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

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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 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 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.

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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 , 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 : 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’.

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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 . 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. The parcels of common allotted to the houses were to be as near to them as convenient. The cottagers had to depend on wells or springs for their water supply. The Enclosure Act of 1778 made special provision for some, declaring ‘That nothing in this Act contained shall prejudice, lessen or defeat the Right, Title or Interest of the said Thomas, Duke of Leeds, in respect of his separate right to a certain pond called Myms Pond, and also to the said Sir Charles Cocks, his right to a certain Pond used by him as a Reservoir to his House: and also reserving the Right of Inhabitants of Bell Barr to the use of the Common Well there’.

THE COMING OF THE RAILWAYS The importance of Bell Bar as a staging post and a place to rest for the drovers was not to last. In 1842 Mr Robert William Gaussen, Lord of the Manor of Brokemans had the White Hart pulled down because ‘the railroad had done so much injury to the North Road’ He was referring to the London and Birmingham Railway opened in 1838. Gaussen objected to the

5 newly incorporated Great Northern Railway from passing through his land and ‘disfiguring it’ to the extent that he petitioned parliament – at the parish’s expense! His endeavour failed and construction of the new railway started the following year, and by September 1848 the railway company had a small brickworks at Bell Bar for making bricks for the nearby bridges. Some of the village lads found employment at Bell Bar and it would seem that the making of little money-boxes shaped like the round haystacks familiar to their makers and of household "crocks" was a side-line. The little money-boxes, though still remembered, disappeared long ago. Occasionally an earthenware crock finds its way to a jumble sale, but as the wares carried no distinguishing marks it is impossible to establish the truth of the statement that it was made at the Bell Bar pot works. Although Gaussen failed in his objections to the railway, he did succeed in diverting the Great North Road from its route passing the gates of his mansion and along the present Bell Lane to its present line in 1850, the cost of which was paid by the railways company. These two events had a great effect on the inhabitants. For whereas the stir and bustle of the coaches from London to the North had been a daily event of their lives, the traffic was soon to vanish and some of the prosperity it brought with it. This new route by-passed Bell Bar and together with the advent of the railways left the inns and alehouses empty. Of the four inns that were in existence in 1756, by the time of the 1851 census, the White Hart had been pulled down, the Bell and the White Swan were still in existence as inns but the Black Bull had long been demolished. The Bell soon closed and left the White Swan as the only inn until its demise in 1919. So the last of the inns of Bell Bar closed and it was some years before the present Cock O’ the North was built to cater for a new type of traveller.

VICTORIAN BELL BAR When Samuel Robert Gaussen II died in 1816 his son Robert William became the new Lord of the Manor at the tender age of four. He was in possession for sixty four of the hundred and thirty five years of the Gaussens tenure of Brokemans/Brookmans and saw the estate grow to 2,068acres, nearly an eighth of the total area of the parish of North Mymms. He bought the neighbouring Gobions estate which increased his lands by another hundred acres. The estate in 1844 included three inns (The Bell, The Swan and the white Hart) and 15 farms including Upper and Lower Bell Bar farms which brought in a handsome rental income. Not only did he become the largest land owner in the parish, but the biggest employer, many of the employees living in Bell Bar. These included Sam Dimmock, age 43, cowman with his wife, a straw plaiter, and five children; William Longstaff age 60, labourer with his wife and four children; John Burgess age 33, farm carter with his wife, a charwoman, and five children; Henry Viner, coachman with his wife and four children; Joseph Redington, gardener at Bell Bar; and the widow Messer age 44 with two children, formerly baker at Bell Bar. There were also village craftsmen on his rent roll such as John Jackson age 39,

