CONTENTS

TRING AT WAR 1914-1918, by John Bowman

THE COUNCIL, by Bob Grace

TRING FIRE SERVICE (author unknown)

ALL BECAUSE THE FIRE BRIGADE WASN'T THERE? by Denis Aldrige

THE FIRE BRIGADE, by Jill Fowler

THE WRITINGS OF FRANK JOHN BLY, antiques dealer

EARLY DAYS OF THE WAR, by Doris Miller

MEMORIES OF A TRING EVACUEE, by Joyce Hollingworth

EMUS, TOBOGGANS, FIREWOOD AND OLD TIN PLATES, by Ron Kitchener

AKEMAN STREET IN THE 30s AND 40s, by Doug Sinclair

THREE GENERATIONS OF FARMERS IN TRING, by Stephanie Wells

MEDICINE IN TRING - A SHORT HISTORY, by Dr. D. F. E. Thallon

SEVENTY YEARS AGO, by Dennis Aldridge

THE TRING ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROSECUTION OF FELONS

THE CLUBS OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, by Jill Fowler

TRING AND THE MOTOR CAR, by Jill Fowler

TRING STATION - TRUTH AND HALF TRUTH, by Tim Amsden

MEMORIES OF TRING IN THE THIRTIES, by Jerry Spencer

BORN IN THE SAME YEAR AS THE QUEEN, by Pam Cockerill

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TRING AT WAR 1914-1919
Researched and written by John Bowman.

August 1914: Reservists were reporting to their Naval and Army establishments, and the Territorial Army mustered at their local drill halls.  The Territorials were primarily a home defence force of volunteers who were requested to sign for service where required; the majority volunteered at the outbreak of war.

Lord Kitchener, an outstanding military engineer and soldier, and well known for his service in Egypt, The Sudan and South Africa, was appointed Minister of War.  He immediately asked for 100,000 volunteers to supplement the small regular army, most of which was engaged in France supporting the French and Belgians against the Kaiser’s army.  The 100,000 target was achieved in the first few days following the proclamation.  Preparations were then made for the recruitment of a further 100,000 men.

In September 1914, it was rumoured locally that a new Army Division was to be formed at Halton Park, which had been offered to the crown as a Rothschild contribution to the war effort.  A tented camp was erected on what is now the Halton Airfield and men began arriving from the north-east, from Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire to form the new army’s 21st. Division.

Due to a very wet autumn, the tented camp was soon waterlogged and the soldiers were out housed in any available accommodation.  Three thousand soldiers were billeted in Tring, mostly with local householders.  The school in the High Street was commandeered.  The pupils were accommodated in various locations.  The boys went to the Church House and Market House/Hall.  The girls went to the lecture hall in the High Street Free Church, and the Western Hall, which was situated where Stanley Gardens is now.

The ‘gallant lads at Halton Park’ in a sea of mud.

The Victoria Hall and the Gravelly School became medical and hospital accommodation, the infant pupils being housed in the Sunday School Room of the Akeman Street Baptist Chapel.  The YMCA building, in the Tabernacle Yard, Akeman Street was opened as writing and reading rooms for the soldiers.  Bathing facilities were installed in the Museum’s outbuildings.

A bathing parade.

The billeting rates paid for soldiers were quite generous for the time and, no doubt, supplemented the income of the townspeople, which was lost when so many of the population volunteered.

In November, it was reported that Arthur Wells who lived at Tringford had been lost at sea.  He was a stoker in the Royal Navy, and had been recalled at the beginning of the war.  He was serving in HMS Aboukir, a cruiser.  His Majesty’s Ships, Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue were elderly ships of the “Battle” class [Ed. – Cressy class] and all three were lost, torpedoed in the North Sea, on the same day, 22nd September 1914.  Reginald Seabrook of Tring, a seaman, was serving on HMS Hogue when it was sunk and he was picked up from the sea.

Together with sister ships Aboukir and Cressy, HMS Hogue was torpedoed and
sunk in the North Sea by the German submarine U-9 on the 22nd September, 1914.
In total, 62 officers and 1,397 enlisted men were lost in this disastrous engagement,
which revealed to a complacent Royal Navy the danger of submarine warfare.

In Tring, various groups of ladies were knitting comforts for the troops, scarves, gloves and balaclava helmets were welcomed by all the troops in the trenches.  The front had settled to a line which was to stay until early 1918.  The trench systems throughout were an elaborate mishmash of deeply excavated trenches in the Arras/Somme area, to built up defences in the flat coal mining areas around Vimy/Lens/Bully and the Ypres salient, where water would appear at two to three feet under the surface.  Large quantities of sandbags were needed for the defences.  Also wattle hurdles, chestnut paling and withy fascines.  The manufacture of these was a rural craft, a local industry.  Of course, the manufacture of sandbags was a commercial undertaking.  It is estimated that each division of 15,000 men would need over one million bags a month.

The voluntary effort by women’s groups to make sandbags was organised by a Miss Tyler who worked from North London as a collecting point.  The purchase of hessian was undertaken locally, in the Home Counties.  Women’s groups made the bags measuring 33 inches long by 14 inches wide.  By September 1914, 10,000 sandbags a day were dispatched to the front.  The collecting point in Tring was Hazely, a street in Tring, where Miss Helen Brown and her helpers bundled the sacks for collection.  All costs for this enterprise were met by public subscription.  Every pound raised provided 60 bags.

A poem written by a soldier of 21st Division:

Summer 1915: the district nurse, Miss Girardet, has resigned and is presently nursing at the military hospital on Wandsworth Common.  She has been thanked for her 17 years service to the community.  Miss Green has been appointed in her place.

A cartoonist’s view of the Wandsworth Military Hospital.

The 21st Division are now in France and have been in action around Loos/La Bassée.  Halton Camp is now the training facility for the East Anglian area.

Gallipoli has been evacuated.  A combined force of French and British troops, have occupied Salonica and have moved into Thessaly and Macedonia, in support of the retreating Serbian army.  The Kitchener battalions of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry are part of the force.  A number of local men are in these battalions.  The casualty lists are depressingly long.  Almost every family, locally has either lost a relative, or had news of one wounded or taken prisoner.

The production of shells and ammunition is being co-ordinated by the government.  The shortage in 1915 was felt by our armies on the Western Front, and is no doubt the main cause of our failure to progress militarily.

1916: saw the National Service Act coming into operation.  This allowed the direction of the work force as required for the war effort.  Local tribunals were established, which allowed exemption for men with large families, men and women who held essential jobs and men running family businesses and farms.  The pronouncements of the tribunals were not always acceptable, and recourse to an appeal board was often sought.
 

The shortage of food, due in part to the German submarine warfare is having a serious effect on the population.  The licensing laws were changed, with pubs having restricted opening hours.  These restrictions remain virtually to the present day.
 

HMS Hampshire, a cruiser, was sunk north of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands on June 5th 1916 [Ed. – Hampshire is believed to have struck a mine laid by the German minelaying submarine U-75. She sank with heavy loss of life].  She had on board, Lord Kitchener and a delegation, which were on their way to Murmansk in Northern Russia to meet the Russian Imperial Command.  Lord Kitchener’s body was never found.  However, Able Seaman Stanley Collier, one of the crew, was recovered from the sea and buried in the military cemetery on the island of Hoy.  He was a Tring man and is commemorated on the Tring war memorial.

The Chiltern beech woods were being cut down to provide timber for the trench systems in France.  Three forestry engineer units were at work in the area, one being from Australia.  The consumption of timber was so great at the front that a special port facility was built on the river Seine, at Rouen, solely for the handling of timber.

The meadows in the Vale of Aylesbury were in great demand for the production of fodder for horses, many thousands of which were used for transportation and supply by the Army, at home and in France.

At Paines End, just over the county boundary in Drayton Beauchamp parish, the Royal Engineer (Signals) had established a small unit engaged in radio communications.  They were housed in tents and a portable canvas hut.  The lady in a cottage nearby was asked if she could supply hot water for the soldiers’ ablutions.  She said she would, but that she had no fuel to heat the copper in the outhouse.  The next morning there was a visit from the Bucks policeman from Aston Clinton.  He asked if the family had seen anybody passing with ‘wooding’ trolleys, as a quantity of timber was missing from Pavis Wood.  Later that day the estate policeman came and asked the same question.  Of course, the woman denied having seen anybody passing.  When she next went to the outhouse, she found it was full of logs!
 

During 1916 the British and Commonwealth armies took over most of the front extending from the Somme River to a point north of Ypres where the remnants of the Belgian Army held the front to the Channel coast.  Preparations were made for a major attack to be made in the area north and south of Albert, which we now know as the Somme offensive.  The battle raged for four months.  During this time many names were added to the Tring Roll of Honour, many men were posted as missing, believed killed.  On March 19th the Church Council discussed the building of a war memorial to commemorate the young men of Tring who gave their lives during the war.  It was suggested that the memorial should take the form of a crucifix, similar to the roadside memorials which are found in France and Belgium.  This would be very familiar to all the soldiers who had served and would be a fitting reminder to the living and memorial to the dead.  It was agreed to commission a design showing Christ crucified on a cross.

War savings groups were being formed.  Street Marshals collected the pennies in exchange for stamps which were affixed to cards.  When full (15/6d) they were exchanged for a certificate worth a pound sterling in five years.  This type of saving continues to the present day in a similar form with the National Savings Bank.

Rationing (1917): food is becoming short due to the German submarine warfare waged against our merchant ships.

The shortage of labour on the land is being circumvented by the formation of a corps of women volunteers known as The Women’s Land Army.  Young women are also being directed into munitions factories.  The naval and military have their own women’s arms, the WRNS and WAC’s.  The women are taking over the duties of motor drivers, cooks, clerks, etc., allowing the release of men to fill the gaps in the fighting services.

Halton is still the Eastern Command Training Depot.  The Royal Flying Corps are moving into the North Camp area.  A flying field has been established, with an Australian squadron flying from it.  The Royal Flying Corps training organisation, concentrated in the new workshops being built by German prisoners of war under the direction of the Royal Engineers, has trained 15,000 Air Mechanics during 1917.

A Handley Page 0/400 bomber displaying Royal Flying Corps insignia at the
Australian Flying Corps Training Depot, Halton Camp.

On the Western Front, an offensive was started in the Arras area during the early spring.  The German army was pushed back, resulting in the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Army Corps.  Although the high ground was not of a great height, it did hold a commanding view over the Douai plain, with its coal mines and industrial complex towards Lille and the south Belgian bulge.

The Bolshevik revolution, and subsequent peace with Germany, has allowed thousands of German and Austrian troops to be moved westward.  The entry of the United States into the war partly evened up the score, but the Americans were largely untrained in warfare.

In the autumn of 1917 an offensive move in the Ypres area was launched, to break out from the salient.  The objective being a possible capture of the Channel ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge, which were bases for the “U” boats engaged in sea operations in the Western Approaches.

1918: On April 1st the Royal Air Force was born by the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.  As aircraft developed, an offensive strategy developed whereby enemy lines of communication were attacked.  Even industrial complexes were attacked in the Ruhr and Saar areas.

The German nation was beginning to crack. Lack of food and the casualty lists were causing and demonstrations throughout greater Germany.  Early in 1918 the German High Command launched an offensive westward in the Somme area, pushing back our forces almost to Amiens.

Food shortages and unrest was showing throughout Britain, very similar to Germany.  Socialism was surfacing taking heart from the success of the Russian Revolution.

The Tring war memorial is nearing completion. It is hoped that the unveiling and dedication would be held on St Peter’s day 29th June 1918.  Due to various delays the memorial was unveiled and dedicated on 27th November 1918.

Thanksgiving for Peace on Church Square: 24^th July 1919.
The War Memorial is in the background.

The Parish Magazine for April 1918 published a letter from an officer in the Royal Flying Corps in Italy:

“The other day I was at --------- aerodrome, it began to snow, so I beetled back here as rapidly as might be.  The snowstorm put up a pretty good fight but we beat it alright.  But we had to go!  Normally I fly at 50-55 miles per hour, to ease the engine, but I saw now that I should get a move on.  So I started at 70 mph, and for the first 10 miles kept level with the storm, which was about a mile away.  I could see quite clearly up to the south but then it looked like a thick white mist.  I said to myself ‘My child, carry on at 80 mph’.  But even at this pace the snowstorm gained on us slightly.  In the end we beat it by four fields.  I have been caught too many times by rain and muck to take any chances by going slowly.  These jiggers will do 105 mph near the ground and I was flying at only 800 feet.  It was quite amusing and my engine was priceless.

I went up for a joy ride the other day to try the electric heating, which I think I told you about.  There is a 250 volt dynamo on the machine driven by a small propeller 18" across, and a switch box containing about eight switches.  Three of these are for body, hands and feet.  For your body, you put on under your tunic, a wash-leather waistcoat, which has resistance wires all over it.  For your hands you have thin cotton gloves, with wires down the back of each finger.  For your feet you have socks - the sort you put in your boots when they are too big - these also have resistance wires in them.

The other switches are: (1) for heating the guns to keep them from freezing; (2) to power the klaxon horn used for contact while flying; (3) for navigation lights, which are on the wing tips and also behind the observer, and underneath the machine. (these are to show who and where you are in night flying), (and also to prevent being run into); (4) for charging accumulators for wireless; and (5) for Holt landing flares under each wing for night landing, and are fired by a hot wire.

When I got up I turned on the three body switches and everything worked gorgeously.  In fact, I had to turn the hands switch off after a bit as they got too hot.”

Letter from a Royal Engineer (Signals) officer April 3rd 1918:

“At last!  After twelve of the most strenuous and exciting days I have ever known, the remnants of us are safely out for a bit of green field, able to sleep.  Ever since the fight began we have been at it all day and all night - fighting, marching, retreating, counter-attacking, etc., etc.

Out of the twelve nights of the fight I was four nights without a wink of sleep and have certainly not averaged three hours sleep out of the rest of the twelve days.  Never had boots off, except once to wash my feet; shaved about three times; washed hands and face about every other day; and with it all have been wonderfully and marvellously fit - huge appetite and perfect digestion, walked and ridden countless miles without fatigue or soreness; and come right through it without a scratch.  A most wonderful experience!

Yesterday we came out of the fight battered and dirty but still cheerful.  I ended up by an all-night march of 24 miles, so tired and sleepy that I could not remain on my horse, but had to walk to keep awake, after which I slept all morning, most of the afternoon, and all night, and could still do with more.

The Signal Company has been pretty fortunate on the whole in the way of casualties, one officer killed and some valuable NCOs, but very few men and only three horses.

