Paul Wigmore has sent in this story about the Bushey public library in the 1930s. He said: “It was 1935 and I was ten. The Bushey public library was opened a little later, I think, but when it did come I found it great after coming out of school – Ashfield School for Boys – at 4pm to walk into Bushey public library.

“It was like bringing a storm-tossed boat into harbour. As you went in, all you heard was silence – not a forbidding silence but a soothing one, with a quietly-spoken, smiling, helpful young woman busying herself behind the counter.

“I've forgotten her name. You could ask her questions about where to find a book, or even the sort of book you needed, and she would lead you there.

“Two or three people would be sitting at the big tables at the far end, working, some writing notes, others turning the pages of books.

“When I went in I knew exactly which shelves to head for. There were the entire series of Cody M Ferris’s The X-Bar-X Boys and all of Captain WE Johns’s ‘Biggles’ books; on each side and above and below them were books of the same kind.

“Further along there came Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, PG Wodehouse with Jeeves and Bertie Wooster and The Empress of Blandings waiting to reduce me to giggles.

“At home in the evenings when there was nothing interesting on the radio, I would read Three Men in a Boat to Mum and Dad, I in an upright dining chair facing the fire and they in their armchairs on either side, exploding with laughter.

“I discovered the library as soon as we arrived at our new Ashfield Avenue house (a short road, ending at Somers Way at that time).

“It was my teacher, my guide to the ways of the world, to the workings of the human body.

“This last function came into play as soon as I cottoned-on to the fact that there was an enormous row of books called the Encyclopaedia Britannica and that it could enlarge upon so much of what I had heard about but didn’t understand.

“They had answers to the many pressing questions. Sitting there, reading the answers and studying the illustrations I would become aware of a burning red face and, walking out of the place, hoping it would cool down by the time I went in at the back door of No 36.

“The library was my best, my honest, friend. I just wish I could remember that librarian’s name.”

 

ONLINE TOMORROW: Memories of Maud Judd the grocer, plus the Church Lads Brigade - and some appeals from around the world.

 

This Nostalgia column was first published in the Watford Observer on April 26, 2013. The next Nostalgia column can be read in this week’s Watford Observer (dated May 3, 2013) or read online here from 4pm next Thursday.

If you have anything to add – or would like to tell us anything you think our readers may enjoy about Watford’s history – we are always pleased to hear from you. Contact Nostalgia, by clicking here watfordnostalgia@london.newsquest.co.uk