Hitchin, Hertfordshire

Halsey's Delicatessen

Our grandparents used to visit Halsey's weekly from Old Stevenage to buy their provisions. Now I with my sister visit regularly especially as we love the new owners' Kirsty and Damien's Tea Room. We take our children for 'tea' there and they think it's a real treat! Christmas simply wouldn't be Christmas without our Christmas Pudding Coffee, and Wild Boar and... [more]

Visiting

The lady in the centre of the photograph walking towards the camera is Mrs Kate Silsby my grandmother who lived at 8 Tilehouse Street. When this was taken we think she would have been walking to St Ippollytts to visit her daughter Mrs Babs Brown.

Car in the Churchyard

This car was parked in the Churchyard outside the provisions shop Halseys.

Man in Picture 1965

The white-haired man in the photograph, I believe, is my father John Neville. He was a police sergeant in Hitchin from 1941 until his retirement in the late '50s.

Queen Street

The road is called Queen Street and shows St Mary's Square on the left where the market was held on Tuesday and Saturday every week. Beyond that is Portmill Lane and the back of shops and offices at the top of Hermitage Road. On the immediate right is the Telephone Exchange.

My Heritage

Personally I don't have a memory of the Sun Hotel, but my late mother told me once that she thought her father's family either owned or ran the hotel. Their name was Taylor and they came from Hitchen and the surrounding area.

Hitchin

The scene is the rear of The Sun Hotel.

Times Gone By

The bustling twice-weekly market was clearly a popular event at the turn of the century. The cupola of the 1851 Corn Exchange rises above the collection of stalls and the surrounding Georgian facades. The flint-faced post office is on the right. Note the lone policeman keeping a watchful eye on events in the right foreground.

Countryside Poems

The bustling twice-weekly market was clearly a popular event at the turn of the century. The cupola of the 1851 Corn Exchange rises above the collection of stalls and the surrounding Georgian facades. The flint-faced post office is on the right. Note the lone policeman keeping a watchful eye on events in the right foreground.

Hitchin Town and City Memories

This photograph shows how the traffic used to run diagonally across the Market Place. To the left of the Italianate Corn Exchange, G C Flanders advertises the various cycles sold in the shop: Swift, Rover, Royal Enfield, Rudge and Whitworth amongst them. On the other side of the Exchange is Edwin Logsdon's confectionery business. Gatward's Engineers are to the right of... [more]