himself. The jury found that the deceased “Shot himself with a pistol while in an unsound state of mind”. An Act of Parliament in 1823 allowed that suicides could be buried privately in a churchyard but only at night and without a Christian service. William Grigg was buried in February 1860, presumably at night, in the churchyard at St Helen's. A discreet gravestone now marks the spot. |
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75 |
October
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Muriel "Tommy" Parsloe, who was gamekeeper on Nomansland in the 1930s, led a remarkable life which she described in her autobiography "A Parson's Daughter". Born Muriel Jardine in 1881, she wore men's clothes all her life. Involved with horses, shooting and hunting from childhood, she took a job as a man in Ireland when she was 20, then worked in England as a horse-breaker, married Stanley Parsloe, moved to Australia as farmer and horse-breaker, returned to England and ran a bus service in Wiltshire, emigrated to Canada to farm 25 acres of land, was burned out, returned to England again and moved to a cottage on Nomansland when her husband took a job as gamekeeper and bailiff. After Stanley died, she took over his job and became known locally as "Bill of Nomansland". She died aged 81 in Sussex in 1962. |
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76 |
November
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Five shillings doesn't sound much to spend on a Christmas party but it was a lot of money in 1275 so it's likely that a good time was had by all at the Wheathampstead manor staff Christmas party 749 years ago. How do we know this? Because we've had the reeve's account for that year translated from the medieval Latin. The reeve was appointed by Westminster Abbey to manage Wheathampstead manor for them and had to present his accounts to the visiting monk-bailiff for auditing once a year. The account tells us that Alfred the reeve spent five shillings on beer and meat for the party. Five shillings in the early thirteenth century would have paid the wages of a skilled tradesman. How many workers would have attended the party? Other evidence suggests there may have been eighty to a hundred people so perhaps five shillings wasn't so generous. |
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2023 |
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57 |
January |
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Many churchyards in Hertfordshire have 18th or 19th century table tombs surrounded by iron railings. In some cases, a tree has grown inside these railings and this has given rise to a legend that the individual buried there was an atheist who declared before decease that if there was an afterlife a tree would grow out of their tomb. In the mid-1970s, there stood on the north side of St Helen's Church a magnificent ash tree which had demolished a table tomb and devoured portions of its railings. Today the spot is marked only by the tree stump and smashed grave slabs. Is there a local legend associated with this tree? |
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58 |
February |
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John Desmond Thomas was headmaster of Wheathampstead School from the day it opened in 1965 until he retired in 1986. ‘Des' was born in Llan Ffestiniog, North Wales, in 1926, the third of seven children. He won a place at grammar school and, after serving as a Bevan boy, he was awarded a degree at Bangor Normal College and a scholarship at the Sorbonne. Following two teaching jobs in London, he was appointed Head at Wheathampstead at the age of 39. |
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59 |
March |
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These initials and the date (1893), which can be seen on the east-facing wall of the mill, are those of Norman Thrale (1832-1900). The earliest record of the Thrale family dates from 1309 and they owned various farms in the district from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Norman worked as a miller and stonemason at Wheathampstead Mill and probably worked on the cladding of the mill in brick in the 1890s. |
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60 |
April |
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‘At 01.45 hours this morning a Flying Bomb burst 60 yds West of Bury Farm house. Damage was caused but there were no casualties.' This entry appears in the St Helen's School logbook dated 27 June 1944. It goes on to describe the damage to the school buildings (broken windows, roof damage, cracks in ceilings and ‘bell turret moved'). It is the only contemporary record we have of this major incident in Wheathampstead's war but it was clearly remembered by local people in later years. |
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61 |
May |
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Frederick Rudolph Lambart, 10th Earl of Cavan, (1865- 1946) was a distinguished past resident of Wheathampstead with a remarkable military career from 2nd Lieutenant in 1885 to Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1922 and Field Marshal in 1932, but he certainly divided opinion. “Bone from the neck up”, “Ignorant, pompous, vain and narrow”, “Undoubtedly one of the great successes of the war”. He lived in Wheathampstead House for most of his life and, when not on active service, led the classic life of a Victorian/Edwardian gentleman with a focus on hunting, shooting, fishing and golf. |
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62 |
June |
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The debate about the origins of Devil's Dyke and its place in history has continued ever since Sir Mortimer Wheeler published his conclusions from excavations he made in and near the Dyke in 1932, reinforced by post-war Ordnance Survey maps describing the site as a “Belgic Oppidum”. This bulletin summarises the research of historians and archaeologists in recent years, including the latest evidence from LiDAR, all of which cast doubt on Wheeler's suggestion that the Dyke was the site of a battle between Julius Caesar and Cassivellaunus, leader of the Catuvellauni, in 54 BCE. The debate highlights the issue of how legends and myths relate to and should be balanced with historical evidence. |
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63 |
July |
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Our book about the history of the pubs of Wheathampstead ended in 1914 but sales figures for fourteen of these pubs in 1936/7 have recently come to light. The figures provide a firm understanding of the hierarchy of the trade at that time. Sorted by barrels sold, the figures show the Swan at the top of the list, selling most beer for consumption in the pub itself. And that by a long distance when compared with its competitors in the village, especially the Bell & Crown. Sales at the Bull were surprisingly low. |
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64 |
September |
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The most important historic relic ever found in Wheathampstead is probably the 7th century bronze ewer that is now in the British Museum, recorded as having been found in 1887. Society member Ray Wilson has been researching a much less well-known object, a palm-cup that apparently was found at the same time as the ewer. Basing his conclusion on evidence in a number of documents, Ray surmises that the Wheathampstead palm-cup was found in fragments in December 1884 by the Griffith brothers from Sandridge, was restored by them, and reunited with the Wheathampstead Ewer at the British Museum in 1910. Which prompts a question. The ewer and the palm-cup were found in “a considerable cemetery of Saxon times”. What else was there and has been lost forever? |
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65 |
October |
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October 1923 was a busy month at St Helen's School, as recorded in the school logbook. There were visits by His Majesty's Inspector, the Chief Education Officer, the rector, the Diocesan Inspector and at least six school governors. Entries in the school logbook suggests that this level of interest was prompted by a highly critical HMI report in July 1922 at a time when the headmaster, Thomas Clark, had been absent for some time. He returned to work in September 1922. Itmust have been a relief to all concerned that the next reports by His Majesty's Inspector and the Diocesan Inspector were much more positive and supportive. |
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66 |
November |
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William Beach Thomas lived at Place Farm and then in Gustard Wood from 1923 to 1957. After a brief career in teaching, he became a journalist and was war correspondent for The Daily Mail during World War One. He complained that the censors would not publish any article that told the truth of what was happening at the front. He later regretted his reports from the Battle of the Somme saying "I was thoroughly and deeply ashamed of what I had written for the good reason that it was untrue". He later wrote articles on gardening and country life, including in and around Wheathampstead, for The Observer and The Spectator as well as a total of 18 books. |
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