Ashwell

Little has changed at this junction on the roads to Newnham and Hinxworth, known as West End and Back Street. The first token reference to the growing traffic can be identified in the reflective pillar mounted on the boundary wall (centre). The cottages were owned by Joshua Page, one of the many local brewers, as accommodation for his workers. Later it was the site of a fish and chip shop run by Fred Harris.
An extract from from"North and East Hertfordshire Photographic Memories".

The thatched roof and plastered walls of the Chantry House typify the construction of the houses and cottages in Ashwell. Even the barn (left, behind the delivery van) is thatched. More expensive later buildings were of brick with a tiled roof, although, of course, the earlier church is built of stone. There is a village story that one Friday evening around 1850, Georgianna Covington was on her way to choir practice when she noticed a figure coming towards her. As she entered the church, she turned and to her horror saw that the hooded apparition had no head. She staggered into the church and fell senseless on the floor of the chancel, causing fear and fright amongst the choir who were assembling there.
An extract from from"Hertfordshire Living Memories".

The cottages were threatened with destruction shortly after this photograph was taken, but popular opinion prevailed and they were saved. The Hertfordshire Building Preservation Trust, in collaboration with Hertfordshire County Council, carried out a major restoration in the 1960s, and they now stand proudly as a memorial to what might have been lost. Almost opposite Foresters Cottages is the headquarters of the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain, and members’ cars often visit the village. Spring afternoons provide a fine sight as some of these elderly ‘ladies and gentlemen’ parade through the streets and lanes.
An extract from from"Hertfordshire Living Memories".

This was clearly a successful village which had made its fortune by the weaving and cloth trade, as well as through agriculture. Later, in the mid 1800s, coprolite extraction brought prosperity to the landowners and inhabitants: phosphotic nodules, mined locally, were washed with dilute sulphuric acid, ground to a powder and sold as a powerful fertilizer. One of the gang-masters of the mining teams was a certain Mr Fison. The Foresters Cottages, in the right foreground, were to be demolished in a few years after the photograph was taken, but were saved and extensively restored in the 1960s through the Hertfordshire Building Preservation Trust and Hertfordshire County Council.
An extract from from"North and East Hertfordshire Photographic Memories".

This early 16th-century timber-framed house, formerly owned by St John's College, Cambridge and earlier by Westminster Abbey, was used by the village as the Town House for the collection of rents and tithes. In the late 1920s it was in a dilapidated state and about to be demolished, but it was purchased for £25 to house the bygones and objects of local interest collected by Albert Sheldrick and John Bray. As Ashwell Museum, it was opened to the public on 29 November 1930. Over 70 years later, it continues to thrive as one of the best small museums in Hertfordshire.
An extract from from"North and East Hertfordshire Photographic Memories".