When we are refitted we will, I suppose enter the fight with renewed vigour.  The end is not yet, and though the Hun has won the first act, it does not follow that he has won the rubber.  Our post has been held up from the start but I have received it all together yesterday.”

Bucks Herald, June 1918.  Herts Recruiting Campaign for Women on the Land:

“A recruiting rally for women on the land will be held in Tring on Saturday, June 8th.  A procession of land army girls and part time workers from Tring and surrounding villages, decorated wagons, etc, will start from the ‘Britannia’ at 6 p.m. and march through the town to the market place, where a short open air meeting will be held.

A letter thought to be from Lieutenant Kesley, published in the Parish Magazine, June 1918:

Palestine
“I have been moved from camels to donkeys; the Corps is under the same administration as camels, and is newly formed, so of course it has to be officered, and I have been selected as one of them and posted to No 1.  It is really a big scream.  I wish you could hear the noise at feeding time.  I have 500 of them, and it is a regular Donnybrook!  Of course, I am no longer on the coastal sector and probably, shall have a chance of getting to Jerusalem, which is about 25 miles distant, but the country is about the worst I have ever struck.  It is very mountainous with hardly any cultivation, and the mountains are covered with huge boulders of rock, and only donkeys can get about on them, with the exception of goats.  But they are not forming a goat corps yet!  We seem to be away from the world up here, away in the hills.  Everything is very quiet except for the hum of an aeroplane; it seems almost living a hermit’s life.

Later: At last I have seen Jerusalem.  Just before entering the city, Nebi Sainwil, the traditional tomb of the prophet Samuel, is clearly visible from the road.  This where some of the stiffest fighting took place, and one cannot understand how our boys overcame such strong positions; it was superhuman.  I took a guide to the Holy Sepulchre; there I saw our Lord’s tomb.  The church, which is built over it, is very beautiful inside.  I cannot say what passed through my mind as I stood by the side of his tomb, but everything seemed to be at peace.  I also saw the mosque of Omar, the Jews’ waiting place, and the garden of Gethsemane.  It is hard to realise what happened here.”

June 1918: Letter from Guy Beech, Chaplain to the Forces, former curate at Tring.

With a Middlesex Regiment Battalion B.E.F., May 3rd 1918.

“As the address shows you, I am now attached to the ‘Diehards’.  My last letter was written just before I left the reinforcement camp to join the Division.  Eventually I reached it close to the town I had left the week before I was posted to this battalion whose padre had been killed in the recent fighting.  But how long I shall be with it is uncertain, as it seems likely to be broken up, which will mean my being transferred to some entirely different unit.  Most of the men have been drafted away, and their place may possibly be taken by Americans.  We have been perpetually on the move from one village to another in back areas, quite a long way from the fighting line.  We are billeted in first one, and then another French house; usually a farmhouse built four square like an Oxford college quad, and usually with a refuse heap in the centre!

In the last village my bedroom overlooked a pretty little valley with an aerodrome on the opposite hill and on clear evenings I used to watch the aeroplanes come out one after the other from their hangars, like wasps from a nest, and go off in formation, laden with bombs for the enemy territory.  Here in another farmhouse, I am roused at by the old French peasant starting forth with his plough and horses for the fields.  The French are indeed wedded to the soil.  Everywhere you see them working on the land, the women and old men, and there they are from sunrise to sunset every day.  Doubtless it is one great reason of the strength of France, and one can’t help wishing we English people loved the soil as they do.

We are under orders to move again tomorrow and have a seventeen mile march before us.”

G.B.

An Economic View, published in mid 1918: IT CANNOT LAST.

Through one means or another many people are earning large wages.  Hundreds of firms are paying excess profits tax.  And many workers outside the big industrial world are receiving salaries and wages, which, for purely war reasons cannot last.  Thousands are earning comparatively good pay, which they will take as a matter of course until ‘their services are no longer required’.  What is to be the future of these?

There are two distinct types of worker: first, the organised wage earner; second the new worker in office situations.  The first section, though quite aware that the war (and war prices also) are liable to fall when peace comes, will look to the State to prevent the dislocation and unemployment that have followed previous wars.  But a guarantee against actual want does not mean continued prosperity.  Even when a minimum wage is the rule it will be far less than the present maximum.  The second section is in a position quite undefined.  To both the National War Savings Committee offer sound advice when they say, ‘Save while you can and buy War Savings Certificates’.

Let us grant that the State would not allow wholesale disorganisation and unemployment.  But let us remember that the State, like the individual, depends on trade.  It is impossible to guarantee high wages, for the so called ‘good times’ of war depend on artificial causes.  It is to be hoped that new trades and fresh energy will flourish and abound.  But behind such hopes lies the plain fact that the men and women with £10, £50, or £100 in hand will be saved an anxiety.  For no state exists that can restore to its citizens what has been lost or wasted, or create wealth out of thin air.

It is not necessary to buy certificates one by one.  £1 certificates are issued in book form; or twelve may be bought at one time (on one certificate) for £9-6-0 and £25 certificates cost £19-17-6 each.  If you have any odd sum, you can put it all into certificates in exchange for one document and you can withdraw part of the money at any time if you need it.  A small reserve fund may make all the difference some day, between having to jump at the first job that comes your way, and being able to wait until you can secure congenial occupation.  The certificates you buy today may mark the turning point of your career.

Education: the Rev. Basil J. Reay, Diocesan Inspector of Schools, paid visits to each of our schools during July and has sent us most encouraging reports.  From these we make the following extracts, which speak for themselves:

“The school is in excellent hands, and the scholars are being taught to think for themselves, with very good results.  I was particularly pleased with the way in which the bible narrative was known, and with the clear evidence of the application of the moral and practical lessons to the lives of the scholars.  The tone throughout the school was excellent”.

“This was an excellent school in which the scholars are being very fully taught and where, not only is the knowledge imparted, but the children are being encouraged to think.  The staff are to be much congratulated on the result of their care and instruction.  An excellent tone was apparent, and the keenness and bright answering of the children was delightful”.

“The children have received careful and sympathetic teaching for which they made, on the whole, an adequate return.  Good work has been done, and many of the children answered in an intelligent manner.  The tone and reverence was pleasing”.

“There was evidence in this school of careful teaching, and keen interest on the part of the children; and in both classes, the answering was bright and general”.

We are sure that all our readers who have a care for the well being of the rising generation, will read these remarks with real pleasure, and will congratulate those who have made it possible for the inspector to make them.

August School Honours:

Boys: Kenneth H. Desborough has obtained one of two open minor scholarships at Berkhamsted School.  Francis Mildred has won a County naval scholarship.  John Lines, who passed the written part of the examination, was disqualified due to defective eyesight.
Girls: Nora Lines has been elected to a free place scholarship at Berkhamsted High School.

Our congratulations to teachers and scholars alike.

September 1918. The War Memorial: the total sum as estimated for the erection of a war memorial: £450-0-0 has now been received from public subscription.  The cost of the wrought iron gates is considerably more than first estimated, and it is expected that more costs will be incurred, so contributions are still needed to offset unforeseen costs.

Christmas and Tring men at the Front: the vicar called a representative meeting of the inhabitants of Tring, at which it was decided to send all of our men in the Royal Navy, Mercantile Marine, Army and Royal Air Force, and those in hospitals will be sent a postal order to the value of 5/-.  A parcel, or money where it is safe to send it, to the value of 10/-, will be sent to our prisoners of war in enemy hands.  Collections for this enterprise, and names of entitled to receive this gift.

November 1918: on 11th November an armistice was signed, to cease hostilities at 11.00 a.m. on that day.  There was great rejoicing throughout Great Britain.

An excerpt from the war diary of Mrs Ethel M. Bilborough, of Chiselhurst, Kent: November 11 1918:

“I was trying to write a coherent letter this morning when all of a sudden the air was rent by a tremendous bang!  My instant thought was a raid! But when another explosion shook the windows and the hooters at Woolwich began to scream like things demented, and the guns started frantically firing all round us like a mighty fugue!  I knew this was no raid, but the signing of the armistice had been accomplished!  Signal upon signal took up the news; the glorious pulverising news - that the end had come at last, and the greatest war in history was over.”

General Robertson presiding at the Tring War Memorial unveiling ceremony
(Robertson remains the only British soldier to progress from the rank of Private to that of Field Marshall).

The unveiling and dedication of the Tring war memorial was performed on Wednesday November 27th 1918 on the Church Square at 3.30 p.m. by General Sir William Robertson GCB, KCVO, DSO (General Officer Commanding in Chief, Great Britain), who gave the address.  The memorial was then dedicated by the Very Reverend T C Fry DD, Dean of Lincoln.

1919.
The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 18th June 1919 so ending the Great War.  A national day of rejoicing was set for 19th July.  However this date was brought forward to Sunday 6th July.  This, of course, caused some confusion, however all went well on the day.  The festivities started with a short service on the Church Square at 11 a.m. followed by festivities in the park.

A good time was had by all.

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THE COUNCIL
Written by Bob Grace, Tring Councillor.

In the local paper in December 1894 there appeared a tribute to the Local Board of Health written by Mr J. T. Clement:

The writer goes on to give a factual but light-hearted account of the work done by this forerunner of the T.U.D.C. [Tring Urban District Council]  In this very short note on 79 years of Local government, I have tried to follow Mr Clement’s lead, alas not in verse.
 

The first [Tring Urban District] Election in December 1894 had been well contested and Mr Stevens, Boot and Shoe Maker, topped the poll, he being a very respected townsman, always available to help with your problems, and a Baptist lay preacher of note.  At the first Meeting (3.1.95), Frederick Butcher, local Banker of Frogmore, member of H.C.C. [Hertfordshire County Council] was made Chairman.  The Hon Walter Rothschild (later 2nd Lord), M.P., was also a member.  Glancing through reports, no doubt these great bankers gave their careful consideration to the Granting of a Pawnbroker’s Licence to Mr Seabrook and that Mr Attwell of the Red Lion could hold a Lodging House Licences for his 1/- a night boarders; the first Rate of 2/6 in the £ brought trade to Mr Seabrook.

Under Mr Butcher’s Chairmanship and the guidance of Mr A. W. Vaisey as Clerk (salary £125.0.0d per annum) the monthly meetings were referred to as a “Duet with Occasional Chorus”.  Health was and still should be the prime duty of Local Government.  At this period Scarlet Fever and Diptheria epidemics were rife and the building of the Little Tring Hospital was an enormous boon to the Town.  In 1902 Smallpox was endemic and patients were housed in a tent at Aldbury – to quote Mr Clement:

This plague was still with us.  By May 1903 the Matron of the new Hospital felt that after eighteen months’ work she might ask for three weeks holiday, which was promptly refused, but she might take 14 days on the understanding that she returned if a patient was admitted.

The Station Road, which had had ruts three feet deep, had now been surfaced with flint, with the aid of a steam roller.  The Landlord of the Robin Hood was sent a bill and strong letter for having managed by diplomatic means to get the roller to rolls his yard without the surveyor’s knowledge!  The Council felt that the Station bus should now be able to meet the trains and as it was failing to do so, consideration to a take-over almost succeeded.

The New Market House, High Street, Tring,
by A. Hedges (1901).

Meetings were held in the market house in the room which had been designed as the Market Hall and Corn Exchange.  Members complained of cold feet and in 1910 the ground floor was enclosed at a cost of £90.0.0d.  Heat was, however, generated when the Surveyor, who had to cover the 25 miles of district roads, asked for £5 per year bicycle allowance, which was allowed by a small majority, but the request for a telephone at £5 per year with all local calls free was immediately refused.  Refuse collection was late and uncertain and was only able to continue when Cllr. Rothschild used his good offices to get permission for the ash carts to tip [refuse] into the disused canal at Little Tring.  Traffic through the Town now came in for attention and 1911 saw a request for a Motor Speed Limit.  This was eventually granted from Langdon Street to the Rose and Crown.  At this time it was possible to buy milk at 11 dairies and milk shops; bread from 12 bake houses; meet from 7 slaughterhouses, and to work in 26 factory premises.  616 children were at school.  Death rate 15.3 per 1000 – Birth rate 18 per 1,000 – BUT death of infants under 1 year, 61 to 1,000 births!  If since 1912 the Council has helped to bring this figure to Nil in 1972-73, it has justified its existence.

The 1914-18 War did not miss Tring.  Rate relief was allowed for houses given over to Belgian refugees and its hospital, schools and hall became Tring Military Hospital, which in 1915 was receiving patients from the Dardanelles.  The writer would have voted in support of a request from the School Managers for “Better heating at Church House and Market House, now used for the school”, for during the last winter the temperature did not exceed 40ºF on many days (I remember trying to sit as near under a gas light as possible with my overcoat on).  Council, however, became very heated and passed a resolution that “All aliens be imprisoned or deported” – this was in bad taste to say the least, considering the position of the Rothschilds and their employees, many of whom came under this heading and in many cases were fighting in the Allied Forces.  Lord Rothschild and the chairman of 16 years standing, Mr Richardson Carr, resigned immediately!  On the reverse face, however, a move to mark the award of the V.C. to Edward Barber was voted “No Action”.
 

The next Chairman, Pastor Charles Pearce, spent weeks visiting as many wounded Tring men in hospital as possible and the Council agreed to tend the graves of the fourteen soldiers who died locally and are buried in our Cemetery.

The price and scarcity of meat caused public concern and the Council set up a Food Control Committee.  They tried without success to stop animals sold in Tring Cattle Market leaving the town; they also failed to stop Council workmen leaving to work at Halton Camp for 10d. per hour!  The Armistice was greeted with the public demand via Sir Steven Collins, M.P. for a ‘War Trophy’.  This arrived in the shape of a very old German Gun, which appeared never to have been able to fire.  From its place of honour in the Market Place it was moved to Miswell Lane Recreation Ground from where it was quietly sold for scrap metal!  The further gift of an ex-service ambulance was refused owing to the cost of a garage and insurance.
 

1918 brought the great Influenza Epidemic and Health properly took precedence over business.  The surveyor was instructed to get the ventilation improved in the Empire Picture Palace, Akeman Street.  Prices came under examination and seven members formed a Profiteering Committee.  There is no report of anything being done at a stroke, but as is usual a Coal Strike followed and all the gas street lights were extinguished.  Two lamp-lighters were part-time employees and it was decided not to pay them even half wages for the strike period.

A report that boys were playing football in Miswell Lane Recreation Ground on Sundays was passed to the Police to stop it.  They refused to take any action.  It was then forwarded to the Ministry, who in those days could give a definite answer in return, which again was No!  Further complaints from Miswell Lane concerned an industrial site, where sausage skins were processed – this time the complaint was smell rather than noise!

