Rickmansworth before the time of John White

Transport – the roads

Most of the roads were ‘parish’ roads, very local and maintained, if at all, by the parish authorities in which they lay – a volunteer ‘surveyor of highways

All these are now our residential roads. But many more have been developed since.

From the early 18^th century roads on long-distance routes (‘turnpikes’) were allowed by Parliament to collect tolls from the users, and maintain the roads from those funds and others they could raise.

[Bucks county Museum, Aylesbury]

Rickmansworth’s High Street was part of the Reading and Hatfield turnpike from 1762- 1888 which supported the three inns (the Bell, the George and the Swan) which stood almost side by side in the town centre. The road came from St Albans via Watford and Croxley Green, and went on to Amersham via Chorleywood, with toll gates at Chorleywood and in west Watford near Harwoods farm.

Rickmansworth’s road to London was also turnpiked, but not until 1809, when it went up Batchworth Hill (with a toll gate at the bottom) to Northwood and Pinner to Sudbury (near Wembley) where it joined the ‘main road’ to London.

The roads were generally in reasonable condition, but the carts and waggons using them had limited capacity. So industrial development was inhibited, until the coming of the canals in the middle of the 18^th century. Rickmansworth and Watford were connected to the canal system, and so to London, by the Grand Junction canal right at the end of the century.

The canal

Until 1797 Rickmansworth was connected to other places only by road. But in 1797 the Grand Junction Canal, which was being built to connect London to the industrial midlands and north, got to Rickmansworth, which allowed goods, including London manure and ‘sea coal’, which came to London from Newcastle by ship, to come here from London. A few years later the canal was opened throughout, and industrial produce and Midlands coal appeared in large quantities for the first time.

The effect on farming wasn’t very great at first, because the stock markets of Watford, Uxbridge, Amersham and Hemel Hempstead were close by. But the new availability of manure began to have a positive effect, and the variety of goods available in the shops increased.

In the nineteenth century industry, especially paper makers such as John Dickinson appeared here, and some (not all) used the canal a lot.

The large Batchworth Mill, which had been spinning cotton thread since about 1775, was taken over by Dickinson to make paper pulp in 1819, and Rickmansworth had several canal wharfs, confirming that there was a fair amount of business being done here. The wharfs were operated by the ‘wharfinger’, who may or may not have been the owner of the business, and worked by the labourers who loaded and unloaded the boats and moved the goods around the wharf and stores: Frogmoor wharf was operated by Emmott Skidmore, who had wide business interests in the town.

Insert picture of Batchworth Mill?

The Tithe Map

The best maps of this period were made in order to assess liability for payment of the tithes. Rickmansworth’s was surveyed in 1839, just as John White started.

It shows us the layout of the fields, roads, and buildings, and tells us who owned, and who occupied, each one.

We can see that John White rented Parsonage Farm from James Wild and Edmund Morris, with his father William White at Appletree Farm at Chorleywood. The large cloth map you can see at the Museum shows the names of the fields in which John White had an interest.

All these fields are now under Rickmansworth’s residential roads!

Parsonage farm, Rickmansworth

Rickmansworth in 1811

Two years before John White was born, the town was listed in a trade directory, and there was a national census.

Town Description:

Rickmansworth was large in area, but very small in population. 3,230 people formed 656 families living in 566 ‘houses’: there were 1559 males and 1671 females – we don’t know the ages. Of them, 256 families had members ‘chiefly in agriculture’, 285 had members ‘employed chiefly in trade, manufactures or handicrafts’, and 115 had neither.

So there was a very strong ‘agricultural’ element, labourers (men and women) as well as specialists like ploughmen and shepherds. And straw plaiting by the women was vital to the economy of many households.

The non-agricultural occupations:

Many of the women, and some of the men, will have been in ‘service’ for wealthy people – servants at Moor Park, Moor House, The Bury, or Micklefield, residences of more wealthy people, of whom there were a number in and near the town. There were other businesses in the town also described here.

Insert picture of Moor Park?

The canal had come through in 1797, and there were two large wharfs doing business. But there were a few road carriers of goods and passengers, many of whom were dropped and collected at one of the inns in the High Street – the Bell, the George and the Swan, which also provided the main meeting rooms of the town.

[Insert picture of the Swan, main meeting rooms?]

St Mary’s church was still in its old medieval form, and was the main place of worship. There was not yet real schooling for the children, nor much medical support for the people.

The old market had effectively ended, although the market hall, recently moved, still stood behind the High Street.

Rickmansworth’s businesses

In 1811 Rickmansworth had a number of important businesses as well as farming. In 1801 its population of the whole parish had been just less than 3,000 –very small, over a large area.

Batchworth Mill was a large, new industrial water mill spinning cotton thread. We don’t know want the thread was used for – it could have been for lace making, candle wicks, sewing or rope making - there was no weaving here. It was operated by John and Joseph Strutt. On the same site was a flour mill – John Strutt was described as a ‘mealman’, the miller.

There was a horse-powered silk mill off the western end of the High Street, close to where Marks and Spencer is now. It too was making thread, taken off to be used elsewhere.

There were several paper mills, at Solesbridge, Mill End, Scotsbridge and Loudwater. This industry was to grow greatly over the following years, but was still small in 1811.

There was a tannery at Mill End, (you can still see evidence of this on the Rickmansworth Road) and a small brewery. But the main brewery was Salters, at the eastern end of the High Street, with its own maltings (located where the Catholic church is, now) and growing in size.

Insert picture of Salters brewery?

The town was well enough served with bakers, butchers, shoe and dress makers, as well as the blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters and builders who made what people needed.

The People

Most of the population of Rickmansworth, a large parish which included Croxley Green, Chorleywood and Maple Cross (but still had a population of only about 4000 in 1801), worked on the land in one role or another.

There were some wealthy people, especially those who had made their money in London and moved out to the country, but most were much less well off, and about half were certainly ‘poor’, with an agricultural labourer being paid about ten shillings a week, (10/-) when a 4lb loaf of bread (the staple diet) cost about 8 pennies (8d) and lasted a family about a day.

The people were very vulnerable to adverse weather and other conditions outside their control. For example, in 1795/96 successive very cold, wet seasons nearly caused famine here, and the wealthier residents had to make special provision to avoid it. When prices rose during the Napoleonic wars many families had to rely routinely on ‘the parish’ - supported by the rates paid very largely by the same farmers who employed the bulk of the working people anyway.

Although many of the people worked for the farmers, they usually lived in cottages owned by other people - the farmer himself was almost never an owner of land or property, and the ‘tied cottage’ was very rare in this area. Few of these small homes we would now think of as ‘well built’, which is why so few remain today.

Insert picture of poor ag lab cottage?

Some of the farm workers lived in the farmhouse as if part of the farmer’s family, but we know little about how that arrangement actually worked.

The traders and shop keepers in the town and villages often lived ‘over the shop’, and were usually better off than the labourers.

Insert picture of shop in town?