Borehamwood, Leeming Road Shopping Parade c1965

Borehamwood, The Village

I was born at 4 Glenhaven Avenue in November of 1945 to Matthew Murray and Elizabeth (Beth) Murray, My sister Jill having been born in Radlet in 1944. I remember that the walls were brown in the house so I gave it the name of the 'dirty house'. After the war, council houses were being built to take care of displaced Londoners. My folks got one of the council houses, 23 Caishowe Road. We must have moved to this house about 1947. My sister Lindsey was born in this new home in 1950. We all went to Cowley Hill Primary school which was on Winstre Road. We took a short cut on a foot path from Caishowe Road to the back side of the school. Borehamwood was a wonderful quiet place to grow up. We didn't realize that we lived so close to London. Borehamwood was part of the green belt, so we felt like we lived in the middle of farm country. Even the movie studios had sheep on their lots. We would go gather the wool off of the fences. One time we even learned to card and spin it at school. We would spend hours walking the lanes, scrumping, playing on the Iron Bridge and watching the steam trains go under the bridge and playing in the smoke from the trains. Traffic was almost non existent on our street. Very few people owned cars, so we played for hours in the road. Roller skating, hide and seek, kick the can, hop scotch, riding bikes. After school, my friend Angela Brown and I would walk over to the fish and chip shop on Hertford road for a bag of chips with crackling and a pickled onion. One of my favorite places to walk to was The Home of Rest for horses. Sitting outside the Mops and Brooms on a summer evening with a bag of crisps and an orange drink was a big treat for my sisters and I. We would play in the garden while my folks had a drink in the pub and visited with their friends. I now live in Idaho in the USA in a small town away from big cities, and think fondly of those long summer evenings when we would have to go to bed when it was still light, the windows open, the smell of the soft moist air and the sound of the train going through the town could be heard in the distance. Borehamwood was a great place to grow up. In the 1940s and 1950s it was safe to walk the streets day or night. We enjoyed our neighbours and we all watched out for one another.

Borehamwood shops

This picture is of the shops in Leeming Road and not the main shopping centre in Borehamwood, fondly known as the village. Leeming Road shops are in fact about a mile away from the main town. I would love to see any photos of the "village" if anyone has any.

The Village

I moved to Borehamwood from Acton, North West London, when I was three years old. I spent my childhood there, scrumping in neighbours gardens, getting the greenline bus into London for trips to Selfridges at Christmas, to London Zoo and the Natural History Museum. Summer holidays - which seemed to last for months and were always sunny - were spent building camps at Scratch Woods and playing rounders in Melrose Avenue. We would only have to move once or twice a day for passing cars. Its probably impossible to play any kind of street games nowadays at risk of getting run over by a four by four. When we moved to Borehamwood from London my mum thought the shops were miles away - I remember her saying she turned back on her first trip down Furzehill Road as she couldn't believe there weren't shops within a few paces. The shops were called 'The Village'. There was an old fashioned Sainsburys with a tiled floor and marble counter. I remember Kilbeys the butcher and deliveries from Bob Freestone the Baker. They were happy and innocent days. I went o Furzehill Infants School where Mr Holland was headmaster, then on to the Grammar School. Neither exist any more. I remember when the fair came to town - on a site next to the then Grammar School. The Octopus was the ride to go on. Having been to Florida since with my own duahgter it seems very tame but we liked it. I remember the Links and dances at hillside School when I was growing up. When I went to College we drank at the Mops and Brooms then branched out to pubs in Shenley and Radlett before making the break, first to ~Baileys, Middlesex & Herts Country Club, Pinks Hotel then to West Hampstead, Covent Garden and the West End. I went to work in the City and Borehamwood then seemed very small and provincial. I have seen Borehamwood listed on the 'Chav Town' website which makes me laugh and cry at the same time. When I lived there it was a happy 'village' on the outskirts of North London. I left Borehamwood when I was 20 - back in 1977. I live in Cornwall now (having lived in several places in between) but will always have happy memories of growing up in 'The Village'.

Whitethorn Morris at Letchmore Heath

The Three Horseshoes is an attractive pub facing the village green and the war memorial at Letchmore Heath, a beautiful place between Elstree and Aldenham just outside Watford. This pub regularly attracts morris dancers and one of the local morris sides is Whitethorn Morris who often perform both there and in the village hall.

The dancers, plus the Whitethorn Band, form up in the narrow road between the pub and the green and as soon as the music strikes up a crowd of villagers and pub goers forms around us to watch the display. The landlord is delighted to have a crowd, the residents are delighted with entertainment and the musicians and dancers enjoy a glorious outing to an attractive village.

Sometimes we choose this venue for our traditional Boxing Day dancing and we have been known to borrow the landlord's broom to clear enough snow to make a space safe for dancing!  More usually we dance there on a warm summer's evening and enjoy our beer while making music and dancing.