By the mid-twenties leisure appeared on the agenda and the need for a swimming pool was noted.  Next the Education Committee added their pleas for it and within ten years a Swimming Pool Committee was set up.  The first application to set up the County Library in Tring was turned down “As against the interests of shopkeepers”.  However this was reversed at the next meeting and, to rub the result in, the books arrived on a Sunday!  The library had to be run entirely voluntarily and a payment of £2 paid by the Council was overruled by the Ministry and had to be found by public subscriptions.  By 1928, 648 people were on the list and 473 books were permanent.  In 1932 it was allowed to pay a Librarian £13 per year on the condition that it opened two nights per week, the approximate lendings being 250 per week.  In 1936 the books were turned out of Market House to the Junior School in the High Street.  In January, 1937, Mr. Thomas Grace was appointed the Chairman of the Library Committee, a post he held until its last meeting, with at least one other member who has been on the Committee becoming the Council’s longest serving Committee Chairman.

In 1928 the Health of the town was again to the fore.  The Surveyor reported over 70 cases of overcrowding and, to the M.O.H [Ministry of Health], that 34 houses were unfit, some of which had been condemned in 1914 (one or two remain today).  Many children from these homes who attended the Council School were suffering from T.B. [tuberculosis] and Ricketts.  He reported that the tenants of these houses could not afford more that 3/- to 5/- a week rent inclusive.  The Council, who were refused Ministry help, could not rehouse these people and a voluntary scheme was set up at New Road, the houses being built by a public appeal headed by Chairman John Bly.  One man without a home found to be living on his council allotment was ejected as a trespasser.  With all his extra Health work the Surveyor asked to have a typewriter, which was firmly refused, as was the public’s request to be able to pay for the newly laid-on electricity in the Town.  It was, however easy to reach Aylesbury to pay; Premier buses ran every half hour, Viking express coaches at the hours, Chiltern buses if required.

The Council received complaints that people were shopping out of Tring and tried to get the licences of the buses reduced, but by 1934 the L.P.T.B. [London Passenger Transport Board] cut all services to one per hour and did not connect with the trains.  Only after many meetings was some improvement made. It was, however, possible still to use the Canal.  76 boats were Tring registered, eleven being motor.  Road traffic was causing concern and in October 1932 the County Surveyor was asked to improve Cow Lane to the London Road junction, and two months later to consider traffic lights at the Akeman Street/Frogmore Street corner.  By 1935 the Council was refusing a pedestrian crossing in High Street, and the Road Safety Committee placed their resignation en block in the hand of the Council to try to get the crossing, which did not come until some thirty years later!  Town Planning was not a council power in 1933 but it was agreed to do all they could to oppose the setting up of a Motor Race Track at Folly Farm on land which, when this was refused, was bought to set up the Cement Works.  It was refused to signpost field paths but it did, however, under pressure from the Surveyor, draw up a map of all the known rights of way!

In 1937 a joint Planning Committee with Berkhamsted U.D.C. and R.D.C drew up a Town Plan and recommended an industrial area between the Station and New Ground.  Green belt areas were agreed and the purchase of the Woodlands pressed forward by Chairman Donald Brown M.C.  He had the difficult task to prepare for War.  An A.R.P. Committee was formed, and First Aid etc., was instructed by Cllr. Kettle, at first with little support, but the report to the Council, October 1938, that Air Raid Trenches had been dug at Miswell Lane, Dundale Road, near the Brittania, High Street and the School, brought the threat home and work really started.

With the arrival of evacuees requiring another Committee, which was most unpopular, and in September 1940 the first bomb brought War to Tring!  When Victory came, the Clerk reported 1,152 Red Warnings, 15 incidents, 36 High Explosives, 2 Land Mines, 1 Oil Bomb and a number of incendiaries, 162 houses damaged, no-one killed or injured, although the incidents included air crashes in which Service personnel died.  V.E. day had been celebrated by street parties but proposals to welcome home members of the Forces failed to get enough support, except to send most a pocket wallet.

However, a new Committee of Townspeople was forming, that of the Ratepayers Association (now Residents) and at the next Council Election they won all the seats.  From this date, a study of the Minutes of your Association gives a picture of Council proceedings in which the writer has pledged some part and I will not comment further.

To again mis-quote Mr Clement:

R. G. Grace.

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TRING FIRE SERVICE
This piece (author unknown) appears to have been written in the 1970s.

Tring Fire Brigade posing with their horse-drawn fire engine, which remained
in use for almost two hundred years before being replaced in the 1920s.

Spare a thought for the apparently impatient driver behind you next time you are in a queue of cars in Tring High Street.  Don’t discount him as another menace soon to be removed by the opening of the by-pass [opened 1973].  He could be one of Tring’s vital citizens and one day you may be thankful that no queue of traffic impedes his journey.

Why?  Well he could be driving Tring’s fire engine.  Tring Fire Station is manned by thirteen able-bodied part-time officers, three of whom live and work in Tring and are thus on permanent standby.  A fire alarm these days is not sounded by the old -fashioned siren.  Electronic wizardry provides each fireman with a personal alerter which operates within a five mile radius.  These have been available for three years and although more expensive are much appreciated by the neighbours of the siren tower.  A radio signal from Divisional Headquarters triggers a device at Tring Fire Station.  This transmits another radio beam which when received by the alerters causes them to emit a buzzing alarm.  It is then down tools and off to the fire station with grateful thanks for an understanding employer.

The Brigade with Tring’s first motor fire engine.  It was so under-powered
it could not climb the hill to Wigginton.

The staff of the station – in official jargon it is a Retained Station – come from various walks of live.  The occupations they hold include a painter and decorator, printer, farm worker, factory foreman, electricity board worker and security officer.  They are led by a Sub-Officer Gosling, and to help him in his work he has two leading firemen and ten firemen. This band of volunteers cover a wide area round Tring, including Wigginton, Pitstone, Hastoe, Cholesbury and Aldbury.  During the day only three men work within range of the alerters, but at night all thirteen can be raised by this system.  It is the first seven at the station who go out on call, six to man the fire engine and one to remain on watch at the station; not surprisingly this latter job is the less-favoured of the jobs.  These men enjoy the thrill of not knowing what they might be going to deal with when an alarm comes.  The type of call can range from a simple chimney fire, involving no mess with modern equipment; to pulling a donkey out of the canal.  The firemen can cope with all types of calamities including flooding, grass fires, motor accidents and even light aircraft crashes.  The fire engine, or pump, is modern, with a 400 gallon tank of water and a 35 foot extension ladder.  It also carries breathing apparatus, equipment to deal with chemical spillages from lorries winches and of course a two-way radio.

Tring Fire Station had at least one hundred calls a year, with happily few false alarms.  The men are proud of their record of a four minute turnout to any call, and that includes travelling from home to the station.  If you have volunteered to be woken at anytime of night after a hard day’s work, with the knowledge that you have to be in the next day at work after a call, you would expect some financial recompense.  Payment these men get, but hardly worthy of the task they perform is £1.95 per turnout for the first hour, which after tax deductions, and if a daytime call-out also loss of working hours which have to be made up, leaves a fireman with little compensation for his trouble.  But it is just such dedicated men who provide you with the security of help when you dial the triple nine.

Tring Fire Brigade with their new Leyland fire engine outside the Silk Mill (c.1930s).

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ALL BECAUSE THE FIRE BRIGADE WASN’T THERE?
by Denis Aldrige, May 2000

There had been a fire at Spencers Green in January 1926.  The Tring Fire Brigade had not attended.  Members of Tring (Urban District) Council wanted to know why the alarm bells had not been rung; who should have rung them; and why had no effort been made to go to the fire.  In other districts the police rang bells to alert members of the fire brigade.  In Tring the police had to notify Mr Gilbert Grace who maintained the alarm bells in his house.  On this occasion the police had notified Mr Grace who had then consulted Mr Putnam, Captain of the Brigade, who was nearby.  The Captain decided not to attend the fire because he believed that the brigade’s hose would not reach the nearest water supply (at Ebbs Pitt Pond below Dancers End) and he was sure that the Aylesbury brigade had a longer hose and could get there more quickly with its motor engine.

Tring police had notified Aylesbury and the Aylesbury appliance had indeed got to the fire quickly and had dealt with it satisfactorily.  Nevertheless councillors regretted that Tring Brigade could then, at least, have offered to help the Aylesbury men.  In fact, there was no certainty that horses or firemen were available in the town during the working day.  Cllr Goddard contended that seven firemen had been available.  But that was not known at the time.  Moreover councillors were aware that when a serious fire broke out in Mr Howlett’s bakery on an afternoon some months before only one fireman was to be found and the building had been badly damaged.

The immediate result of the Spencers Green fire was that Tring Council unanimously decided that its fire engine and hose cart should be fitted with drawbars to enable them both to be attached to a lorry.  Two firemen were to travel on the fire engine to control it and the remainder were to go on the lorry — Messrs Gower, Prentice and Rolfe agreed to allow their lorries to be used for this purpose. — The Surveyor was also asked to look out for a more up-to-date, second hand engine and for motor pumps on sale.  The captain of the Brigade took umbrage at the implied criticisms of his actions and gave notice of his resignation with effect from 31st March.  This distressed the Fire Brigade Committee which promptly passed a resolution expressing its confidence in Mr Putnam and asking him to reconsider his decision.  The Captain was only prepared to do so if the Council would agree to provide the Brigade with adequate equipment.  The Committee immediately asked him to draft a list of requirements in order of priority (lest the Council would not agree to buy everything at once).

A rick fire at Church Farm, Marsworth on the evening of August 7th concentrated councillors’ minds still further.  After the fire alarm had been sounded in Tring “a large crowd assembled outside the fire station and cheered ironically when the Brigade eventually got away alter a long delay -- due partly to the fact that the arrangements for hauling the fire engine with a lorry and drawbar attachment did not work very smoothly ...... the new method was tried because of the difficulty in getting the engine horsed.”  On arriving at the fire there were further problems.  The engine had not been used for some time so the leathers were dry, and for a while only “a tantalising trickle of water could be pumped.” Nonetheless the Brigade was able to save much of the 21 ton hayrick and prevented the fire spreading to farm building and to two other ricks.

The Council had already invited surrounding parishes to join a contributory scheme for the provision and maintenance of a new engine.  By 24th January 1927 it was plain that the surrounding districts had no wish to contribute.  Tring Council hoped to provide £600 from the next budget but that would not meet the cost of a motor fire engine and the other appliances in the Captain’s report of March 1926.  The Fire Brigade Committee considered the town to be well equipped with hydrants so it decided that a motor fire engine would be an unnecessary expense and suggested that the Council should buy a lorry instead.  However, early in March 1927 the Council accepted an invitation to inspect a motor fire engine at Woodbridge in Essex on the understanding that they were not committing themselves to buying one.  At the end of April, still not convinced by the demonstration, the Fire Brigade Committee wanted a demonstration at the various hydrants in Tring both with and without the engine.  The Council Chairman was certain that Tring did not need a motor engine and that it was premature to allocate £600 before they knew what support surrounding villages would give.  At this point, the Council turned its attention to a letter from Mr Grace inviting it to buy “the electric alarm bell, switches, batteries, wires, installations etc.” installed by his father.  These items had cost about £50 but he would be happy to sell them for £25.  At that point it was decided to buy a “half horsepower one mile radius siren” and eleven 50 foot lengths of hose to the annoyance of Mr Bly who considered the siren to be a great waste of money.  It would cause a commotion in the town and would not be necessary if they possessed the bells as well.

Cllrs Goddard and Hedges had grown impatient with the delay.  By mid June I927 the Council still had not been able to secure a demonstration in the town; only Portslade Council had responded to a questionnaire on the efficiency of the (Baico-Tonna) engine being considered; and surrounding villages had not indicated any willingness to contribute towards the cost.  However, Cllrs Goddard, Mead and Rodwell persuaded the Council to place an immediate order for this type of machine from Pemsel and Wilson of Boxmoor.  Anxious to reduce the burden on Tring ratepayers, councillors also agreed to ask for a donation from “certain fire insurance companies”, from Wigginton, Aldbury and Puttenham, and for a loan from “the Ministry” to meet a total cost of £600 -- £451 for the fire engine, the remainder for appliances.

The Public Works Loans Board turned them down as “the purpose for which the loan was required did not come within the class of loans for which the Board had power to make advances”.  It was the Ministry of Health which approved the raising of a loan of £550 for the Council’s purpose.  The villages still showed little sign of contributing but the lack of their support was only going to increase the Tring rate by ½d so in the second week of September 1927 the Council agreed to continue with the current procedure of simply charging a fee to cover the cost of call-out to a village fire.  Councillors also agreed to increase Brigade personnel by two or three.

12th October 1927 - official reception of the new Baico-Tonner motor fire engine.

Messrs Pemsel and Wilson brought the new machine to Tring for testing on October 12th.  It certainly pumped satisfactorily but it could not get up Marlin Hill and needed several attempts to reach the top of Hastoe Hill.  Dispute then arose between the Council and Messrs Pemsel and Wilson as to the merits of a low speed axle and a gear box to remedy the problem.  The axle would have reduced the appliance’s speed to 16 - 18 m.p.h. from its existing 35 - 40 m.p.h.  Agreement was finally reached on November 7th.  The firm gave a guarantee that with the gear box fitted — without further delay and at a cost of a further £17-10s-0d -- the fire engine would get up any of the hills in the district fully loaded.  The offer was accepted and on December 10th 1927, just a month short of two years since Tring Fire Brigade’s failure to go to Spencers Green, the Council received confirmation from the Fire Brigade Committee that the motor fire engine had indeed carried the men and full equipment up Hastoe Hill, Marlin Hill and Oddy Hill several times.  Councillors immediately agreed that a cheque for £476-2s-5d should be despatched to Messrs Pemsel and Wilson.  Whereupon Cllr Bagnall referred to unfair reports which had been circulated and asked the Press to take particular note that on November 26th “under conditions none too good as regards weather and roads, and from a cold start in the fire station” the fire engine went up Marlin Hill to the Hastoe cross-roads in nine minutes with full equipment and seven men, and then went from New Ground Waterworks up Hemp Lane to Wigginton Church in six and a half minutes.

 
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THE FIRE BRIGADE
by Jill Fowler, July 2013.

Until well into the 20th century Tring firemen would attend a fire with a cart pulled by horses.  This was said to have been bought by the vicar and church wardens in 1750.  In the 1890s and early 1900s the horses were usually provided by Mr Gower who had a removal business.  There would be frequent reports of fires in Tring, many of them chimney fires.  One more disastrous fire was in the hard winter of 1895 when Lord Rothschild’s Home Farm in Park Road was completely destroyed.  Due to frozen conditions water was not readily available.  The captain was Mr Gilbert Grace from the High Street hardware shop and he led the fire brigade until shortly before his death in 1914.

