THIS week’s spotlight falls on Radlett. Nostalgia Editor Michael Pickard spoke to Philip Eastburn, of The Radlett Society and Greenbelt Association, about a village laid out by four prominent landowners, and the location of a gruesome 19th Century murder that gripped the nation.
Mr Eastburn explains: “There was a community here 2,000 years ago because Watling Street is a Roman road built to connect London with St Albans.
“An archaeological dig at the end of the 19th Century found Roman remains off Loom Lane, which was a potter’s furnace.
“It has some complete pots there with the maker’s name – Castus. So we know there was a guy called Castus living in this area.
“The origins of the village’s name are in some doubt, with spellings ranging from Radlet to Radletts. Some people believe it was originally called Radwellheaved. My own feeling is that it’s named because of the stream that runs through Radlett. In the early days, the water was red coloured and the old name for stream is leat, so Redleat became Radlett, but there is no proof for either of these stories.
A view of Watling Street, Radlett, taken during the late 1940’s.
“Into the 19th Century, most of the land in Radlett, around 1890, was owned by four people.
“Mr Charles Part, of Aldenham Lodge, a country house on Shenley Hill, owned most of the land north of Shenley Hill and Park Road.
“Most of the land south of that was owned by William Brough Phillimore, except for the triangle of land of Aldenham Road and Park Road which was owned by the Sedgwick family brewers of Watford.
“Land between Shenley Hill and Theobald Street, which was known as Newberries, was owned by Mr Lubbock, a governor of the Bank of England, who later sold it to the Miller family.
“The land was in these four people’s hands. The Sedgwicks sold off the triangle, which was farmland with barns, for housing development.
“Charles Part started selling off some of his land on the Radlett Park estate.
“Around that time, Phillimore died and left his property of 1,000 acres to his third cousin, Sir Walter Phillimore, a law lord. He was wealthy enough that he didn’t need 1,000 acres so he gave it to his son for building – Robert (Bobby) Phillimore. He immediately set about dividing it up into building plots and selling it off.
“Between those three people, they laid out the roads of Radlett pretty much 80 to 90 per cent as they are now. There has been very little additional development of roads since then.
“At the time the only roads were Loom Lane, Gills Hill Lane, which was known as Gills Hill, the road to Watford and a small road called Malt Lane, which ran up the side of what is now the synagogue and was until ten years ago the parish hall.
“Bobby Phillimore came from a very wealthy family but was a radical left-winger. He was a great friend of George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, and between them they founded the Fabian Society.
“Bobby was very keen on workers’ rights. He built flats for his workers in Scribbits Square and built a big workshop in which workers could have their own workstation and keep their tools. But at the same time he always took the chance to make some money. It’s thought by many he was a generous benefactor to the community. Scrubbits Wood took four or five years of bickering before a price was agreed on to sell to the parish council, which is still the owner of it.
Armistice Day parade, 1948, pictured in Watling Street.
“By the time of World War One, all of Radlett’s roads were pretty much laid out and development had been started in all of them, excluding what was known as the Newlands estate. That didn’t start getting developed until after World War One. The site was owned by Mr Part.
“Radlett was not really affected by either war. There was no bomb damage. A few bombs fell in farmland. Tabard rugby ground, then a cabbage patch, was oil bombed. A unit of Royal Engineers trained here before going to Gallipoli, in the area known as the Warren.
“While houses were being developed, shops came along as well. There had been, as far as I can tell, no shops at all here until the late 1880s. But then there were not many houses. The population was only a couple of hundred and they were all farm workers so presumably most of their requirements were provided by the farms they worked on.
“The first shops were houses that were converted into shops in The Terrace, around 1872. The first shops proper were on the site now occupied by Barclays Bank. He opened his own bank there known as Martens, Part and Company. It had upstairs a room for a men’s club.
“In 1902 he bought a piece of land on the opposite side of the road, presumably from Sedgwick and opened the first proper shop. Mr Part was from Lancashire and had been brought up on the idea of the co-operative movements. He started that type of shop in Radlett, which became part of the London Co-operative Society that became The Co-op.
