Wheathampstead Trail

There is no prescribed route to follow for this Trail. You can 4 WHEATHAMPSTEAD PLACE 13 OLD CHURCH SCHOOL It is worth noting that there are 39 listed structures between start at any point, visiting as many or as few of the sites where you are standing and the roundabout at the far as you wish to. We expect that many visitors will come to Grade II listed Grade II listed (northern) end of the village. Wheathampstead by car and park in the free car park in The best viewpoint for this This former village school East Lane, so the descriptions start with the site that is building is from Mount Rd, was built in 1862 on the closest to the car park. just round the corner from village green, superseding 17 LATTIMORES Grade II listed the Tudor Archway. the original National School on The Hill. As with the Lattimores is a 16th century, or Grade II listed Also known as ‘Place church, the work was initiated possibly earlier, timber-framed 1 THE BULL INN Farm’, this was originally The earliest record by Reverend Canon Davys and the architect, Edward house which was fronted with a medieval hall house Browning, also worked on the restoration of the church. The brick in the 18th century. The of the Bull Inn dates dating from about 1480. The elaborate timbering points to 1617, though WHEATHAMPSTEAD HERITAGE TRAIL school is built in a distinctive polychrome Decorated Gothic parapet of the front and south to the wealth of the owners. It formerly had cross-wings style, using knapped flint walling with zig-zag bands of it was originally a walls, which is clearly visible at each end but only the one at the southern end of the yellow brick and a slate roof that is also in a zig-zag pattern. group of 16th century building survives. At some point plaster was applied to the from the north side, was a very 7 THE OLD BAKERY Grade II listed 10 BURY FARM COTTAGES Local schoolchildren were paid to collect flints from the buildings. The Inn external walls, grooved so as to resemble stone, but this fields to help with the construction of the building. fashionable feature at the time came with 119 acres was blown off when a small bomb fell in the churchyard The core of this building is Grade II listed but the steeply pitched roof betrays the earlier origins of the of land belonging to during the Second World War. 16th century or earlier, with The school was enlarged in 1884 to take 330 children and house. The Lattimores, who owned the Hope Brewery, lived the manor of Lamer, These are the only buildings closed in 1969. The building is now used as offices. Wheathampstead Place may have been the site of the additions from the 17th and here from 1791 until the late 19th century. which lies to the that survive from the original original rectory; the rector was lord of the manor. From the 18th centuries. It is now cased north of the village. It complex of buildings of late 1500s until at least 1670, it was home to the Brocket in painted brick and plaster. 14 BREWHOUSE AND MALTINGS was timber-framed with a plastered exterior and was later family (not related to Lord Brocket). In the early 19th The rear of the building with Wheathampsteadbury Manor. It 18 THE WHITE COTTAGE extended to include two riverside cottages. century it was owned by Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s its steeply pitched roof was formerly an open medieval hall appears that they were originally Grade II listed Grade II listed first prime minister. Another prime minister who owned the house and is probably the oldest part. A cross-wing was built by Westminster Abbey in The then-royalist General Monck (Coldstream Guards) is Inside this cottage are the remains of a late medieval hall house was Lord Palmerston. Sir William Beach Thomas, added in the 1500s to give more living space; the three the 15th century as ‘Hall, Chambers and Gatehouse’ to the This red-brick building, said to have stayed here during the Civil War (1642-1651). house open to the roof, with a crown post and beam dating who wrote several books that include descriptions of wildlife gabled front sections are 17th century. The decorated 13th century moated Wheathampsteadbury Manor House. on the left as you walk up round the village, bought the house in 1923. In the mid-18th century, they were upgraded to become ‘The Brewhouse Hill, has a gable from about 1490. There are traces of smoke blackening on In 1667 Roger Austin, an unfriendly landlord, came to plasterwork is known as pargetting. Manor House’. Later still, in 1879, they became a Victorian end with a cart entrance some of the timbers, as there the notice of the Quarter Sessions – once for