Mr Gower eventually changed to a pantechnicon for his removals and sometimes the horse cart would be pulled by a lorry.  The Bucks Herald of September 11th 1926 reported, under the title of “Motor Fire Engine”, “Surrounding villages are to be asked to contribute to a new engine, the other one, now pulled by a lorry, being completely out of date.”  The new fire engine was soon to prove its worth.  The Tring Gazette of 1928 reported: “The provision of a motorised fire engine at Tring proved to have been fully justified when the brigade fought a blaze at The Grove. The speed of its arrival enabled most the furniture to be saved, whereas the whole house would have been burned by the time the old horse-drawn engine had arrived.”

For years the Fire Brigade was housed in the Vestry Hall near the church.  An early photograph shows the firemen standing in front of the door with “Fire Engine” in large letters above them.  When the new Market House, on the corner of the High Street and Akeman Street, was completed in 1899 it replaced the old Market House that stood in front of the church.  The ground floor was open to supply easy access to the stalls.

Ten years later it was decided that the Vestry Hall was too small for the fire brigade and plans were made to convert the Market House for it.  The work was completed in the autumn of 1910.  Many older Tring people remember the sound of the air raid siren wailing from the top of the building and the firemen running down to man the engine.

There were two major fires in Akeman Street.  In 1965 a fire, said to be caused by a grain dryer, destroyed a large grain store and drying machinery at Bob Grace’s mill.  Luckily the firemen prevented the fire from spreading to the historic mill, now known as Graces Maltings.

Ten years later there was a serious fire at Rodwell’s bottling factory.  Firemen fought all night to control it, with six fire engines in all, from Tring, Berkhamsted, Hemel Hempstead and Aylesbury.  They were most concerned that the fire might spread to the nearby Natural History Museum.  The cause of the fire was unknown, but most damage was done in the storage department which housed a great deal of sugar.  The bottling department was able to carry on as usual.

A sad fire was in 1994 when Grace’s 240 year old Parsonage Place barn, thought to be the oldest in Tring, was severely damaged.  It was said to be arson and a 17 year old boy appeared at Hemel Hempstead Magistrates Court charged with starting the fire.

Eventually, as fire engines became larger, it was necessary to have a purpose built Fire Station in Brook Street.  The ground floor of the Market House has now been “re-opened” and houses a shop.

In the early days a lot of the firemen , all volunteers, were business-men, able to leave their premises at a moment’s notice when the alarm was raised.  They would have been amazed at the fire engines and equipment available today, but their devotion to their job, in spite of their difficulties, earned them the respect and gratitude of Tring people.

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WRITINGS OF FRANK JOHN BLY, ANTIQUES DEALER

The first fourteen years of F.J.B

From the local broadsheet or weekly newspapers a notice - “On the First of December in the Year of Our Lord 1904, Letitia Bly of 22 High Street, Tring was safely delivered of a male child.”  No doubt this was further repeated at the Baptist Chapel on the following Sunday where Letitia and John were members, if not from the Pulpit then certainly from mouth to mouth that “Lettie Bly had a boy”.  After a short interval a visit was paid to the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths, and there recorded that one Frank John Bly, son of John and Letitia Bly, was born on 1.12.1904.

I really remember nothing of the first five years of my life - not in any real detail - but this I do remember, in 1909 a running battle started between my dear parents and myself that was to last for nine long years - I was taken to school.

My first kindergarten was with a lot of other boys and girls whom I rather liked - or wanted to like - under the tuition of two rather dear - and to me very old - ladies, the Misses Francis and Daisy Collins at Elm House, Tring.

According to the financial means of the parents, education in Tring in my young days meant that boys went either to the National School (Church of England plus County Council Aid), the Tring Commercial School (a private establishment run by Mr Walter Edward Wright) at White House Tring, or to Berkhamsted Grammar School.  My father chose the middle course, so off I went to Tring Commercial School.  It soon became quite apparent to everyone that I should never win a scholarship to the Grammar School, so I remained under the care of Mr Wright until reaching the age of fourteen.  I have no complaint about Mr Wright.  He tried, and so did I, but we were parallel lines; our ideas just didn’t meet.  There were so many things I wanted to do in my father’s workshop, the horse to be groomed, the motor to be cleaned, anything rather than books.  But less than a month after leaving school I knew I had been wrong.  Study I must, and study I did, and it’s taken possibly all my life to make up for lost time.  But my boyhood days were wonderful.  In my father’s workshop - a building about 200 yards from the shop - were Mr Good, upholsterer and polisher; Mr West, cabinet maker; Williams Bradding, a young man doing all the odd jobs; and Lew Crockett, the groom and general do-it-all.

Mr Good always said I was a “tiresome, interfering and meddlesome child” (his favourite expression was “don’t meddle boy”).  As an upholsterer he always took a handful of tacks and while working held them in his mouth.  I found a few drops of paraffin dropped in his tack tin cause him some slight discomfort, which helped me put up with his meddlesome ways.  But I learned a lot from Mr Good.  He was a man of great patience and long before I left school he had taught me to straw web a chair seat and hand stitch a hair stuffed ‘roll edge’ on a Georgian stuff-over chair – but I never did put the tacks in my mouth, just in case!

Mr West always had all the tools I loved to use and from him I learned at a very young age how to use them – I’ve still got scars on my hands where the chisels slipped to prove it!  But again, before I left school, I had learned to know one piece of mahogany from another; French walnut from English; how to iron down veneer and cut bandings; and cut and shade in hot sand oval shell inlay.  Maybe I was wrong, but to me time spent learning in the workshop was better than sitting at a school desk.
 

William Bradding, being younger, joined in everything.  Our workshop was heated by an old iron circular ‘Tortoise’ stove, its pipe going through the wall into the fireplace and chimney of the next showroom.  One late winter evening, Mr Good and Mr West having gone home, the stove fire had gone out.  To restart it we poured some paraffin on to the hot coke.  This didn’t flame but must have turned into gas because when we put a match to it, it went with a terrific roar.  The stove didn’t move, but a large wardrobe in the next showroom did, and the hole in the ceiling where the chimney stack came through the roof left no-one within a quarter of a mile in doubt that something had happened.  Father soon arrived and it was our first ‘black and white’ show – I was black with soot and father was white with worry and rage, although he was relieved to find us both alive.  All was forgiven, except for suitable punishment.

I’ll come to Mr Crockett later, but the only one in the workshop, or anywhere else for that matter, was my father.  He could do everything.  To me he was ‘all things to all men’ apart from being a master craftsman in the workshop, a keen student of many subjects, a fine judge of English Furniture, an outstanding dealer, a great teacher and, above all, a wonderful father.  He could make the best rabbit hutches, pigeon cotes, railway stations, build the best boats and chests for birds eggs.

To my father and mother I was always known as “the boy”.  I can never remember hearing my father swear, but whenever - and it must have been on hundreds of occasions when I did wrong, or annoyed him - he said “drat the boy”, into the word “drat” he could get more feeling, more expression and wrath than any other word I have ever heard.  If it was in the morning, then one “drat” would cower me for the day.  But father practiced what he preached; “let not the sun go down upon your wrath”, and we always made sure of saying “good-night”, so that when I woke and my pigeons were at the bedroom window it was another day to explore, another day to do things in and (apart from school!) another day to be enjoyed to the full.

My father was one of the founders and secretary of the Tring Y.M.C.A.  He raised money with a lot of help from tradesmen and local gentry, and equipped a fine gymnasium in what was at one time a chapel known as the Tabernacle.  Gymnastic displays were given to raise funds for needy causes and there are some photos that show the last display in the Cricket Field just before the Great War.  As well as the men’s and boys’ teams there was a ladies’ team organised by Miss Gwen Knight, and one photo shows a display with my sister Doris on the left-hand side.

Up to about the year 1913 my father had a beautiful grey mare, ‘Dolly Grey’, who used to pull the four-wheel open furniture van.  She was Lew Crockett’s pride and joy.  Her coat was groomed until it shone, her harness was a picture, and when she went to be shod Lew would put a blanket and halter on her, put me on her back, and off I went at 7 in the morning to Mr. Stratford the blacksmith.  Dolly Grey knew her way.

Mr. Stratford always made tea in a big enamel jug.  He threw the tea into the water, put it on the forge fire, blew the bellows until the sparks flew and mash the tea.  He then poured the milk and sugar into the jug and out came tea the like of which I haven’t tasted since 1913, mainly, I think, because the jug was only washed out when it wouldn’t hold any more tea leaves!

My father bought Dolly Grey from Squire Jenny of Drayton Manor.  She never looked happy when she was in the van delivering or collecting furniture being driven by Lew Crockett with William Brackley.  I am quite sure she felt it beneath her dignity.  We also had a high, two wheel cart that father drove when out making his calls, viewing auction sales or attending Aylesbury market every Saturday when we always ‘shut out’ and stabled at the Chandos Arms livery stables and public house.  As soon as Dolly was harnessed into the cart she looked completely different.  To see her trot was a picture, head in the air, a proud and beautiful creature.  One day when father and I were going to Berkhamsted down the long hill known locally as Pendley Beeches, when Dolly stumbled and went down in a heap on the road.  Father and I were both thrown out of the cart.  I was of course crying my eyes out with fright, but father quickly picked me up and sat me on Dolly’s head which, as any horseman knows, is the only way to make a fallen horse lay quiet.  He then undid the harness, dragged the cart back so she was clear of the shafts, pulled me off her head and up stood Dolly Grey, trembling as only a hurt and frightened horse can.  Her poor knees were cut and bleeding and I can still see my father tearing up his shirt to bandage those cuts.  We all walked back to Tring.  Neither of us ever got over that incident and father never drove Dolly again.  She had to be taken to Mr Seaton’s livery stables at Aylesbury where I am sure father sent her because he wouldn’t have her put down in our own yard.  Lew Crockett had to take her.  I saw her go but my father didn’t, for he loved that grey mare.  The cart and van were sold except for the two solid wooden boards that ran along the side of the van, which were written in gold letters ‘John Bly, Antique Dealer, High Street, Tring’.  These were taken off and afterwards used on every van for many years, but eventually our Austin van was stolen in Watford.  The first thing the thieves did was to rip off the name boards and smash them – we got the van back but not the boards.  I would rather have had the boards, the van I could have replaced.
 

During the three years 1913 to 1916, so much happened.  The saddest of these years for father, mother and myself was 1916.  I had no brothers and only one sister, Doris Rose Bly.  Doris was nine years older than I, which meant that for twelve years when I was in any real trouble Doris was there, guide, comforter, friend and wonderful sister.  Then Doris died from an illness that modern medicine will cure, but in 1916 pneumonia was so often fatal.  Even after fifty-four years there is still no need for me to look at the old photography album to remember her.  She was such a pretty girl, slim built, a talented musician on piano and organ.  She played the organs at two local Nonconformist Chapels, both having manually operated bellows.  When she practiced I used to go along to blow the organ – often, I regret to say, under pressure.  Then within a few weeks of her twenty-first birthday the end came, and although my mother lived to be nearly ninety she never really recovered from losing her Doris.

Doris was engaged to be married to a Tring boy, Archibald Bishop, who, like most of the boys of that age group was in the Army.  He had been severely wounded in France and brought back to a hospital near Manchester where Doris had been to visit him a few months before her death.

Tring was still very much a Rothschild town (of which more later), but when anyone was seriously ill straw was always laid for about a hundred yards all over the main road to deaden the traffic noise, for all the horse-drawn heavy carts and vans had iron tyres and ‘strawing’ was quite a custom to the time.   The Great War was on, so the heavy army gun-carriages and transports made such a noise that Lady Rothschild had some of the older men who were still left on the “Home Farm” bring down fresh straw every day throughout Doris’s illness.  Just another thing I shall always remember the Rothschild family for, and I think that was the last time straw was laid in the High Street.

My father’s shop was one of the oldest buildings in the High Street and we all lived above and behind it.  One bedroom was built over a gateway leading to the yard at the back, and also to the garden and coach house of the adjoining property, which was the surgery and home of our local doctor.  In 1911 my father’s landlord suddenly decided to pull down the old shop together with that next door and rebuild.  This put father into difficulty, but fortunately the Old Brewery House with its yard and garden was empty and only about three doors away, so into it we moved while the rebuilding took place.  This for me was wonderful; a big house, all the old brewery buildings to explore and an immense garden, room for rabbits, pigeons and, in fact, all creatures great and small.

1911 was a very hot summer.  On the day of the great Agricultural Show in Tring Park, while we were all at the show a terrible thunderstorm broke and a man was struck by lightning and killed, which to me was awful and very frightening. The Show was run under the very active support and Presidency of Lord Rothschild.  It was always held on the first Thursday after August Bank Holiday and was known as the greatest one day show in the country.

In 1913 a wonderful thing happened. After losing Dolly Grey father didn’t buy another horse, but instead he bought a second-hand four-seater open Humber car, two years old.  Wm. Wright, the local coach builder, took off the body and replaced it with a new open van body nearly like the old horse van.  It was beautifully painted, with all the panels and spokes of the wooden wheels finely lined and varnished, and on went the old walnut and gold name of John Bly.  To me and old Lew Crockett this new motor was a great joy.  He would never go home at night – regardless of what time my father returned – until he had washed the tyres with a wisp of straw just as he always did with the horse’s hoofs, singing in a musical hissing breath as only a good old groom could.  But Lew really worked on that motor.  All the brass shone, the big oil lamps always trimmed and that van, which was one of the first motor vans in Tring, looked a picture.

That Humber was a fine piece of engineering.  Ignition was a magneto with open chain drive, but as this made starting – by hand of course – difficult.  A coil and accumulator were fitted, so one started on the accumulator and after the engine was running switched to the magneto.  This switch was marked ‘M’ and ‘A’ (magneto-accumulator) – my father told me when I asked what these letters stood for, Mestophalese and Appolion.  The clutch was a cone shape type with pads of thick leather so when one needed a new clutch lining it was the saddle and harness maker who had to do it.  The leather was usually socked in neatsfoot oil [Note] to keep it soft and smooth in action, but with a heavy load of furniture on the van the clutch slipped on every hill, so father had a better idea.  When he came to a steep hill out came the floor boards in front of the driving seat.  A plank of wood (cut to the exact length and kept for the purposes) was wedged to keep the clutch pedal down, then, with a long palette knife, Fullers Earth powder was shaken on the leather.  The wedge was then removed and, with a terrific jerk, we sailed up the hill.   The only trouble was at the top of the hill we had to stop and repeat the process, except this time the Fullers Earth had to be washed out with paraffin from a brass syringe.  All this was caused simply because my father had a van body big enough for a half a tone of furniture and two men on a motor that was only designed to carry four people!

