HertfordshireTompkins, Herbert W. (Herbert Winckworth)
History
Hertfordshire
Tompkins, Herbert W. (Herbert Winckworth)
Hertfordshire (England) -- Guidebooks
Mention must be made of the curious bronze vessel of the Anglo-Saxon
period, resembling a teapot, found in the neighbourhood some years ago.
It is figured and described in the recently published _Victoria History
of Hertfordshire_.
_Wheathampstead Cross_ (11/2 mile S.E. from Harpenden Station, M.R.) is 2
miles S.W. from the above village. It contains nothing but a few
cottages.
_Whempstead_, a hamlet in the centre of the county, is not easily
reached, being about 5 miles E. from Knebworth Station, G.N.R., and
rather farther N.W. from Ware. The so-called _Whempstead Chapel_,
recently demolished, was a small cottage, but it doubtless stood near
the site of an old chapel "founded and endowed about the beginning of
the thirteenth century by the family of Aguillon".
_White Barns_, near the Essex border, is a hamlet 3/4 mile N. from
Furneaux Pelham (_q.v._).
_Whitwell_ (41/2 miles S.W. from Stevenage) is strictly a hamlet, but is a
place of some size, scattered along the S. bank of the river Maran. The
nearest parish church is at St. Paul's Walden (_q.v._), but there is a
modern Baptist chapel near the centre of the main street, and a small
church on the Bendish Road, formerly owned by the Countess of
Huntingdon's Connection; it is now partially disused. The mill at the E.
end of the village, near the old tan-yard, was burnt down many years
ago, but has since been rebuilt.
_Widbury_ is 1 mile E. from Ware.
WIDFORD, so interesting in the eyes of all lovers of Charles Lamb, is a
small village on the river Ash, with a station (G.E.R.) a few minutes W.
from the church. Visitors, however, must remember that much in the
neighbourhood has changed since Lamb's day. He himself recorded the
demolition of the old house "Blakesware" or, as he wrote it,
"Blakesmoor,"[o] which he knew so well as a child; the church spire,
mentioned in his verses "The Grandame," was rebuilt many years back; the
cottage at _Blenheim_ close by, immortalised in _Rosamund Gray_, was
long ago rebuilt.
The church is Dec. and Perp.; there are sedilia in the chancel, the roof
of which was finely painted by Miss Gosselin forty years ago, and there
is a piscina in the nave. The circular stone staircase that formerly led
to the old rood-loft was built up during restoration. The present E.
window is to the memory of John Eliot--the missionary to the
Indians--born at Nazing early in the seventeenth century. There are very
few memorials; one might almost repeat the words written of the church
two centuries ago, "In this church are no gravestones". The manor is
very ancient and was held in the reign of William I. by the Bishop of
London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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