“Shops were built down Station Parade but not a lot were around until after World War One. In 1924, The Oakway was built, a row of shops at the north end of the village. That was the principal shopping area with grocers, a tea room and hairdressers.
“The next development just before World War Two was the first four shops in Newberries Parade, known as Newberries Mansion, with four shops and four apartments above them. They were built on land on the Newberries estate.
A welcome home dinner for members of the Armed Services in Radlett in 1947.
“During the first part of the 1900s, it was owned by the Miller family. George Miller bought it in 1906 and extended it. His land stretched right down to Watling Street with the railway running through the bottom part of it. He sold off the bit to the west of the railway line and then sold a piece of land next to that to Charles Part’s son Alexander, who started a company known is the Herts and Essex Trust House Co. That was the forerunner of the Trust Houses Association. Up until the 1970s they were one of the biggest chains of hotels in the country. Eventually it was taken over by Charles Forte.
“Part of the Newberries land was developed between during the wars. Cannons Close was laid out and houses built. In the mid-1930s, George Miller’s son Robert was the owner and he lost a lot of money and had to sell the estate. It was bought by Sir Arthur Du Cros, a property developer.
“Du Cros laid out roads now in the Newberries estate and built a couple of dozen houses before the war. It was a difficult time for property. The whole country knew war was coming and properties didn’t move very quickly so the venture was not very successful. To push it along he laid out a five hole golf course. The mansion was the club house but that didn’t help sell anything. He sold it to the UK Provident Institution (UKPI). But when the war came along, the mansion, along with Aldenham Lodge, by then a hotel, were requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence and became Air Force establishments. They were taking part in a secret scheme for diverting German bombers, about which nothing was known until about ten years ago when the details were released and everybody found out what was going on in those two country houses. They were an integral part of the British defence against bombers.
“By the end of World War Two, UKPI got control back and Middlesex County Council expressed interest in buying it to turn it into a hospital.
“Eighteen months later they pulled out. UKPI sold what was left of the mansion and the grounds to William Old, who acquired the rest of the estate from Du Cros.
“They pulled the mansion down in the 1950s. It was described somewhere as the finest gentleman’s residence in Hertfordshire.
“Nothing much has happened since because it was already here. One of the features of Radlett, I feel, is that because of the way it was developed with landowners selling plots, it means that purchasers would buy a plot, find a builder and it would be different from anything around it.
“The variety of houses in Radlett is good. They are not all the same next door to one another. WG Taylor built a lot of large houses in Radlett and they are dotted about the place. I think that’s given Radlett part of its character.
“The Radlett Centre was a major change. The parish council had owned the parish hall in The Oakway since the 1960s and wanted to have a better hall for the community. It owned its offices at number 1, Aldenham Avenue and during the last credit crunch it was able to buy number 3 for a good price. On that site the Radlett Centre was built. It gave the old parish hall to the Jewish fraternity.
Regulars at the Railway Inn present their charity collection in the 1940’s.
“One of the things people do say about the reasons about Radlett growing is it grew because of the railway. It’s not true. It grew because the railway was here, not because it came. It came in 1863, 35 years before Radlett grew. There’s a significant difference.
“Christchurch in Watling Street was built around 1850, on land donated by William Phillimore with money given by other prominent people. It was a single nave church. It is unusually laid out north-south and not east-west, so it could be built seen from the railway. In 1907, the community had grown to extend and a second nave was added.
“The Cat and Fiddle has been here since 1840, when Mr Hooper ‘threw up’ a house on waste ground. It was the law in those days that if you found a piece of waste ground and built a house in one day and had smoke coming out of the chimney, you could claim it. It’s been a pub ever since.
“The Red Lion goes back to the 18th Century. It was originally closer to the road but was rebuilt in 1904 to where it is now.
“The village is also known for the Radlett murder of 1823, when a man was killed for a gambling debt in Gills Hill Lane. It was known as Murder Lane when I was a child. In those days it was a very narrow with high hedges and trees overgrowing so it was quite spooky for a ten-year-old.”
All photos courtesy of Philip Eastburn.