Our coach house and workshop at that time opened out on to a semi-private road which only ran about 200 yards from the High Street to the west door of the church.  Whenever the van stood in this little road, William Brackley, who soon learned to drive, would start it for me and I used to drive backward and forward.  There was no room to turn, but going forward the road was long enough to change gear twice, then reverse all the way back and start again.  These were the only driving lessons I ever had.

All good things have to come to an end and one sad day in 1915 this van was commandeered by the military and away it went to war, less the walnut name boards, which really takes me back to 1914 and the outbreak of the Great War.  The first act which impressed me about the coming war was the day in August of the Agricultural Show and seeing all the horses of every sort, size and breed, from the fine pedigree Shire horses to the horse the farmer used to bring his family to the show.  They were all numbered and catalogued ready for war, because the start of the Great War was really a horse-war as far as transport was concerned.  The second impression was seeing Army Officers, each with a policeman, divide the town into sections, visit every house, count the rooms, count the family, then come out and chalk on the wall of the house or cottage a sign K/4, then below it one, two, three or any number.  This meant “Kitcheners fourth Army”, with one man to be billeted in this house, or two, etc., for every house had to filled.

No camps were ready and to the joy of all we ten year old boys, the soldiers were coming.  Late one night they arrived at Tring Station, marched the mile and three-quarters into the town and stood in the pouring rain, in the light of a lantern, as one went into one house, two into the next and so on. But they were not what we boys had expected.  Only the Officers and Senior N.C.O.s had uniforms, other ranks were in their civilian clothes.  They were all young volunteers, wet, cold and hungry in their rough working clothes grimed from their previous occupation, for they were miners straight out of the coalfields of the north east.  They even spoke in a dialect we couldn’t understand for we had never heard a ‘Geordie’ in our part of the country.  They were soon to be members of two proud regiments, The Northumberland Fusiliers and the Durham Light Infantry.  We had two billeted with us.  Both were regular soldiers, Regimental Sergeant Major Parker and a corporal whose name I cannot remember, but R.S.M. Parker I shall never forget.  He was the first Sgt. Major I had ever seen, or heard, and when he spoke I jumped, for he really put the fear of God in to me.  After that I never liked Sgt-Majors.  Even years afterward when I was a Private in the Second Word War, when the first Sgt-Major shouted at me I thought “I’ll bet your bloody name’s Parker”.


Note.
Neatsfoot oil is a yellow oil rendered and purified from the shin bones and feet (but not the hooves) of cattle.  “Neat” in the oil’s name comes from an old English word for cattle.  The oil is used as a conditioning, softening and preservative agent for leather.

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EARLY DAYS OF THE WAR
by Doris Miller (Neé Baldwin)

1940 saw the beginning of petrol rationing, meat and food rationing of all kinds.  Identity cards were issued as were dockets for furniture.  Everyone registered at the Food Office in Miswell Lane, which was run by Bob Kempster with Mrs Emmie Hobbs assisting him.  Later in the war our retired Tring Police Sergeant, Sergeant Mansfield, joined them.

Each person was issued with a Ration Book for meat, bacon, sugar, tea, butter, lard, margarine and cheese, also eggs, unless one kept poultry.  They were issued with poultry feed coupons, which most people bought from Meads Flour Mill.  Also in the beige-coloured ration books were “points coupons”. If you were lucky, perhaps two or three times a year, you could get a tin of fruit or fish if the grocer had had a delivery.  When your points ran out it was “hard luck” for another year.  Sweets were also on coupons as were clothes.  There was a lot of black marketing going on with people buying sweet or clothing coupons off poorer families who couldn’t afford luxuries.

By now all slaughtering was done at abattoirs only, which was Reg Sallery’s in the High Street (now Almars) and the meat distributed from there.

Syd Baldwin, the manager of Produce Butchers, New Mill, bade farewell to each of the three young men who worked for him when they were called up.  So who was going to deliver the meat to the villages on Friday nights and Saturday mornings?  There was Aldbury, Wiggington, Wilstone and Marsworth.  Syd couldn’t drive, so his daughter Doris had two quick lessons from Percy Dwight before he was called up.  She says she really hadn’t a clue, but managed somehow.

A gas-powered London bus.

The old green double-deck London Transport buses ran on town gas.  They towed quite a large trailer with a black gas cylinder attached.  It was very effective.

No-one had to go out without their Identity Card, which bore their personal number and, of course, they always had to carry their gas-mask with them.

Young couples started marrying before their loved ones were posted overseas.  If they were lucky enough to find somewhere to live, they were issued with a few furniture dockets for the bare essentials i.e. a bed, chair and table.  Pregnant women were issued with a green or blue ration book and if they were lucky enough got one or two bananas a month - if the greengrocer had a delivery.  After the birth they then exchanged the book for a green one for the child.

Black-out material wasn’t on ration as everyone had to buy it to black out their windows, after they had put masking tape, criss-cross on their window panes, to stop flying glass in the event of an air raid.

Coal was in short supply, so people used to go to the woods to collect old timber for their fires.  Many also went to the coal yard at Tring Station and filled sacks with coal-dust, then mixed it with a little dust or cement to make brickets, which burned slowly but effectively!  Towards the end of 1940, whale meat was introduced to the local butchers in an attempt to eke out the meat ration.  It was dark red in appearance, but after being exposed to air for a while it turned black.  Sad to say it didn’t catch on.  Housewives tried many ways of cooking it, with pans of onions, etc., but it was still tough and had a fishy taste.

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MEMORIES OF A TRING EVACUEE,
by Joyce Hollingworth (neè Forsythe).

When I first arrived in Tring as a very frightened little girl I wasn’t very impressed.  I was sent to a couple who didn’t want an evacuee, so I had to sleep on the bathroom floor, although I was very comfortable and warm.  The place was spotless, but being bankers they were rather posh.  Eventually I was moved to the real Tring.  There began the happiest time of my childhood when I heard someone say “Hello, my duck, would you like to go to the pictures?”  I knew I was home.

In those days Tring seemed much smaller.  I thought it was wonderful after living in Enfield, which I thought was quite countrified although compared to Tring it was a town.  There were so many new experiences for me, things that I would never have had the chance to do had I not been evacuated.  I tobogganed in the moonlight on Lord Rothschild’s Estate, tramped through the woods, “ooding” with old Aunt Flop – that meant collecting wood for her fire.  I saw a subsidence where seven trees had gone one on top of the other.  I nearly got caught scrumping greengages.  There were so many things I did that could only happen in dear old Tring.  It was all great fun for a townie like me.

My friends who looked after me were kindness itself and couldn’t do enough for me – indeed, they did everything for me.  Nell used to make my clothes out of any material she could get hold of, and I was the smartest “vac” in town.  One of my dearest memories is of Fred, Nell’s husband.  I was eating tomatoes on toast when he knocked on the back door, just back from Dunkirk.  There he stood in a uniform made up of all bits and pieces, but we were so pleased to see him.

I live on my memories of Tring and here I am, 60 years later, still in touch with the family that looked after me so well, who I love dearly and visit whenever I can.

Note: The lady who looked after Joyce was Mrs Nellie Nicholls of 17, Henry Street.

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EMUS, TOBOGGANS, FIREWOOD AND OLD TIN PLATES.

Some memories of Ron Kitchener, pictured below,
enclosed in a letter dated December 2001.

It was a renowned travelling historian who wrote that he saw emus peering over the ha-ha and boundary wall that separated Nell Gwynne’s Avenue from the Old Market Street, the site of the cattle and general market place that we tend to think of in these modern times as the Lower High Street.  I never did, neither have I spoken to anyone who could enlighten me as to that being a fact (which is not to say it was not!).
 

My earliest memories of these large, foreign, cursorial flightless birds was as a young boy in the late 1920s.  Many families would follow the fenced path extending from Park Street (once Maidenhead Street) up to Tring Park, particularly at weekends.  They would picnic, play in the park, or to continue through it, usually close to the set footpaths, and through the park wood up the cobbled track to Nell Gwynne’s Obelisk (it was a path of inclined banks, of wild flowers, snowdrops and daffodils, and always so clean and tidy) to witness many a herd of deer that ventured from the wood to the isolated fringes of the open park.  Children would run around the Obelisk (surrounded by a fence) sufficient times to be giddy from the effort, in the belief that a ghostly image of dear Nell would appear to present them with an orange, but she never did!

The final resting place was usually situated on the high headland of the Oddy Hill, there to admire the idyllic view reaching, in the east, to the Chiltern Hills and to devour the goodies from the picnic bag.  However, now to back-track to the point where we entered the park, which was through a very tall iron clapping gate, where traumatic happenings would often be experienced!  These cursorial and often ‘cursed birds’ were very aware of the walkers, which they saw as a source of food.  This was given either with generous consent or taken by some form of scrounging or intimidation by attacking the source in a persistent way.  Some were gentle, most were not – far from it!  Their size and trampling were awesome enough, but their long necks and small heads (with a penetrating glare from hypnotic eyes)  would strike like a cobra at anything that appeared edible.  It was a frightening experience!  Often they approached in an Armada, and any bright shining article – a brooch, hair clip, badge watch, pocket handkerchief or the like – that protruded from a carrier bag or handbag was deemed a tasty morsel.  Earrings were a speciality, never to be chewed but swallowed whole.  To those who recall Rod Hull’s Emu and its attack on Michael Parkinson, it was a close impression of the reality that could exist in Tring Park, and that’s a fact.  My personal experience in those tender years of childhood was to feed an emu with a spearmint chew from my pocket - needs I say more?  For want of more, it sought to rape my person and pocket!  I ran many hundreds of yards along the park path with this persistent creature in pursuit until I reached the monument gate.  Phew!  I shall never forget that experience!  So frightened and out of breath, and still to hear those plonking three-toed feet behind me, no wonder I was always carried a stick with me whenever I went walking thereafter.   I certainly did not want a like experience, neither did I seek to scrounge an orange from Nell Gwynne’s basket!  But there were several other experience, that I well recall from visiting Tring Park that i shall never forget.

It is my habit to ramble on through local history, so I will mention several other of my experiences that happened in that part of the Rothschild family’s domain.

When winter arrived, and the snow laid right and frost prevailed to glaze its surface, local folk would make tracks for Tring Park.  It seemed a time when the Rothschilds permitted the public to venture across the Park with their home-made sledges and purchased toboggans to the slopes of the high rising escarpment, where greater challenges existed.  Three main runs come to mind.  The ‘emu path’ or footpath that held close to the fence and the steep incline on the south side.  This appealed to the less venturesome, where the children would skid down on their sledges, toboggans and tea trays, without too much harm, for it levelled off to a gentle stop.  ‘The devil’s bump’ lay along the valley to the west.  It was a steady slope with a sudden drop that could take the breath away!  But the greatest challenge and the greatest thrill was the ‘leafy dell’, which required nerve and courage to face, a real thriller!  One needed to drag one’s conveyance high up the escarpment among the trees, then, not to gently sit but to leap on whilst it made off!  So many who sought to do so tempted providence.  It was necessary to manhandle the sledge amongst the massive tree trunks that blocked the way, but that was only part of it!  At the bottom of the slope were masses of long established hills that gave the final thrill, which was to take off like a plane and fly.  Very few ever completed the challenge and many were often much the worse for their experience.  I recall my last attempt, with four on the sledge!  We didn’t make it, for we hit a tree causing a school chum to suffer broken bones and hospitalisation.  The other members of the crew learned from that disaster – never again!

Yet, much later in life, as fathers do, I sought to demonstrate to our two sons that I was not past such an adventure, not down the leafy dell but the devil’s bump, and did I bump!  There comes the time to learn by foolish experience and at best to venture to show off on the gentle slopes!  But such times have passed, and to stand and watch seems wiser.

Negotiating a bump on an old tin plate, Tring Park.

But the mind still backtracks to the difficult and hard days of the past, to when the winters seemed much harsher and longer! When central heating systems were only for the rich, and (one wondered ) how to keep the homes fires burning when coal supplies and reserves where depleted and deliveries were very sparse.  Lord Rothschild gave permission for any to enter the Park and woods to collect fallen boughs to use as firewood, and many people would face the donkey work to do so.  Any form of personal conveyance was utilised – old trucks, trailers, pram chassis, cycles and baskets; shoulder carrying and even dragging by rope or chain.  T’was then I joined the trek to strap a long log to the frame of my treasured bicycle to find the load so great that it broke!

So the memories of Tring Park prevail, some wonderful, some not so!  Just too many to mention.  Now I rarely venture to the extremes of it.

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AKEMAN STREET IN THE THIRTIES AND FORTIES,
by Doug Sinclair 2008.

I was born in a room over the alley leading to Clements Place in Akeman Street on the 28 September 1927.  Thus started a wonderful and mainly happy childhood.

At a very early age I was left with my aunt Win while my mother was hospitalised.  In those days relatives or neighbours took on children in need, with no thought of monetary rewards or meddling by do- gooders.  By the time my mother came home I had bonded with my aunt, and so they decided that she would keep me for another week or two.  This stretched to the day I was called up at the age of eighteen.

I have fond memories of my Uncle Jack, a north-countryman who had come to Tring with the Northumberland Fusiliers in the First World War.  He had been badly gassed in the trenches and suffered very poor health, but he never complained and worked hard all his life.  Complaining people of this generation could learn a lot from those who really had to struggle.

As I child I lived in Surrey Place.  It was a very different place in those days.  It was approached by an arch between Batchelor’s shop and a row of cottages.  Inside was a row of derelict cottages which had fallen into disrepair.  Further into the yard was a row of three cottages.  We lived in the middle one, No 5.  There were two bedrooms with an upstairs attic, and a tiny kitchen and front room downstairs.  When I think that during the war it housed me, my aunt and uncle, and four evacuees – it really puts overcrowding into perspective!

Surrey Place was almost a community on its own.  Everybody tended to stick together as a group including Mums and Dads.  Summer evenings where an excuse to have a good old gossip and it was quite a sight to see all the ladies perched on their dustbins doing just that.

As I approach the age of 81 I feel it is time to record my memories of Akeman Street, which in the thirties was regarded as the main hub of the town.  I thought of several methods, but decided to concentrate on the myriad of shops and businesses, ranging from bakers to breweries, which used to be in the street.

The first shop at the bottom of the street – technically in the High Street – was Alex Smith the chemist.  I remember him as a dour Scot, very distinguished looking and a highly respected member of the community.  As children we used to wonder what weird and wonderful potions were stored in the large coloured carboys in the shop window – little did I think that in later years I would be cleaning it as a window cleaner.