6 journeyman smith from Devon with his wife and five children and Joseph Holton age 27, wheelwright and his wife, child and apprentice. The maintenance of all Gaussen’s properties kept local craftsmen such as blacksmiths, bricklayers and carpenters busy, not to mention a large retinue of servants at Brookmans. His own employees complete the list of people dependant on him in one way or another. His bailiff, John Elliott, a north countryman of 33 living at Bell Bar with his wife and child, had sufficient standing to have a servant, a girl of 16 from Hatfield. The farm he kept in hand, Home Farm at Bell Bar, was not large, perhaps about 70 acres to judge by the number of workers who lived in rent-free cottages. This would be in line with the amount spent on farm labour for "ploughing, sowing, hoeing, hedging & ditching, etc." — £80 for the first half of 1852. The home farm seems to have been run at a small profit, averaging about £125 per annum. Such an amount was not significant for a man of Gaussen’s wealth and it may be that he kept the farm as a hobby or an example, or simply for the produce. Brookmans figured prominently in social control. Churchwarden for many years, Gaussen gave regularly to the parochial institutions, the schools and the thrift clubs some of the money required to keep them going, e.g. £25 in 1865 rising to £37.10.0 in 1880. A major contribution was the Iron Room at Bell Bar, a mission room holding sixty to seventy persons, which he had built in 1877. Bell Bar Mission Room was licensed on April 3rd 1878 by the Bishop of St. Albans ‘for preaching the word of God and in reading the Common Prayers and in celebrating the Holy Sacraments as prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer’

Iron Room and Mission Hall, Bell Lane, c.1950 Originally licensed in 1878 for church services and prayer meetings, held up to 1939 Then used as a vehicle store. Now a renovated and privately owned residence.

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In this rather remote hamlet, no longer on the route of coach traffic, the church held Bible classes in the summer and cottage lectures during the winter for many years. The Iron Room still stands in Bell Lane, though now in the service of mammon instead of God. At the beginning of the 20th century Bell Bar, the little hamlet that clustered around the gates of the manor of Brookmans, was a self-contained community. It had its own smithy and bakehouse, two farms, an inn, a mission room, a post office, nine or ten cottages and a few larger properties.

Ben King, contractor with his hay sweep working at Bell Bar 1920 There were enough young men to raise a cricket team. In those days the people of Bell Bar had the privilege of walking through Lord Salisbury’s vast park if going shopping in Hatfield. The children would walk a mile or so to the school at Westfield, built in 1850, either by the ‘bottom fields’ across the road from The Swan or by the ‘top fields’ opposite North Lodge. This school was praised in the House of Commons by Mr Mundella “I have recently been in during the holidays and I found just on the border of Lord Salisbury’s Park one of the best schools in England”. This school is now a private house.

The Bakery 1880

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By now the villagers could look across the field to see the rare motor-car travel along the Great North Road, but it was more usual to see the droves of cyclists on their high machines riding along in orderly fashion to spend a day in the country. Fifty years earlier their grandparents had stood at the same doorways and had watched great coaches lumber by, sometimes so close that it had been possible to touch the sides of the vehicles as they went by on what was the North Road. Glimpses of the famous and of the not so famous had rewarded those who stood and stared. Mail coaches had raced down through the village, scattering the geese that gathered at the village pond at the bottom of the street. Who knew who it was who cantered through in the middle of the night when all good people were in their beds? Their grandparents had told them that Dick Turpin, who had had a liking for a village girl, had sometimes passed through on his way to meet the girl at the Greyhound, the old name for Woodside Place. This inn had once been the home of Ben Caunt, a famous pugilist, and followers of the "Fancy" had been seen in Bell Bar.

BELL LANE THEN AND NOW If one strolls up Bell Lane today at the beginning of the 21st century, one is unaware of what a bustling and thriving community existed in the Victorian era. Walking south from the crossroad with the Great North Road we start outside what was The White Swan. The inn had closed in the 1960s becoming a private house which was demolished in 2018, taking away the last link in Bell Bar's coaching history. It has been replaced by 8 apartments and a bungalow that have been sitting empty since they were built.

