Abbots Langley

The Causeway development, carried out between 1955 and 1957, created a parade of shops, flats and dwellings on the site of Causeway House, which was finally demolished in 1957. It was built in 1720, and until 1857 had been owned by Miss Caroline Henty, the niece of the Edwardian boy’s adventure story writer, G A Henty. The first occupiers of the shops when they opened in 1958 were Mr Hall, consulting optician, Davis TV and radio sales, Christy’s gentlemen’s and children’s outfitters, and Mrs S Henderson, ladies’ hairdresser. The timber-faced building in the distance was the local dental practice.
An extract from from"Hertfordshire Living Memories".

In 1865, George Wander, a Swiss chemist, devised a new malted barley nutritional drink called Ovaltine. The company bought Parsonage Farm at Abbots Langley and Numbers Farm at Kings Langley in the 1900s, and the Ovaltine model farm was established at Langley in 1929. It was modelled on the farm created by Louis XIV for Marie Antoinette. By the 1950s, Ovaltine employed 1,400 staff at Langley - the lives of few local people were not influenced by the company or its suppliers. The poultry farm kept one of the largest flocks of laying poultry - over 50,000 White Leghorns - whilst the dairy farm at Bedmond Road boasted a herd of prize-winning pedigree Jersey cattle. By the late 1960s, demand for the product had dropped and parts of the farm had fallen into disrepair; in 1975, the 185ft Ovaltine chimney, which had been built using a quarter of million bricks for £7000, was demolished at a cost of £8000.
An extract from from"Hertfordshire Living Memories".

Originally known as Langley House, this was the home of Robert Henty, brother of G A Henty and of Lord Kindersley, Director of the Bank of England. In 1928 the Salvatorian Fathers of Wealdstone bought Langley House, and part of it became the Roman Catholic church for the area. By 1930, a school had been established in the stables under Sisters Claudia and Ellidia. It was known as Breakspear College in memory of Nicholas Breakspear, Pope Adrian IV, who was born at Abbots Langley. The property was sold in 1986 to Dr John Munro, who converted it into an allergy clinic. Today it is empty and boarded up, awaiting planning permission for the main house to be broken up into individual dwellings.
An extract from from"Hertfordshire Living Memories".

The Causeway development, carried out between 1955 and 1957, created a parade of shops, flats and dwellings on the site of Causeway House, which was finally demolished in 1957. It was built in 1720, and until 1857 had been owned by Miss Caroline Henty, the niece of the Edwardian boy’s adventure story writer, G A Henty. The first occupiers of the shops when they opened in 1958 were Mr Hall, consulting optician, Davis TV and radio sales, Christy’s gentlemen’s and children’s outfitters, and Mrs S Henderson, ladies’ hairdresser. The timber-faced building in the distance was the local dental practice.
An extract from from"Hertfordshire Living Memories".

What life was like for the unfortunate plait children can be gleaned from a Factory Inspector’s report in 1870. He associated their mothers, the plait women, with ‘vacant minds, dirty cottages and neglected children’. The decline of the plait schools was caused mainly by the deterioration of the plait industry; aided by the fact that from 1891 education was not only compulsory, it was also free. The 19th century was a century of Free Trade and this allowed cheap plait imports from Italy and later from China and Japan. Plaits that were sold for one shilling (10p) a score in 1838, were only fetching 3d (1.5p) in 1893. By the 1870s an experienced plaiter’s earnings had dropped to about four shillings a week. In spite of the hardships, straw plaiting provided a much-needed income for the labouring poor and opportunities for the aged and widows, who otherwise would become a burden on the parish. The craft, the way of life of the plaiters, together with their independent spirit, has endured in local memory. At the other end of the social scale, the arrival in the early 19th century of the gentry in the form of the Cooper family provided a noticeable Tory-Anglican form of interference into local affairs. The people of Hemel Hempstead, who during the Middle Ages were ruled by the rector and monks at Ashridge, now found themselves under the stewardship of the gentry who lived at Gadebridge. Indeed, the Cooper family interfered with life in Hemel Hempstead in a way that the Lords of the Manor, the Halsey family, never did. (Dacorum Heritage Trust Ltd) Gadebridge House and estate was purchased for the town by the Hemel Hempstead Borough Council in 1952. The house became a preparatory school for boys until 1963 and was demolished when Kodak bought the site. When Kodak moved the site was developed for housing.
An extract from from"Hemel Hempstead - A History & Celebration".