Next came Parks Electrical.  Mr Tom Parks was the proprietor and I believe his was the first shop in the town to stock TVs.  I well remember taking our radio accumulator to be charged – I think it cost sixpence – and to be told not to spill the acid, or unspeakable things would happen to me.  On special occasions, such as the Cup Final or the Derby, Parks would put a tiny TV in his garage for people to view.  What a great day!  Phil, his son, went on to be a stalwart in the towns’ football team.

The came the Victoria Hall, which in the thirties was probably the most important building in the street.  It was the H.Q. of the British Legion – until stolen from them by Dacorum Borough Council in the 1980s – and as such housed the brass band.  In those days it was forty or more strong and a stirring sight to us youngsters in their smart blue uniforms.  The hall was also used for children’s parties at Christmas and on other the occasions.  Dances were held twice weekly and they gave lots of pleasure, especially during the war when the Americans from Cheddington Air Base would turn up.  They came in large numbers suitably controlled by the Provost Marshall and his ‘snowdrops’ (American military police) in their distinctive Jeep.  The British Legion, especially the ladies, put on many plays and variety entertainments and the large hall was always sold out.

Finally we now come to the biggest shop, that of George (another one) Batchelor.  His was the main shop in Akeman Street and he sold everything, from paraffin oil to bacon.  Most people in the street dealt with George and he ran a weekly book for most of them.  Everything was weighed up – from bulk sugar to dried fruit, such as a raisins, currants etc. – and packaged in distinctive blue bags tied with string.  I wonder what health and safety would say about the tabby cat I remember always being asleep in the shop window.  George would, with impunity, serve someone with bacon and the next person with paraffin, but nobody died.  Inside the shop’s front door was the cellar where all sorts of things were stored, very much like the Ronnie Barker comedy Open All Hours.

THREE GENERATIONS OF FARMERS
IN TRING
by Stephanie Wells, March 2019.

I feel very privileged to be born, and still live at Cow Lane Farm, where my family have farmed for over 90 years.  This is mainly due to the foresight of my grandfather Walter James Wilkins Snr who applied for 10 acres of land being offered to returning servicemen after the 1st World War.  The Council had purchased land from large landowners (Rothschild here) and were offering plots to rent to help servicemen start making a living again.

Grandfather did not do service but was in a reserved occupation namely taking hay and straw to London by horse and wagon and bringing back soot to use on the fields as fertiliser.  This was taken from the cellars, bagged up and put on a train at Euston to be collected at Tring Station for storage in the roundhouse at Pitstone Windmill.  My father Walter James Wilkins Jnr also went on these journeys as young as 5 years old and remembers staying overnight in pubs, sleeping on benches or on the floor tied up in a sack to keep the rats off.  Approaching London, a steep hill had to be negotiated and a spare horse was available for 6d to hitch to the wagon to help pull the loaded cart to the top.

He was also a horse dealer, mainly for the coal trade and we have kept a logger which came from a stable in London (I have more).  They were used in the tethering ropes in the stables to keep the ropes taut so avoiding the horse’s leg getting tangled up.  Soldiers were sometimes on the lookout for horses to commandeer for the army.  They would stop you and remove the horse and replace with an old nag to get you home.  If word was about that the any were in the vicinity, an alternative route was found home.

Among the WJW Snr’s other occupations were Baker, Ground Worker and Bargee.  Father remembers him walking to Watford and other large towns to dig trenches and coming home only at weekends.  He had a spell on the horse-drawn barges on the canal.  In fact any job to put meat on the table to provide for his wife and 6 children (1 boy & 5 girls).  He also kept a donkey which he rode to Tring Station to help unload goods at Tring Wharf on the canal.  The donkey threw him one day and arrived at Tring Station without him.

He was educated at New Mill School where the first signs of his future character began to emerge, judging by one story he enjoyed relating.  As punishment for a misdemeanour he was told to stand in the corner with his hands held over his head.  The long-suffering teacher piled writing slates on his hands and when asked if he had enough, he replied “No Sir, pile them up - I can take more”.  When the pile was a high stack, he dropped his hands and the whole lot shattered.

MARRIAGE AND A HOME

The second generation: W J Wilkins with
Beecham and Blossom, Cow Lane, c. 1930.
Photo courtesy Mike Bass.

After meeting my grandmother from Bulbourne whose surname was also Wilkins (incidentally my mothers’ parents also had that surname), they moved into 7 Bulbourne Road, New Mill and lived there until his death in 1972 aged 92.  The house had a yard and outbuildings where his various animals were kept including a cow.  I remember a well in the garden where the 10 gallon churns were let down on a rope to keep the milk cool during hot weather.  During the war my father erected an Anderson shelter and I can remember going down some very slippery chalky steps to this smelly and damp and dark room where my grandmother stored her bottled fruits and other preserves.  Another important building was the dairy where the milk was processed before being delivered on the milk float.

DAIRY FARMING AND DELIVERING THE MILK

After acquiring the 10 acres at Cow Lane as the first Hertfordshire County Council tenant (info given to me by John Hunt, H.C.C. Land Agent - I have also seen documents listing applicants and minutes from meetings discussing them), he acquired further plots as tenants dropped out and eventually had 25 acres, but no buildings.  He shared a cowshed at Dunsley Farm until the complex of buildings was erected about 1933.  This consisted of a cowshed with standings for 8 cows and a mixing house with 2 coal-fired boilers to heat water and boil up swill.  This area was later used to enlarge the milking parlour to hold 12 cows.  A stable, box and dairy together with various homemade sheds made up the smallholding.  The Dutch Barn was erected, probably in the 1950s.  In 1938, the year my parents married, a house was built.  Grandfather wanted to remain at New Mill so the newlyweds moved in and my sister and I was born there during the war.  Another 25 acres were added in about 1960, making 50 acres.

My father worked on the farm all his life and never thought about doing anything else.  In 1939 he was included in the tenancy agreement.  He helped deliver milk at 9 years old as well as working on the farm.

The Milk Floats were probably built by Easts at Berkhamsted and maintained and painted by Bushell Bros at New Mill [Ed. - proprietors of the Tring Dockyard, a boat building and repair business].

I was occasionally allowed to harness the horse to the milk float - checked afterwards by father of course.  I also loved putting the cardboard tops onto the bottles.  They came in long tubes.  A popular pastime was making woolly balls from these milk tops as they were perfectly round with a hole in the middle.  Milk was also dispensed from a large brass churn on the milk float, engraved with our name.  Customers left various containers on the doorstep and measures were used to give the exact amount required.  The horses knew the route and whilst Punch (as grandfather was known) chatted to the ladies at the door, the horse moved on to the next house.  Milk was delivered 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year, even Christmas, and in all weathers.  All the horses were of good quality and I recall sitting in the High Street School in the afternoon and hearing the fast clip-clop of horse’s hooves as the horse knew it was on its way home.  The horses worked one week on, one week off, and during their rest week I had the opportunity of riding them around the farm.  We also had ploughing horses and I spent many a happy day sitting on their backs up and down the field.  A good day’s work was one acre per day.  As a matter of interest one of our bouting ploughs [Ed. - a double-furrow plough] is on show at Dunsley Farm together with a mower for cutting hay.  I also let them have a weighing machine for sacks as they are better seen there than at Cow Lane.

In the mid-1950s the milk round was sold to West Leith Farm.  This was due to pasteurisation regulations coming in. Grandfather wanted his customers to have his own milk - not anybody’s.  We continued to milk and it was collected by lorries until bulk tanks were required.  At this point a decision was made to give up milking and stick to suckling cows and rearing calves.

The Milk Float was sold to Hunters Farm at New Ground for £2. 10s.0d. and used as a donkey cart for the children (note: shafts cut off).  Dacorum Heritage Trust acquired the cart at a cost, I believe, of £400 in the late 1980s.

‘PUNCH’ WILKINS

Grandfather was very well known in the town and became known as Punch.  He was often called out by the police if there was any trouble in the pubs.  He only had to walk in and everything went quiet.  He often administered ‘justice’ in Bank Alley while the police turned their backs.  He was also known to tar and feather anyone who upset him and gave this treatment to his son-in-law outside the Bothy after he had abandoned his wife and children.  During his life on the canal, his fighting prowess was put to the test when a coloured man known as the ‘King of the Canal’ always insisted he put his boat through the lock first.  Punch objected and a bare knuckle fight, lasting for hours, ensued on the towpath at Northchurch.  Grandfather won, leaving a sleeve from his shirt, made by grandmother, on the hedge where it remained, marking the site for years to come.

Wally 'Punch' Wilkins.
Photo courtesy Mike Bass.

My father continued as tenant until his death in 2006 at the age of 91.  He was the longest-serving H.C.C. tenant.  The Council asked me if I would like to continue the tenancy, farming the smallholding in a traditional way, as before.

WARTIME

I have wonderful memories of my childhood.  During the war, we had Jewish evacuees named Hille who designed and made high-class furniture in London.  They more or less took over the house but were very good to our family.  They had a daughter a little older than me and I have faint memories of being pushed into Tring in a big pram by her Nanny - one curly haired dark child and a curly haired ginger child the other end.

German prisoners of war came in a lorry to work on the farm all day unaccompanied and collected at night to go back to their billet at Northchurch.  They had an accordion and sat on the straw bales singing, having their lunch break.  They also made me toys from wood, decorated by burning patterns in the wood.  A pecking chicken item comes to mind.  Dad did fire watching duties with Miss Galpin a neighbour.

CHILDHOOD

I followed my father and grandfather attending New Mill School.  The bad weather of 1947/8 prompted my parents to send me to Tring School instead as there was a bus into the town from the bottom of the lane.  During that winter, the school was open every day and the children dried their wet clothes on the railings around large stoves, one in each classroom.  These stoves often smoked and the children had to cram into the other classrooms for lessons and dinner.  Meals were not provided at first and I went to lunch at 7 Bulbourne Road until a small kitchen was built on the side of the school.  We still had to eat our lunch at our desks.  The two teachers were Miss Needham and Mrs Pearson who were sisters and lived together in the School House at the end of the classrooms.  They had a little black car.  Various modes of transport took me to school and back.  I could be on the milk float, on dad’s crossbar or the crate on my cousin’s grocery delivery bike, but mainly it was shank’s pony.

When not at school, most of the time I was with my father.  He was a good thatcher and I enjoyed helping him prepare the straw.  Farming was labour intensive and many hours were spent hoeing the swedes and mangolds and turnips used to feed the cattle in the winter.  They were stored in long clamps made of earth and straw and when needed, were dug out and sliced in a large machine ready to mix with toppings, a by-product of flour making at Meads Flour Mills at New Mill.  Swill was also mixed in.  This was collected from Pendley Manor where soldiers were billeted during the war.  We also delivered milk there.  Dorian Williams let us have some land to put our cows on (where the football and rugby clubs are now).

Hot days harvesting were often followed by a thunder storm at night.  These seemed to go on forever.  We never seem to get these nowadays.  There was always a race to get the sheaves into shocks before it rained.  The harvest was brought in by horse and cart, and hay and straw ricks built and thatched followed later in the year by a threshing machine.  My family took part in these activities.  Mum wore dungarees with string tied around the legs to stop mice running up.

We never had holidays except maybe a few days with my Aunt in Worcestershire, but father rarely came.  We looked forward to Christmas though when a pig was killed and all the meat was used.  Faggots and chitterlings were popular and Mum made lovely brawn.  Trips to Aylesbury Cattle Market on Saturdays were our only days out.  We stopped mostly in Tring which had all you needed. Tring Market was on Mondays.

We owned the Pound Meadow for some years until the Town Council compulsorily purchased it for playing fields.  They paid grandfather £2,000 for it but he would rather have had the meadows for grazing.  My sister and I had to stand guard at the gates of the big houses in Station Road when the cattle were being moved to Pound Meadow.  Some people may remember Flanagan’s Fair.  Grandfather used to like sitting in the control box of the Dodgems chatting to Mr Flanagan.  I can also recall circuses with animal acts being popular.

A visit to the blacksmiths was always exciting - leading the heavy horses along the Station Road trying to avoid their feet was a challenge.  The horses were tied up and under cover, but outside to await the Blacksmith’s attention.  The acrid smell of the smoke arising from the hooves was memorable.  The inside of the Smithy was like Dante’s Inferno when the two ovens/forges were made hot with bellows.  Quite often I would call in to watch the Blacksmith on the way home from school.

FARMING TODAY

I have continued to raise calves which stay with their mothers in the fields for 10-12 months.  They are then sold to a farmer in Halton who collects them in his own transport thus avoiding the stress of markets and long journeys.  They are raised traditionally with no fertiliser or weed killer being used, only manure.  Consequently the farm is species rich both in plants, hedges and birdlife, and has caught the attention of the Wildlife Trusts who have conducted a survey hopefully leading to Higher Level Stewardship.  I have also hens and geese, and grow vegetables, some of which are sold in Dunsley Farm Shop.

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MEDICINE IN TRING - A SHORT HISTORY
by Dr. D. F. E. Thallon, August 2000.

When I was first asked to compile a history of medical care in Tring, I thought there would be an abundance of material which merely had to be unearthed.  Sadly this proved not to be the case.  I recalled that there had been a cupboard full of dusty documents at our old surgery at 23 High street, and I thought they might provide a wealth of information.  Unfortunately they had been lost, probably during our move to Rothschild House in 1988.  Therefore I had to rely on the reminiscences of partners and colleagues of mine over the years as well as the memories of local historians.  Some of their revelations, I have to say, have been both fascinating and fruitful.

I could find very little material earlier than about the middle 1920s.  There were some anecdotes however.  For instance, for many years there was a speaking tube that ran from the doctors house at 23 High Street to the groom’s room on the other side of the road.  This was used at night when the doctor had to make a night call and the groom was required to get the horse and trap ready.

Therefore the story will have to start in about 1925, when the senior incumbent at the practice at 23 High Street was a Dr Brown.  With the passage of time he has become a somewhat shadowy figure, but he and a Dr Carpenter practiced together for some years, followed by Dr O’Keefe, who was still living in Tring when I arrived in 1962.  He and Dr Norman Knox, together with Dr Christopher Cole, whose family lived in Tring for several generations, were in partnership until the beginning of the NHS in 1948.

Dr O’Keefe was, I understand, someone who inspired great confidence and had a wonderful bedside manner.  He treated the more well-off section of the community, while his partner, Dr Carpenter, dealt with the rest.  Lord Rothschild, who was one of Dr O’Keefe’s patients, required him to visit every day.  He was one of the first people in Tring to own a motor car, having previously used a motorbike to do his visits.

