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Chorleywood
Chorleywood maps
Historic maps of Chorleywood and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Chorleywood maps
Chorleywood area books
Displaying 1 of 8 books about Chorleywood and the local area. View all books for this area
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Memories of Chorleywood
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Hertfordshire memories
Walking in The River
From the concrete slab bridge by the watercress beds to the park near Scots Hill we would wade in the river with bare feet, I was only nine years old then.
The river bed was a fine golden grit that was easy to walk on. The water was always clean and clear with minnows and bullheads in abundance. We frequently saw Kingfishers darting into the water for the minnows. The water weed waved in long flowering bunches and the ripples would lap against the reed margin like quiet music. I have visited the Chess many times and have never tired of it.
The Artichoke on The Green
I used to walk or ride my bike past the Artichoke public house almost daily while running errands from the small group of shops opposite the church.
There used to be a small cycle shop, news agent, grocers shop, and a garage, with the Sportsman public house at the north end of the group.
In the warmer months the publican of the Artichoke would put out his cockatoo parrot by the front door. It would call out to everybody passing by on the Green. I would go over to him for a very one sided chat and brave putting my fingers in the cage to pet him.
Saturday Morning Pictures at The Odeon
School days were OK but on Saturday morning the walk/run from Croxley Green down into Ricky was always an adventure. We would go down Scots Hill or down the track opposite the church at the bottom of the Green and come out by the cinema we called the flea pit. Then a short walk into the town. Normally what seemed like hundreds of children would be gathered at the rear of the Odeon waiting to get in. Films of Roy Rodgers, Jean Autry, Charlie Chaplain and many others would entertain us. If any youngster had a birthday that day, his or her name was called out and 'Happy Birthday' was sung buy everybody, all very happy.
A Beer With my Dad at Ye Olde Greene Manne
In the distance you can see Ye Olde Greene Manne pub on Batchworth Heath. My Dad and I sat in the pub garden and drank beer one hot summer's day in 1965 and my mum took a photo of us together which I treasure as a lovely memory. Can you believe we were wearing tweed sports jackets, coloured shirts and ties on a hot day! I suppose that was fashionable then. I just wish the old beer prices were still in fashion; as I recall it was one shilling and ten pence for a pint of bitter. Mind you Watney's Red Barrel and Inde Coope's Double Diamond were all you could get locally in those days. The quality and choice of beer have both gone up dramatically over the last 40 years but so have the prices. Sadly my Dad died in his mid 60's so I had very few opportunities to visit pubs with him but this visit to Batchworth Heath sticks in my memory as a very jolly... Read more
Ah, Summer !
Each summer we would set off, my mam and dad and I and the dog, Raq, in our 1938 Morris 8 to travel from Hartlepool to Rickmansworth to stay with Uncle Charlie and Aunt Sally Charters who had the grocery shop in Norfolk Road (number 55, I think it was). It was a huge adventure every year, setting off at 6 a.m. and travelling down the A1, stopping for tea on the cobbles at Biggleswade, just beneath the house martins' nests on the front of the hotel and shops. We would arrive at about 8 p.m. to a meal of Uncle Charlie's home-cured and boiled ham which was always in great demand from his customers.
I played with Nobby who lived across the road and his friends, usually fishing for tiddlers in the water splash or trying to catch fish in the canal at the end of the road. The water splash was always warm and clear, awash with fish just asking to be scooped up in... Read more
Nice Photo!
Is the pond still there? I remember delivering newspapers to the pub, and to other houses and cottages around the heath - by bike all the way from Moor Park shops! At least it was downhill from here - about three papers to the pub and six to the golf club on the way back. Even then, most of the cottages around the heath were occupied by country folk, farm workers etc. and really homely and friendly they were - I've noticed the area has become somewhat ''gentrified'' and the heath itself then was much more open with fewer trees - who planted all the ''screening trees'' and did they have permission? I believe the pub was a regular stop for the day-tripper Charabanc trade in Ye Olden Days.
No Idea Where This
I was born in Mill End, Rickmansworth in 1950 and have no idea what church this is a photo of. I went to infant school in Shepherds' Lane, Mill End opposite St. Peters' and it isn't that. I then went to Ricky Grammar School in 1961, in Croxley Green and opposite was All Saints' and it isn't that. Is it at the back of Our Lady Helper of Christians, near the Fortune Green at the bottom of Scots' Hill?
