Around 160 years ago Elstree's farm-hands and servants would finish the day with a drink at The Wrestlers, a pub at the corner of Old Elstree Road and Old Grubbs Lane.
Today both those roads have gone and the area once occupied by the pub is a car park at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Boys, but The Wrestlers' replacement, The Battleaxes, is more popular than ever.
The pub, within the Aldenham House estate, dates back at least as far as the 1840s. In 1890 the estate's owner, Henry Hucks Gibbs, an MP for the City of London, demolished the pub and closed off Old Elstree Road and Old Grubbs Lane.
He created Aldenham Road and Butterfly Lane, which still exist today, to replace the old roads, marking the estate's boundaries.
To make sure his staff still had somewhere to go and enjoy themselves Mr Gibbs built The Battleaxes on the corner of the two new roads, and named it after the three battleaxes in his coat of arms.
The estate changed a great deal over the 20th Century. Under Mr Gibbs' ownership, dozens of trees, and specimens of plants from around the world that could rival Kew Gardens had been planted.
The grounds include 400 acres of garden and parkland, and a 200-acre flower garden.
Henry Hucks Gibbs died in 1906, leaving the estate to his son Vicary.
In the 1930s the family moved out of the estate and it was turned into a country club, whose wealthy clients demanded an airfield so that they could visit without having to drive in from home, leading the the foundation of Elstree Aerodrome.
The BBC took the site over during World War Two, to be used as the base of the BBC South American Service, and in 1961 Haberdashers' Aske's School for Boys was opened.
The boy's school now lies on what would have been the junction of Old Elstree Road and Old Grubbs Lane, across the road from where the pub would have been.
The Wrestlers Inn itself is now a distant memory, although during a recent visit volunteers from Elstree and Borehamwood Museum were impressed to find that boys at the school knew there had once been a pub there.
Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls opened in the early 1970s, and The Battleaxes is now one of Elstree's most popular pub restaurants.
February 28, 2003 16:00
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