Dr Carpenter did his consultations from a high desk in the waiting room, so it seems that confidentiality took a back seat!  A Miss Glanville, reputedly a formidable woman, ran the dispensary and also sent out the bills.  Fees were quite arbitrary and depended on what it was thought the patient could afford.  The less well-off joined a ‘club’ and paid a fixed amount a year, as well as a shilling for the (almost) obligatory bottle of medicine which was prescribed after most consultations.  The expression ‘on the club’ is still used by patients today and I have always assumed that it dates from those pre-NHS days.  At that time practices depended largely on private patients for their survival, and the doctor's wives had the vital job of calling on all the more affluent new arrivals in the area in the hope that they would join their practice.

Medicines for patients living in outlying areas were lefl in an open cupboard outside the surgery for collection at a time that suited them.  Such prescriptions included items such as sedatives, a practise which just would not be possible today.  The system was still in use, however, until about fifteen years ago.  It worked well and was never abused.  I doubt if this would still be the case.

There were, of course, other medical practices in the town during this time, notably Dr Middleton-Brown.  He practiced from a surgery close to the United Reform church in the High Street.  He was considered very high class and had a French wife as well as three daughters, who were heavily chaperoned.  He was succeeded by Dr John Martin, followed by Doctors Beasley, Steven, Newton and, at the present , Hall-Jones and his wife Dr Susan Osbond, as well as Dr Side and his partner Dr Hazel Butland.  Dr Vicky Plumb also practiced single-handed in Queen Street until she retired some years ago.  Mention should also be made of Dr Neil Saunders who used to help the practices out a great deal for many years until his death in 1996.  Neil’s first love was music.  He was a composer of considerable ability and lectured on the History of Music at London University.  I was never quite sure how he found time to get a medical qualification!

If a patient needed hospital care, they were usually admitted either to the West Herts Hospital at Hemel Hempstead, or to the Royal Bucks Hospital at Aylesbury (Stoke Mandeville Hospital did not exist before the Second World War).  Patients needing long term care who could not be dealt with at home were usually admitted to St Paul’s Hospital in Hemel Hempstead.  This was originally a workhouse and has been closed now for some years.  Locally it had an unenviable reputation which, probably unjustifiably, lingered on.  Its poor reputation was probably acquired many many years ago, but memories can be long and I can still remember the apprehension of patients who had to be admitted there.

Until the end of the World War II there were also two fever hospitals, one at Little Tring and the other on the outskirts of Aldbury.  Patients with diphtheria and scarlet fever were invariably sent there, though other infections were treated at home, after which the house was fumigated.  There was also a nursing home in Station Road where, if necessary, surgical procedures could be performed under a general anaesthetic.  It was quite usual for the surgeon to come from London on these occasions.  As a historical footnote it is worth noting that there are the remains of a Pest House in the woods outside Wigginton where, presumably, patients needing isolation were sent.  This may well date from mediaeval times.

As with so many other aspect: of life in the town, the Rothschilds were influential in the development of medical services.  Lady Rothschild, a very considerable person in her own right, paid for the nursing home in Station Road, which was built around 1887, as well as the fever hospital in Little Tring built in approximately 1900.  They were also generous in other ways; for instance they provided a nurse to see to all their employees and their dependants (a high proportion of the local population), and, many years ago, when there was a very ill patient living in the High Street, they arranged for straw to be put down to cut down the noise from the passing traffic.

I am greatly indebted to my ex-senior partner Dr Christopher Cole, whose knowledge of these parts is encyclopaedic, for his help in compiling this short history.  My thanks are also due to Michael Adams, also a retired partner of mine, Nora Grace, Wendy Austin and Ron Kitchener, who all had pertinent comments to make.

An extract from Dr. Fallon’s obituary.
 

David Thallon studied medicine at St. Thomas’s Hospital.  There he met his wife Jenny, then a student nurse, and they married a day after his final exams.  For the next 2 years they both worked in hospitals attached to St Thomas’s and in Burton-on-Trent.  David and Jenny came to Tring in 1962 where David joined a General Medical Practice, working there for the next 30 years.  During his career in Tring he was for many years school doctor at the Arts Educational school and also looked after the nuns at St. Frances de Sales.  David died on the 27th January 2019.

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SEVENTY YEARS AGO
by Dennis Aldridge, October 1999.

The enquiring newcomer to Tring soon becomes aware of the improvements introduced by the Rothschilds.  Local historians or biographies of the family draw attention to slum clearance, the provision of a hospital, and the gift of land for additional housing.  Local mock Tudor buildings prove to be the work of Huckvale, the architect employed by the Rothschilds.  Substantial houses of a distinctive red brick are recognised as dwellings of the more important estate employees.  Elderly neighbours of the newcomer will relate rosy recollections of childhood days helping with harvests well within the present town boundary; of cycle rides on a virtually traffic free A41; of fun and games at crowded Agricultural Shows in Tring Park.  Present day glimpses of the surrounding woodland and the hills rolling along to Ivinghoe complete the new arrival’s impression of an early twentieth century idyll.  The Bucks Herald of March 22nd 1929 presents a somewhat different picture.  Tring Urban District Council had “promoted” a public meeting in the Market House the previous Friday evening to discuss a proposition to build houses to be let at a very low rental.  The meeting was chaired by the Chairman of the Council, Mr John Bly.  Among those present were the Vicar, the Rev. T. V. Garnier, Councillors Miss Boyson, F. B. Fells, G. Goddard, E. Houchen, H. J. Baldock, C. R. Tyrrell, and A. T. Ives along with Messrs. A. Butcher, A. W. Vaisey, M. C. Kemp, M. A. Young, E. Wright, F. J. Bly, A. Brooke Turner (clerk to the Council), H. N. Hedges (surveyor), and Nurse Shore.

Dr Sparrow, the main speaker is quoted as saying: “I could take you to 20 houses in Tring in which you would not like to live.  Some would not be fit to bring up pigs in.  Landlords round here give their pigs more air and light.  I believe there are something like 100 houses that ought not to be lived in.  At any rate, 25 are not fit to live in, in Church Lane, Albion Place, Stratton Place and Providence Place.”

Dr Sparrow was the assistant TB officer for the district and the medical officer in charge of the infant welfare centre in Akeman Street.  He had been dissatisfied with the housing conditions for many years although he admitted taking little action for six or twelve months when fewer cases of illness came to his attention.  But many of the children living in these conditions suffered from debility, rickets, unhealthy tonsils and anaemic debility.  He urged people who did not realise the need for rehousing to go and look for themselves.  “They could ask themselves how they would like to live in those houses, without any backs at all, where the sun never got, where they got nothing but a scullery window, looking on to a high bank.”

Dr Sparrow had seen in Watford, in Northchurch and in Tring and on Bunstrux-hill a tremendous change in a number of children through an improvement in their housing conditions.  There had been a case of seven children and their two parents, all tubercular.  “They all went away to institutions except the mother, who was never able to go.  They got into a Council house four or five years ago and now all of them were cured except the father.  It was too late for the mother.  She would never be cured.  Even one of the children, who was on her back for seven years, was now at work.”

The provision of more houses for the poor was an urgent matter in which everyone in Tring should be interested.  Dr Sparrow therefore urged Tring to make a big community effort and to aim at building 100 houses to re-house those living in the worst conditions.  The audience heartily applauded him and Mr Vaisey, Clerk to the Urban District Council for over 50 years, agreed that a very serious state of affairs existed in Tring.  Consequently the Council had decided, said Mr Vaisey, to start an association which could hold the property (the houses they proposed to build), and to borrow money on debentures for the purpose of starting the work.  The Council wanted loans and gifts to raise £4,000 to build 8 houses for renting at 5/- a week.  Lady Rothschild had offered to take up £1,000 in debentures; Mrs Rothschild’s family and Mrs Williams had each offered a further £500.  In fact £2,400 had already been pledged before the meeting.  Those present unanimously supported Mr Vaisey‘s proposal to proceed and a further £401 were given or pledged.

The Vicar hoped that once people had moved into the new houses, the old over-crowded ones would not be re-occupied.  Only if they had been reconditioned and only let to small families was the reply of the Chairman, Cllr. John Bly. -- Church Lane and Stratton Place did not disappear completely until Budgens, the car park and Dolphin Square were built in the early 1970s.

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THE TRING ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROSECUTION OF FELONS
March 1996.

The Tring Association was started in 1824 for the purpose of protecting the property of members and bringing to justice all felons offending against them.  Fees were based on the size of the member’s property.  In 1888 Lord Rothschild paid 10 guineas, but the average fee for shops or public houses was 7/6d.  If premises were damaged or something stolen, the Association would circulate reward posters, and also pay the prosecution solicitors fees.

Records show that in 1845 a Mr George Webb was successfully convicted by solicitors, G & H Faithful, and the man transported for life.  On 26th May 1845 Inspector English of the Herts Rural Police claimed £1.13.6d for expenses involved in the case.
 

By 1881 the punishment was less harsh and solicitors A. V. Vaisey noted that the defendant, who was convicted for stealing apples, was fined 15/— or seven days hard labour in default. By 1926, in the minutes of the AGM, it was proposed that the Association should be wound up and the assets divided amongst local charities, because membership had been falling since the War and it was considered that the objects for which the Association was formed were now obsolete.  This was duly done in the following year.

We have no record of Mr Webb’s crime. Does anybody else?

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THE CLUBS OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO
by Jill Fowler, April 1997
 

In the last decade of the 19th century there were, as there are now, numerous clubs and societies to join.  There were sports clubs, the Oddfellows, the Agricultural Society, the Primrose League and many others.  In June 1891 it was reported that the Tring Mechanics Institute had found a new home in the house opposite the Post Office, just built by Mr Gilbert Grace with a reading room described as "very inviting and comfortable."  The Tring Branch of the Herts Technical Instruction Association received a record total of £97-4s-7d from the County Council for tools and appliances and the payment of instructions (Bucks Herald May 6th 1893).  Many clubs were reported as having a meeting or supper in the Rose and Crown, as did the Tring Station Quoits Club on April 27th. 1893.

One of the most bizarre must have been the Tring and District Sparrows Club.  Founded in 1891, 20,000 sparrows were destroyed over the whole area in the first year.  In 1893 (Bucks Herald May 27th) it was said that 8,000 had been killed since last October and added, “The efforts of members are now being directed to their nestlings with a view to extermination.  Should the efforts of the club members be as successful this year the farmers in the locality will be freed from 11,000 of these impudent, destructive little pests.”  Prizes were awarded to Messrs J. Fulks of Hastoe, T. Pratt of Marsworth, T. Mead of Aldbury and T. Mead of Gamnel, presumably for record kills.  There is no description of the methods used to wipe out the sparrow population, but it obviously didn't work and no record of the demise of the Tring and District Sparrow Club has yet been found.

A number of societies and voluntary groups enjoyed the patronage and support of the Rothschild Family in the late Nineteenth Century as can be evidenced from the following article in The Bucks Herald on Saturday 4th November 1893.

The Church Lads’ Brigade and Lady Rothschild - Last Monday evening there was a large muster of the Tring Company of the Church Lad‘s Brigade in the National School Yard, over seventy being present.  After a short preparatory drill, the boys marched under the command of their Captain, the Rev. S. Stuart Stitt, to Tring Park, where they had been invited by Lady Rothschild, the members of Tring Brass Band at their head, playing soul-stirring martial music.  When they arrived at the door of the Mansion, and had halted and formed up in line, Lady Rothschild and party came and inspected the boys.  After the lads had executed some simple manoeuvres very credibly, her Ladyship expressed her great pleasure at what she had seen, and said that she hoped on her return from the seaside that she would see more of them, promising the youngsters a great treat in the future.

The Tring Lads’ Brigade
[Ed. - the names of some shown here now appear on the Tring War Memorial]

What her Ladyship seemed particularly struck with was the smart and cleanly appearance of many of the lads who hailed from the the very poorest quarters of the town, who now not only go to drill once a week, but Sunday School and Church every Sunday.  There is no doubt that this organisation has met a great want, in getting hold of boys [that] hitherto seemed unapproachable on the path of good.  The thing to be desired, however, is that there should be a large room built in some central position for their use, and furnished with games and papers, where the boys, would be free to go for an hour or so every night in the week when they had nothing else to do, where they could be warm and well looked after, and kept out of the streets.  The Church Lad‘s Brigade is to be congratulated, however, for the kindly interest taken in it by Lady Rothschild and other ladies of influence in the neighbourhood.

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TRING AND THE MOTOR CAR
by Jill Fowler, November 1998

The first mention of the car in Tring appears to be in November 1898 when the Bucks Herald stated briefly that “On Sunday a Motor Car passing through the town came in for a considerable share of attention.”  Until then horses, and particularly those pulling carts, all too frequently made the news by causing a variety of accidents, some of them fatal.  Horses for transport were not phased out until well into the next century but the better off Tring residents did become interested in the motor car, Gilbert Grace of the High Street shop was said to be the first person to own one.

The vehicle, seen outside the Tring Silk Mill, belonged to Walter Thomas,
manager of Tring’s electricity power station located in the old Silk Mill

By June 1901 accidents involving cars became news.  On a Sunday evening a car being driven from Wendover hit the bank in Aylesbury Road, the occupants being thrown out and some injured.  Tring’s Dr Le Quesne dealt with their injuries and they were driven home to Luton by a conveyance (probably horse drawn) from the Rose and Crown.  The following Wednesday four gentleman were in a car coming through Tring and decided to blow the hooter.  This started a pony in a trap belonging to Mr F. Johnson, the jeweller that was standing outside his shop.  Mr Johnson rushed to the pony's head but both were thrown over and the trap damaged.  The paper said “The gentleman in charge of the car, who gave his name as Mr W. V. Thome of 43 Cedar Street, New York, amply compensated Mr Johnson for the damage to his trap and for his own personal injuries, before proceeding on his journey.”

During the next few years several Tring firms applied to sell motor fuel, though many people have had their doubts about the car, as more reports reached the paper of frightened horses and injured people.  In August 1905, Harry R. Pope of London was charged at Berkhamsted Sessions with speeding through Tring at 34 mph.  Since the Police in those days were only supplied with bicycles one wonders how Mr Pope was convicted.  The method sounds too simple to be true - “Evidence was given by P.S. Hewitt and P.C. Alldridge of defendant passing the 27th milestone from London at 9.22 and by P.C. Davis to his passing the 31st milestone at 9.29.  Their watches, the constable added, were checked at 8.30 that morning.”

The same year the Automobile Association was founded when the speed limit was still 20mph.  It was said they would warn their members if they were approaching a speed trap.  The following year, 1906, hill climbing tests were held at Aston Hill with 40 to 50 cars starting from the Rose and Crown.  Graces were servicing cars in their workshops in Parsonage Place and Wright and Wrights had been established for some years, though not under that name until 1910.

