Bell Bar – a Historic Hamlet

BELL BAR – A HISTORIC HAMLET The Great North Road through Bell Bar: 1840 (Looking South) . By courtesy of the County Records Office. Bell Lane, Bell Bar 2020 1 Bell Bar – A Historic Hamlet The Bell Bar of today is a quiet hamlet with a few houses on the busy A1000, a petrol station, The Dutch Nurseries, The Cock o’ the North pub, and a restaurant, but the bulk of the houses are on Bell Lane. This quiet backwater belies its historical importance. EARLY HISTORY The history of Bell Bar goes back before 1388 when Nicholas de Mymmes claimed the manor of Mymmeshall/Mymmes Hall by descent from his grandfather, John de Mymmes, who lived in the reign of Edward II. In 1400 it was held by John Brokeman from whose family it took its name, but there was no Brookmans Park village until five hundred years later. The manor house passed through the hands of many owners until in 1666 Andrew Fountain was supposed to have pulled down the old mansion and erected a new one “as the date 1680 was upon the spouting of that house”. This new manor house known as Brokemans was described as “situated near the High Road at Bell Bar in the parishes of North Mymms and Hatfield”. The High Road came to be known as The North Road and subsequently as The Great North Road, but back in the 16th century before the Reformation, the maintenance of highways and bridges had a religious significance. People donated money for this purpose for the benefit of their souls. When Sir John More, the father of Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII’s Lord High Chancellor, author of Utopia and owner of the neighbouring estate Gobions/Gubbins/More Hall, made his will in 1526 he included; “Also I will that £40 of money be bestowed and laid in reparation making and amending of the highway leading from Barnet towards Bishops Hatfield between Potters Bar and the Bell Bar in the town of Northmymes”. By the 17th century wheeled vehicles were replacing pack horses but the busy through roads were not maintained satisfactorily. The many complaints resulted in the setting up by Acts of Parliament of Turnpike Trusts. The first of these in 1663 was for a section of the “Old North Road” as far north as Huntingdonshire. Included in the list of trustees named in the Act were Henry Fish gent. of Bell Bar; Robert Huntman gent. of Bell Bar and the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Jekyll Kt. Lord of the manor of Brokemans/Brookmans. 2 COACHING HEYDAYS By 1756, Bell Bar was a bustling staging post on the Great North Road, with four inns and alehouses dotted around the hamlet. The route was one of the main thoroughfares for drovers, travellers on horseback or on stage coaches making their way between London and the north. Situated 17 miles from the capital, it was the ideal spot to break the journey, stay the night, feed or change the horses, and have a few beers and a meal. John Byng (1743-1813), a nephew of Admiral John Byng, (his 'foolish uncle'), who built 'Wrotham Park' in South Mimms, made many journeys, usually on horseback, around various parts of Britain and recorded his 'tours' in his journals, with comments on events and his nightly accommodation, On the 9th of July 1793 John Byng set out from London, for a tour of North Wales, on the Great North Road towards Biggleswade. He writes:- "The roads were hot and bad, my pace was slow, and the mare jolts me to powder. Had I been young and on an active trotter, I had got to Welwyn: but those days are past, and, as relative to folly, all the better. So I put up at the White Hart, Bell Bar, whose landlord I have long known, and tho' it is an alehouse, yet there was a pretty display upon my supper board of clod ham, cold fillet of veal and sage cheese; with the daughters of the White Hart attendant." -- "There was much noise and drunkenness of the haymakers in the alehouse kitchen. Then one wishes for an elegant tavern, but it is summertime and may be endured”. Because of its location on the Great North Road, Bell Bar was much more widely known than North Mymms. It was named in the schedules and timetables for coaches and carriers' wagons, from London to places north: It is not surprising therefore that Inns, or Ale-houses, were built there. There are records of four such, three in North Mymms and one just over the boundary in Hatfield parish. In 1756 the Government had a survey made of inns and ale-houses to establish accommodation for the billeting of soldiers. The schedule then made