The Ryse

A Memory of Hatfield Heath.

My Grandmother lived in Yew Tree Cottage, The Ryse Hatfield Heath with Bob Challis. I was a little girl growing up in London, and would visit at Weekends and school holidays. Uncle Bob was a stockman on the farm but later due to ill health drove a tractor. I remember cycling to Hatfield Heath on my little bike past the Turkey farm where I could see the heads of the turkeys. Nan told me at Christmas time they were driven down the road by men with sticks to the butchers on the Heath. The Butcher always called my Nan 'Mrs Marsh' although her name was Mrs March! Near the cottage was a great big barn and a moat. I was told the moat was haunted by the ghost of a girl from the Big House who was not allowed to marry her love because he was a common man and that Uncle Bobs Brother hung himself in the barn! I remember going in the barn and seeing the stalls where the horses were kept and all the old harness hanging on the walls all covered in cobwebs, just left from the time they were last used. Opposite was the Dairy which was getting derelict and build with cool white tiles on the inside. Near the lane at the end of the barn stood an old cart, left with it's shafts pointing up into the sky.Saturday afternoon we always when to Bishops Stortford down Pig Lane and my sister and I ran to the toy shop called Danes and a book shop with a stone stag outside. On the way home we stopped at the Heath and Dad went into the White Horse and took Uncle Bobs bottles of beer home and we popped into Bucks, the village shop for some sweets. I remember the main road being cut and build through Hatfield Heath as there were a lot of big lorries driving down the narrow lanes and the houses behind the shops in the village. Also lots of low flying aircraft as in those days Stanstead was a training airport! Every year there was a summer fete on the Heath and I spent lots of time on a very dodgy slide and all my money on the Win a Pig stall. Yes a real pig was the prize! I remember the Round House on the way to the Ryse where Uncle Bob was born and opposite lived a lady called Mrs. Bird who had a duck called Quackers. We used to walk nan's dog down the lanes, and The Avenue near the cottage where a beautiful Copper Beech tree stood. There were lots of old hollow oaks where the boundaries of the old fields must have been before the fields were made into one large one and I would run across the fields and play in them! There was a large drying shed where the harvested corn was stored and I remember an old bull pen and a deaf white cat that lived there on the mice which my nan would feed! Sadly Uncle Bob died in 1967 and Nan came back to live with us in London. I was so sad as I loved visiting Hatfield Heath. They were the happiest days of my life!