refusing Murphy Chemicals Ltd had their offices here for many years farmhouse and then farmworkers’ cottages. Westminster at basement level facing would have been no chimney accommodation to Nicholas Brooks, a fishmonger from from 1932. Their premises extended over a large area and smoke had to escape behind the house and, at its peak, the company employed 8 WHEATHAMPSTEAD MILL Abbey administered the large estate until shortly after the down the hill. Brewhouse London, and on another occasion for not looking after his through a hole in the roof. some 300 people. The entire site had to be decontaminated Second World War when it was sold off for development. Hill was formerly known as wife Elizabeth and their sons, Meshach and Abednego. before it could be used for the housing that was built in 2001 Grade II listed Hamwell Hill, leading to Hamwell, now Amwell. In 1781 Some of the original timber From before 1822 until at least the 1850s, the Bull was and 2002. James Wilkins of Wheathampstead was granted land by the frame of the house can be A corn mill has existed 11 ST HELEN’S CHURCH seen on the side wall. kept by the Hooper family. In the 1850s William Hooper on this site for more lords of the manor, Westminster Abbey, on which to build The bridleway that starts here is part of the Lea Valley Walk a brewery, which he called the Parrott Brewery. The plot was the village letter-receiver and then postmaster. than a thousand years. Grade I listed St Helen’s The Sibley family lived at and links to the Ayot Greenway. It also links with a footpath of land on which the brewery stood stretched up the hill to that provides a pleasant riverside walk to Water End House One of the four mills is the parish church of The White Cottage for about 250 years. The frontage of the end of the yard behind this building and its neighbours. (built in 1610, listed Grade II*) and on to Brocket Park and in Wheathampstead Wheathampstead. the house was rebuilt in about 1630 by Francis Sibley, who 2 The buildings have timber frames behind their 18th and RIVER LEA Lemsford. Manor that are listed Originally a Saxon church, also owned the Bell and Crown public house (the site is The river may derive 19th century brick façades and are all Grade II listed. The in the Domesday it fell into some disrepair now The Crown House at 27 High Street). On his death an its name from the brewery, by then known as the Hope Brewery, was bought book (1086) stood here. The present structure, which is and the present building inventory was drawn up for the house, which included his Celtic ‘lug’ meaning remarkable for its length, is a three-bay, timber-framed by the Lattimores in 1841. Brewing ceased in 1904, when 5 WHEATHAMPSTEAD STATION was largely completed by ‘joined’ chair, his bookshelf and ‘some few books’, and, from ‘bright’. The Irish building. The oldest central part dates from the late 16th the Lattimores sold up, and the brewery building has since (remains) the late 1300s. It is built of his kitchen, six brass kettles, brass pans and skillets (pans or Gaelic spelling century. The river flowed through the building to power been demolished. The cart entrance leads into a storage soft Totternhoe clunch with with long handles, and short legs to stand in the ashes), is ‘lugh’, hence Wheathampstead Station the mill wheel. The original external weatherboarding was tunnel that runs under the first cottage and stretches well flint facings and limestone dressings. ‘3 dripping pans, a Tin colander, Tin apple roaster and Tin Lughton, now Luton, was opened in 1860 on the replaced with brick between 1890 and 1895. back into the chalk. The cottage and tunnel appear to date new line that ran between pudding pan’. where the Lea rises. The main shape of the building has not changed since that to 1781. Hatfield and Dunstable as The Mill was originally owned by Westminster Abbey and Both the river and the time although, at the instigation of the rector, Reverend The frontage was rebuilt again in 1763, this time by (another) part of the Great Northern tenants can be traced back to 1500. Local Dissenters met On the way back down Church Street to the corner with town may have been Canon Davys, a major restoration was carried out in 1865. Henry Sibley. Railway. For over 100 here, possibly including John Bunyan (1628-1688), author High Street, note Cunnington’s lighting shop. This shop named after Lugh the Shining One, the Celtic god of light years it was the lifeblood It is said that the bells are among the most difficult to ring in of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’.

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