The Swan, Bell Bar 1900s Outside the new building is the old milestone. This 18th century milestone was once leaning against the wall of the White Swan. It was a condition of the planning permission that this

9 milestone should be reinstated once the building work was finished. There is a bit of a mystery about this milestone as most accounts of the time refer to the Swan being at the 17th milestone (the 16th being at the Shepherds Way junction), some to Bell Bar being 18 miles from London, but if you look closely you will see that XXI is carved on the milestone! It is one of only two known dated milestones in Hertfordshire, but the date is difficult to make out. It could be 1771. Next to Swan Lodge is the site of the demolished buildings of The Swan (2) which in turn is next to the Grade 11 listed, half-timbered medieval Lower Bell Bar Farm, the original site of The Swan. This was part of 40 acres of land called 'Ingoldes Fields' granted to John Fish of Hatfield in 1429. It remained in the Fish family until about 1755. Continuing south we come to the junction with Bulls Lane.

Opposite the junction in 1851 stood a fine Georgian house with the smithy behind it along with a cluster of cottages which housed the shoemaker, two farm labourers and the butler’s family. The Forge was, in more recent times, occupied by Sid Titmuss, described in Kelly's directory of 1929 as a threshing machine owner. Here oxen were shod before being driven by road to the London market. The upper part of the building was full of ancient relics - cavaliers' boots, obsolete farm tools and ploughing implements, all many hundreds of years old. When the demolition men arrived in the 1960s these valuable relics were thrown in a heap in a neighbouring field, burnt and lost for ever.

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Harry Harlow at the Forge 1950s The Forge, the Georgian House and the cottages behind were all demolished, as was the bungalow which was subsequently built on the site. There is now a 21st century house on the site called The Forge! Next door is the Mission Hall or Iron Room, so called because it was built of corrugated iron, but handsomely wainscoted inside. Many meetings were held there, Temperance Society, Band of Hope, Bible classes and readings, Sunday School gatherings; an outpost of evangelism in the hamlet. On the opposite corner of Bulls Lane still stands the Old Bakery. In 1881 William Cozens and his son who had been born in Bell Bar, diversified from baking into Grocery. A former inhabitant recalled how she worked part time in what then became the Village Shop in the 1960s when it was owned by two elderly ladies. One of her jobs was to stop the cat sitting on the cheese!

The Old Bakery 2020

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Next to the Bakery, opposite the village pond, stood a row of five cottages. In 1851 they housed the 75 year old widow of a farm worker on parish relief along with her ‘afflicted’ daughter, and her labourer son in law. The next two cottages were crowded with farm workers’ families each with five children. In the household next door Thomas Starr, though only 37, was another pauper. His wife went out charring to support him and their four children. In the last cottage lived an elderly widower and farm worker.

A generation later the occupants had changed completely. They were a widowed needlewoman with four children, two under gardeners each with six children, a farm worker with five children and an elderly herdsman, a widower with two older children earning. In 1922 one of these cottages became the village post office before the whole row of cottages was demolished and new detached houses built. On the other side of the road, is a field. The Tithe map of 1844 shows the field divided into smaller parcels with names such as Long Pyghtle and Magpie Meadow. (See appendix 2). It is thought that these smaller fields may well date from the enclosures of 1788 when small parcels of land were given to the cottagers. The eastern side of this field is defined by the modern line of the Great North Road where a new hedge must have been planted when the road was diverted, but the southern and western boundary of the field is enclosed by an important and ancient hedgerow. From the woody species survey recorded by the Herts & Middlesex Trust, using Hooper’s Rule on aging hedgerows, it would seem that this hedgerow could be as old as 300 years or more. At the south west corner of this field stood a cluster of cottages and The Bell formerly the Kings Head. This was demolished shortly before 1840 due to the dwindling trade, but the outline of buildings can still be observed in the field to this day.