included:- Name Abode Sign Beds Stabling George Drew Bell Bar White Hart 4 10 Will Yielding Bell Bar Bell 2 12 Thomas Broom Bell Bar Swan 8 20 Alice Leeman Bell Bar Bull 8 10 There has been some confusion and debate as to the location and names of all these Ale- houses except The Bull. There are records held in the Manor of North Mymms of The Bell in 1556. Agnes, wife of Thomas Frowke, previously the wife of Thomas Roberts, had died holding, in the right of her son John Roberts, a messuage (a dwelling house together with its land and outbuildings) called ‘Le Bell’. After various changes of ownership and sometime during the 17th century, the name was changed to The Kings Head (perhaps after the 3 execution of King Charles). By the early 18th century it was again The Bell. It remained The Bell at least until after the diversion of the Great North Road in 1850. Confusingly, The White Hart in the above schedule was also known as The Bell! This was held of the Manor of Brokemans and is recorded in the Court of that manor in 1674, when the death of John James was reported. He was said to have held ‘a messuage and hospitium called The Bell at Bell Bar’. In 1699 it was called The Old Bell Inn at Bell Bar’. By 1716 it was known as the ‘Old Bell’. In 1746 John Lucas surrendered the White Hart to John Cocks Esq., Lord of the Manor of Brokemans, making it part of the Brokemans estate which passed to the Gaussen family in 1786. Lower Bell Farm, Bell Lane. A grade II listed building, c.1930 The Swan occupied three different locations, the first being what today is Lower Bell Bar Farm. This is one of the oldest buildings in North Mymms. It was part of 40 acres of land called ‘Ingoldes Fields’ granted to John Fish of Hatfield in 1429 at a rent of ‘one red rose’ per annum, to be held of the Lord of the manor of North Mymms by ‘Military Service’. The Swan remained in the Fish family until about 1755. By 1776 The Swan was a new brick-built house just north of the original house which returned to being a farmhouse. Sometime after 1850 when The Great North Road was diverted between Shepherds Way junction and Hatfield Town to by-pass Bell Bar, a new public house The White Swan was built at the junction of Bell Bar with the new road and the previous building demolished. The Bull, sometimes called The Black Bull, stood on the west side of the Great North Road just over the boundary in Hatfield parish. It is not known when this inn was established, but in 1737 ‘A messuage called by the name of the Black Bull’ was mortgaged and the tenant was ‘widow Lemon’. 4 In 1776 after the owner Sir Matthew Lamb died, a survey described the building as ‘A house at Bell Bar (late a Public House the sign of the Black Bull). By 1805 the house had been demolished and the outbuildings incorporated in the Bell Bar Farm. These Ale Houses and Inns owed their livelihood to the North Road, the main route between London and the North, which made Bell Bar so important as a staging post. In the 18th century the original route of the North Road travelling north from Little Heath ‘a small part of which is un-enclosed where stands the Turnpike at which a toll must be paid’ continued north to about 200 yards south of Swanley Bar where the road entered North Mymms Common. At the 16th milestone which is at the Shepherds Way junction the road turns slightly to the left and follows a reasonably straight route, passing the gates to Brookmans and onto the southern end of Bell Bar. It continued north through the hamlet of Bell Bar crossing the parish boundary into Hatfield parish and through Woodside Lane to Fore Street in Hertford. Before the enclosure of the North Mymms Common by Act of Parliament in 1778, there was an extensive area of open land east of the section of the North Road, from Bell Bar to Swanley Bar. This may well be the origin of the name of Bell Bar. The ‘Bar’ was probably the gate which controlled the pasture on North Mymms Common and it may have been named after the ancient Bell Inn which stood nearby. The enclosure act divided up ‘the wasteland’ of North Mymms Common. It also increased the area of the Brookmans estate as the landowners gained the bulk of the land with little left for the small holders. The cottagers had lost their common rights – the pasture for cattle, the pannage for hogs which had been theirs since Domesday, the right to gather fuel and the wild fruits and the right to walk at will on the common.

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