When my father visited places of antiquity, his thoughts wandered to those through the centuries who had preceded him. He never failed to be fascinated by the footsteps of the past. I’d like to take you back, courtesy of early Watford historian Henry Williams, to several Watford residents from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Charles Icome was Parish Clerk of St Mary’s Church around 1835 and master of Dame Fuller’s Free School. He was an experienced philosopher, lecturer and astronomer. Short and well set, he had closely-cropped grey hair and a face marked by smallpox. He wore old fashioned clothes: a tricorn hat, straight-cut black coat with large buttons and quaintly-cut lapels, black knee breeches and black silk or worsted stockings, with silver buckles on his shoes. In adverse weather you’d hear him approaching as his protective over-shoes called pattens were fitted with iron rings.

In his memorable practical lectures, he invited pupils to form a ‘living cable which transmitted shocks from his electrical machine across the floor’. Once, on a journey on ‘Greenway’s six-inside coach’ from London, he quoted Greek, Hebrew and Latin, spoke of deep subjects and replaced his watch in his pocket in a ‘peculiar position to secure the truest vibration of its works’. As a mark of his character, he once forgot to deliver an ‘unimportant’ note whilst in London. After returning to Watford and retiring for the night, he remembered and arose at once to walk 15 miles with the note ‘to repair his neglect and atone’.

Watford Observer: Drawing of Charles Icome by Heulwen Jones, Pump House PaintersDrawing of Charles Icome by Heulwen Jones, Pump House Painters

Solicitor Thomas Nicholl, born c1761, also wore knee-breeches, black silk stockings and shoes with silver buckles; the mark of a country gentleman. He and fellow solicitor and churchwarden Philip Cowley, born c1775, were the last two Watfordians with pigtails. Before their deaths in 1847 and 1854 respectively, hairdresser David Downer of 97 High Street, brother of celebrated Watford photographer Frederick Downer, cut off their pigtails.

Philip Cowley, who lived in Grove Circus, where Beechen Grove is now, landed a 37lb pike in Watford and paid £10 (£1,000+ today) to a taxidermist to preserve the specimen. Following his death his brother-in-law bought it but, after he and his widow died, it was sold for just £2.10s. (£2.50) to William Newbury of the Brewers’ Arms, 233 High Street. A reverse fisherman’s tale in terms of investment!

John Adcock, Baptist schoolmaster of George Godfrey, about whom I last wrote, became an accountant in his 50s, then Registrar of Marriages in Watford. He was single and lived with his father Daniel and two unmarried sisters, Mary and Sarah; the latter a straw bonnet maker. Their home was also in Grove Circus.

Billy Lovett, a farm labourer born c1840, and his family worked at the Rookery Silk Mill. He was put into the stocks in Market Place on three occasions for cruelty to his children. They were left unwashed for so long that a scrubbing brush he used to forcibly clean them caused their skin to come away. Stocks punishments were augmented by passers-by who threw rotten eggs, mud and stones.

Before the police force was formed in 1829, two watchmen guarded Watford High Street each night, protecting people and property, and calling out the hour and state of the weather. Charley, the watchman in upper High Street used a watchbox near the Pond. One night in the early hours a prankster, fresh out of The Horns public house at 1 Hempstead Road, heard Charley snoring and, with a hefty push, overturned the watchbox. Charley’s head hit the inside of the door and he lay trapped. Eventually his cries were heard and he was released, though much bruised.Watford Observer: The watchbox was near the Pond. Behind trees in the distance is The Horns public house, 1909.The watchbox was near the Pond. Behind trees in the distance is The Horns public house, 1909.

In 1845 Fanny Crawley was born in Flint Hall at the bottom of Chalk Hill, Oxhey. The grand-sounding house name comprised several old flint cottages constructed below ground level and accessed by several steps. The inhabitants were poor and included chimney sweeps. The cottages eventually became dilapidated and their demolition ‘gave considerable satisfaction to all those interested in the improvement of the place’, noted Henry Williams. Fanny Crawley married Charles Field of Bushey and moved to Watford Heath.

Widow Elizabeth Armstrong was publican of the Red Lion Inn in Red Lion Yard around 1850. In Waterbutt Square, beyond the public house, was a Wesleyan burial place and she and her predecessors were given a penny for access through the yard for every corpse. Red Lion Yard was also home to a silk-spinning mill, workers’ cottages and later formed an entrance to Watford’s old covered market.

Watford Observer: Red Lion Yard. Image: 'Watford, A Pictorial Record'Red Lion Yard. Image: 'Watford, A Pictorial Record'

Watford residents come and go in ever-increasing numbers, but spare a thought for those from past centuries who spent their lives for better or worse in the town.

With thanks to Heulwen Jones for the drawing of Charles Icome.

Lesley Dunlop is the daughter of the late Ted Parrish, a well-known local historian and documentary filmmaker. He wrote 96 nostalgic articles for the ‘Evening Post-Echo’ in 1982-83 which have since been published in ‘Echoes of Old Watford, Bushey & Oxhey’, available at www.pastdayspublishing.com and Bushey Museum. Lesley is currently working on ‘Two Lives, Two World Wars’, a companion volume that explores her father’s and grandfather’s lives and war experiences, in which Watford, Bushey and Oxhey’s history will take to the stage once again.