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A bit further north on the other side of the road was another cluster of cottages, one of which housed Flinders Glassworks in 1820 another being Carpenters cottage, (Grade 11 listed) building dating from the early 17th century. In 1898 it was the village Post Office, but reverted to a private house when the Post Office moved down the lane in 1922. It still stands today. Next to Carpenters Cottage stood a row of three cottages occupied by agricultural workers and their families. Now two semi-detached houses have taken their place. We then come to Elm Tree Farm or Upper Bell Bar Farm (Grade 11 listed) as it was sometimes known. Dating back to 1641, this farmhouse was, according to some accounts, first known as the White Hart inn and later as the Bell. Until quite recently (1970s) it contained an inglenook fireplace large enough to swing the proverbial cat, and steps leading upwards reminded one or the bad old days when very small boys were sent up to sweep the chimneys. During recent alterations a George I coin was discovered in the brickwork, and the laying of a new floor in the kitchen disclosed five levels, the lowest of old flagstones. On the wall it is recorded that a plasterer walked from Shoreditch and back in 1821 to replaster the walls. Many accounts of the history of the Ale houses and Inns of Bell Bar ascribe the location of The White Hart to Elm Tree Farm, others to the row of cottages next to the farmhouse as a possible location, but evidence now proves that the White Hart was on the same side of the road as Elm Tree Farm, but about seventy yards further south. And, indeed, the field opposite the White Hart was marked on later maps and the Tithe Awards for 1844 as ‘White Hart Field’. It was part of North Mymms Common until it was enclosed in the 1780s. It also seems curious that Elm Tree Farm has no cellars. When the present farmer was digging foundations for a new house in this area at the end of the 1990s, he came across the foundations of an old building with cellars – this surely must have been the remains of the White Hart? The present Bell Lane turns to the left but originally it was part of Ansell’s Lane which led to North Mymms Common to the east and west beside Elm Tree Farm down the fields to Bradmore Ponds. It was enclosed by John Lord Somers 1715-16. The old North Road continues south through Home Farm yard, passing the site of The White Hart on the right hand side and on the left White Hart Field. We pass the present day farmhouse, in 1851 the home of the dairywoman. Next is Stewards Cottage, in 1851 the home of the farm bailiff (also a gardener), John Elliot, a young man of thirty three from Northumberland with his wife and little daughter, substantial enough to have a servant girl. The road continued through the rickyard passing the water tower and the remains of the old Dutch barn which was destroyed by flying bombs in WW2. They also damaged Elm Tree Cottages, the bailiff’s house and the Farmhouse. The road continued south to the bothy where the game keeper lived and the stable block that housed the coachman, his wife and four young children.

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The road then arrived at the gates of Brookmans. This magnificent house no long stands as it was totally destroyed by fire in 1891. Fire engines galloped from Hatfield, Hertford and Barnet, but only when the third arrived was there sufficient length of hose to bring water on to the flames, but by then it was too late. Melting lead from the roof poured down the walls and the whole building became a glowing furnace. The Gaussens family moved into the re modelled stable block which these days houses Brookmans Park Golf Club. The mansion was never rebuilt.

After the fire which destroyed Brookmans House in 1891 the stables were remodelled as a dwelling house. The house is now the clubhouse for Brookmans Park Golf Club.

The Gaussen family of Brookmans employed many of the local people which kept the hamlet of Bell Bar thriving. In 1851 it was, by today’s standards, a young community with thirty nine children under fourteen and only nine persons over sixty, three over sixty five. Today it is the complete reverse with probably the majority of inhabitants over sixty five and few children. This could be because people never move away as everyone enjoys living in such a quiet backwater whose rich history and semi-rural character sets this little hamlet apart from other villages.

References;

Parishes: North Mimms', in A History of the County of Hertford: Volume 2

The Journal of the Potters Bar & District Historical Society. Inns at Bell Bar by Mr JPB Clarke

A Modern History of Brookmans Park 1700 – 1950 by Peter Kingsford. North Mymms Local History Society

Victorian Lives in North Mymms by Peter Kingsford. North Mymms Local History Society

North Mymms Parish and People by Dorothy Colville. North Mymms Local History Society website

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Appendix 1

Ordnance Survey map showing the original line of the (Great) North Road through Bell Bar to Swanley Bar

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Appendix 2

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