By the 1920s the motor car was no longer a rarity and nowadays people living in the older part of Tring know the disadvantages of their homes built in roads not built to accommodate the motor car.  Just a hundred years after the residents came out to gaze at the Motor Car, they are more likely to watch as a pony and trap passing by, as they occasionally still do.

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TRING STATION - TRUTH AND HALF TRUTH
by Tim Amsden, April 1999.

Many a traveller has wondered why Tring station sits peacefully in the countryside, a mile and a half from the town that bears its name.  Looking for a gnarled old country swain to explain it, he will be told it was all because of old Lord Rothschild, who didn’t want a railway through his park.  It serves well enough, but isn’t, unfortunately, even remotely true.

The railway, promoted in 1833, sought the quickest route from London to Birmingham.  It had to negotiate the barrier of the Chiltern Hills and was unable, so it was believed, to operate on steep gradients.  Robert Stephenson, its builder, chose the Gaddesden valley, but local landowners resisted and the valley of the Bulbourne, further south, was selected.  From a height of some 120 metres at Cow Roast, this route reached a peak of 130 metres at Folly Bridge before falling to 100 metres at Great Seabrook near Cheddington.  Even so it requires a cutting of some 17m deep between the station and Pitstone, at the highest point on the whole line.

Lord Rothschild had the temerity not to be born until 1840.  His grandfather had, it is true, rented Tring Park as a summer residence in 1834 from its owner, the industrialist William Kay.  The Rothschilds did not own Tring Park until 1872, thirty five years after the railway was built.  William Kay would probably have relished a railway but there was little likelihood one would ever come to Tring, unless it were a branch line like the one later proposed to come over the hills from Chesham.

Tring sits beside the old Roman route through the Chilterns which ran westwards from St Albans to Alcester.  Had the promoters of the London to Birmingham railway wanted to take in Aylesbury or even Oxford on their line it is still unlikely that it would have come any closer to Tring than it does.  The plateau on which Tring stands has the 160 metre contour at Pendley Beeches and at Tring Hill a further 30 metres to tackle!  A cutting twice the depth of the one eventually built would have been out of the question, and a tunnel of that length would have been grotesquely expensive.

Above: Tring Station ticket office once upon a time - the Station Master’s house is on the left.
Below: Tring's first station motor bus, 1914.

In any case, there was little to be gained by serving a place of fewer than 3,000 souls.  The line was designed to convey freight from the industrial heartland of England to London and the sea, not to provide a passenger service to a string of little villages.  It succeeded in eclipsing the Grand Junction Canal, built only thirty eight years before on the same route and for all the same reasons.

Originally there was to have been a station at Pitstone, but Tring businessmen such as the Browns petitioned for one nearer Tring.  The railway later split the difference by building one at Cheddington also, largely for the benefit of the Rothschild mansion at Mentmore.  Station Road was built in 1838 and when there was a Lord Rothschild to whizz along it to the station and his job in the City, whizz along it he did.

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MEMORIES OF TRING IN THE THIRTIES
by Jerry Spencer, May 2004.

I left school in 1930 at the age of 14, as most children did in those days.  My first job was at Brandons the large furniture shop in the High Street.  I worked in the shop and also had to unpack parcels.  Tea services would arrive in huge crates up to five feet high, tightly packed in straw and I used to climb inside and gradually unpack them.  No article was ever broken.  The furniture, mats and carpets were sold upstairs and the crockery downstairs in the basement, stacked on shelves.  The customer would go downstairs to choose a tea set, which in those days cost about 3s-6d!  There was also a workshop outside where the men used to repair furniture.  I liked to creep out there and watch them at work.  Every year the Rothschild family would go to London for the season and the men from Brandons used to go to the Mansion to do any repairs that were needed.  They had a special room for their use but you had to wear slippers if you went into any room in the Mansion.  I went too and one of my jobs was to check all the windows in case they needed new sash cords.  Also the carpets were taken up one by one and taken to an area of gravel behind Jones, the saddlers shop, run by Mr Jones and his daughter.  Then an old man, I think named Mr Gomm, used to beat the carpets with a long stick, then sweep them before they were returned to the Mansion.

Brandons shop is third from the right.

Brandons was one of Tring’s biggest shops and they had another branch in Chesham.  They continued to trade until quite late in the century.  Many Tring families still have furniture and other household items bought from Brandons in their houses.

I earned 12s-6d a week and stayed there until I was 16.  One thing I did learn was to pack up parcels expertly, a skill that still comes in useful from time to time.  Then, two years after I left school, an opportunity arose for my career to take a different turn, a move that had a profound influence on the rest of my working life.  In 1932, when I was 16, my dad spoke to a man in a pub and heard that Robins and Marriott, the garage in the High Street, now Metcalfes, were looking for an apprentice.  I had worked for Brandons, the furniture store, for two years, but was keen to go into the motor trade.  I was taken on at 2s-6d a week.  In those days it was generous to pay an apprentice, many families had to pay for their son’s training.  I started by selling petrol and helping to repair cars and motor bikes.

I had my first motor bike at 16.  The local undertaker had had a bad accident on his motor bike and my boss told me to call in on the way home and ask if he would sell the badly damaged bike for £3.  This he did and it was taken to the garage and repaired, and 6d a week was taken from my wages until it was paid for.  As I lived at New Mill in those days it was very useful.  Petrol was then 1s-6d a gallon.  I had a motorbike licence at 16 and a car licence at 17.  You didn’t take a test in those days.

Lord Rothschild did not own a car himself so he hired one from Robins and Marriott.  It was a large Wolseley which was kept for his use.  The chauffeur, Albert Christopher, was employed by Robins and Marriott and that was his only job.  He had to take Lord Rothschild to London and bring him back most week days.

Sometimes when they came back early he would ask the chauffeur to pick him up in 30 minutes to take him to the Museum.  As half an hour wasn’t long enough for the chauffeur’s lunch break (he was due an hour) I had to put on a blue jacket over my dirty overalls and a peaked cap and go to pick up Lord Rothschild.  The only words he ever spoke to me were “Take me to the Museum”; and when he got out of the car he would just say “Wait”.  By the time Lord Rothschild came out the chauffeur was back and I would ride his bike back to the garage.  When the Rothschilds had visitors they would hire another car and I would pick them up or take them back to the station.  I had to go up to the Mansion every Saturday morning and collect any empty petrol cans, fill them up and take them back to the garages at the Mansion.

I enjoyed my apprenticeship and later joined forces with the foreman of the garage, Ernie Goddard, and we opened our own garage in Akeman Street.  While I had the garage I taught several people to drive, then charging 1/- an hour if using the pupils’ own cars.  This led to me becoming a driving instructor after selling the garage and I started the Tring and District School of Motoring.  I started with a Morris 8, charging pupils 7s-6d, or 5s-0d in their own car.  I fitted dual controls to the car and for many years was the only driving instructor in Tring.  I still meet people who remind me that I taught them to drive.

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‘BORN IN THE SAME YEAR AS THE QUEEN’
by Pam Cockerill

“I remember I remember the house where I was born”.  Thus begins a poem by Thomas Hood which I learnt as a child.  I too remember the house where I was born on 15th October 1926 — at least it wasn’t a house, it was above a shop called Sanders & Sons which belonged to my paternal grandparents Alfred & Alice Sanders.  The shop was situated in Tring High Street in what is now the entrance to Dolphin Square, together with another shop, a jewellers called Clements.  My grandparents lived in the house which lies back from the road between the HSBC Bank, or the Midland Bank as it was then called, and Nash’s previous office, formerly the doctor’s surgery.  The house was called Hastovan and still is to this day.  The doctor who delivered me was Dr O’Keefe and the doctor who lived above the surgery was Dr Knox.  These were the only two doctors to look after the welfare of all Tring residents, plus Nurse Shaw, a very formidable lady!

Pam in 1945.

At the time of my birth my grandparents had virtually retired and my Dad Douglas and his brother Harold, the two youngest of my grandparent’s five children were running the shop.  I have very vivid memories of that shop.  It was a fruiterers, greengrocers and confectioners, double fronted, with a huge supporting pillar right in the middle where a barrel of grapes in crushed cork always stood.  As you entered the shop the fruit was all beautifully arranged in an arc in front of you with vegetables to the left and cakes (my favourite was Kunzel’s Spider Cake) sweets and chocolates to the right.  My Dad was a brilliant florist and he made the most beautiful bouquets and wreaths which were kept in a very dark and damp cellar until collected.  No delivery vans then!  Even in his seventies he was still making holly wreaths at Christmas.  They were always made entirely of holly (no fir or other greenery as is used today) and decorated with fir cones and teasels which he just tipped with gold or silver paint — all natural foliage, nothing artificial at all.

Now a word about my Mum.  She was a Wilstone girl, hence my fond attachment to that village.  Her name was Winifred Edwards and she lived with her parents and young brother Arthur who was fifteen years her junior, in a thatched cottage with a large garden and a “two holer” out the back.  Sadly three other children were born before Arthur but as so often happened in those days all three died in infancy.  Arthur was like a big brother to me and I spent many happy holidays in Wilstone and it was in the canal there that he taught me to swim.  You have to remember that this was at the time of the working boats and my mind now boggles at the thought of what was in that canal — never mind the cows that came down into the water to drink at a spot specially made for them!!  Even as young teenagers a group of us would go swimming there in the summer and none of us suffered any ill effects.  I think we must have been immunised by the canal water.

As an infant I went to a little school run by two ladies.  Miss Huckvale was the headmistress and Miss Cummings her assistant.  The house still exists and stands next to the cemetery at the entrance to Donkey Lane.  The only pupil I can remember by name is Peter Lief, son of the founder of Champneys.  At seven years old my parents sent me to Berkhamsted Girls School and I travelled in the care of the two daughters of Mr. Smith the chemist.  We travelled by train as did the boys attending the Boys School and there was a strict rule that forbade boys and girls sharing the same carriage.  At seven years old this was of no interest to me but by the time we were teenagers we tended to ignore this rule.  Unfortunately my friend Jean Chase and I were split upon and we were sent to the headmistress and promptly defrocked i.e. we lost our prefect status.  I don’t seem to remember it had the desired effect!  I had a wonderfully happy childhood, both at school and at home.  There were few restrictions on where we could play — in the fields behind Manor Road — no housing estate then — in the woods and it seems to me that every winter we went tobogganing in Tring Park.  It was carefree, safe and all innocent fun, sadly today is so different.

I can remember Tring when it was full of shops no cafes, charity shops or estate agents, except Browns.  There were at least five butchers; the London Central Meat Co., Wrights, Singlehursts, and Sallerys in the High Street, and the Co-op in Albert Street.  There were numerous grocers, Glovers, the Co-op, and the International in the High Street, plus Batchelors in Akeman Street, and Howletts and Bakers either end of Queen Street.  There was a haberdashers run by ‘Toddy’ Ives and his Wife.  They had underwear hanging from racks and when you went into an apparently empty shop a face would suddenly appear between the ‘unmentionables’, his or his wife’s.  I remember she wore her hair in ‘earphones’.  They also kept a parrot — a very unfriendly bird that would give you a nip if it got the chance.

I could name many more shops in the High Street plus all the little ones in the side streets and those a bit further afield in Longfield and Beaconsfield Roads all somehow making a living, serving their communities and being a meeting place to exchange the gossip of the day. There were two cinemas as well, The Regal very new and modern and The Gaiety [Ed. - first named The Empire], which we called the flea pit, probably quite unjustly.

I have lived in several houses in Tring throughout my life.  The shop where I was born, my grandparent’s house before moving into a house in Manor Road when I was about four, then my Dad and his brother Harold bought a plot of land in Dundale Road and had two identical bungalows built —this would have been in the mid 1930’s.  The two back gardens were joined up and a full size tennis court laid out.  We had some wonderful tennis parties throughout the summer. Then came the war which devastated so many lives.  To be honest it did not have a great impact on my life.  My Dad was declared unfit for military service — he had developed rheumatoid arthritis — so he joined the St Johns Ambulance Brigade.  I was still at school and when it ended I was working in the Midland Bank in Berkhamsted.

At home we grew lots of vegetables, kept chickens — I distinctly remember a white leghorn cockerel, a vicious bird that flew at you every time you entered its pen. We had evacuees, and every Saturday night there was a dance at the Church House - the highlight of the week. This was regularly attended by the Halton RAF apprentices who vied with the local lads for the girls’ attention. Although they were only sixteen and seventeen they had the advantage of wearing a uniform. I still have the brass wheel that my particular boyfriend gave me from his jacket sleeve when he left.

After the war we moved to Surrey where my Dad bought a business and where I met my future husband John.  For various reasons the move didn’t work out and after some time we came back to the place that was home and settled in Longfield Road.  My Dad also bought a house called Adeyfield in the Western Road, because he thought he would like to retire there and watch the world go by.  He never did.

John and I were married in May 1951 at St Peter and St Paul and lived in Adeyfield for a time.  Our daughter Alison was born while we were living there.  In 1958 we bought a plot of land in Beaconsfield Road; Sid Horne was a local builder who had decided to retire, and ours was the last house he built.  Our son Timothy arrived in 1961.  When he was old enough to go to school I decided it was time to find something to do other than housework — never my first priority as my daughter will tell you — and I went to Wilstone School as a classroom assistant.  I enjoyed working with children and when the school closed in 1971 I was lucky that Wigginton School needed a secretary.  I stayed there for 20 years until I retired.  Both schools were typical village schools within a close community and I soon knew all the parents as well as the children, and still do today.

Recently I had some work done in the garden and two chaps arrived, one much younger than the other, in his twenties.  He looked at me and said “You don’t recognise me do you Mrs Cockerill”.  I said, very politely “No, I’m sorry but I don’t”.  He said “I’m .... ..” and without thinking I said “You were a right pain!” and the older man promptly added “and he still bleeding is!”  Happy days.

I still live at 34 Beaconsfield Road, and still find plenty of things to do to keep me busy.  Sadly John died nine years ago but I am lucky to have my daughter still living with me.  Tim is married and I have a lovely daughter-in-law Lyn and two equally lovely grandchildren Molly and Hugh.  I have been blessed with many friends, some of very long standing, others of more recent years, and many in the church community, especially at St Cross in Wilstone where my parents were married and my two grandchildren baptised.  Life seems to have come full circle.  I have had a long life and a happy life in the midst of a loving family for which I am truly grateful.  A final thought.  If anyone doesn’t know what a ‘two holer’ is, just let me know.  My granddad grew wonderful vegetables but we won’t go into that!!

Editor: this article was originally published in Comment magazine June 2016.  Pam was born in 1926 and died in October 2021.

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