MRS Grillo's aunt, who researched the Heydon family in Victoria's reign got her information from Herts historians and most of her findings are correct. However, her comments on the origins of the Watford Heydons were not correct; the first of whom John, was a Leavesden farmer who died young in 1468, leaving his widow Joan as trustee for his young children.

His eldest son, William went to Westminster where he obtained employment at court, becoming in 1476 the arbiter of weights and measures.

He prospered and married Elizabeth Aubrey of Harlington, Middlesex, of a landed family.

He obtained a grant of arms, copied from the coat of the Heydons of Norfolk, to whom he was quite unrelated. William died in 1512 and was buried in Westminster.

He had bought property in his native Watford and also inherited a house in New Street from his father.

Before 1505, when his mother Joan died, he had co-operated with her to rebuild St Katherine's chapel in Watford Church, which became known as the Heydon Chapel.

His heir, William the younger, was a barrister of Lincolns Inn where he lived above the gatehouse.

He was clerk to the Duchy of Lancaster and a friend of Thomas Cromwell.

In 1518 he bought the estate of Grove, which had never previously belonged to the Heydons, and made it his principal residence in 1530.

He enlarged his New Street home in 1530 and built a farmhouse in Oxhey called St Cleres (Sinclairs). In 1545 he died and was buried in Watford.

His heir, Henry, succeeded, and after him, Francis, who died in 1606 almost bankrupt.

Before his death, he had sold or given away all his Watford land and houses.

His eldest son, Edward, went to Shipton Solers in Gloucestershire, which had been the home of his mother's family the Twynhoes.

So it seemed that the Watford Heydons were finished. But in 1610 Michael Heydon, Francis' cousin, steward to the Lord Chancellor, acquired the New Street house, called Watford Place, and leased it to Lady Dorothy Morison as a woman's almshouse and home for the Watford parish lecturer, a kind of curate.

Michael built a new house in the orchard of Watford Place, which he intended to endow as the Heydon almshouse, but he died in 1619 before he could carry out his wish.

By 1670 this new Watford Place was home to Dame Fuller, founder of the Free School.

The adjoining old Watford Place was by then called The Lecturers House untill its demolition in 1824.

In 1639 a nephew of Francis, John Heydon, bought Oxhey Place, the former St Cleres, from the Altham family. He lived there until 1668, a keen supporter of Parliament against Charles I. But in that year, at the age of 60, he was knighted by Charles II and sent to Bermuda as resident governor.

He remained there until 1681, and put down a slave rebellion. He died in Coventry, the home of his daughter Ann Bayley, in 1697. aged 89.

He was buried in Watford, as was his daughter in 1702. His only son died young in 1641.

Sir John, like most of his ancestors a Lincoln Inn lawyer, was indeed the last of the Watford Heydons, a family which had vied with the Morisons to be supreme in Watford during the 16th and 17th centuries.

On the site of the two Watford Places we now have Exchange Road and George Street and the Woodfields old people's flats, but I remember the oriel window and porch of the 1530 Watford Place which were preserved in Woodfield's store mason's yard until Exchange Road was built.

By EJ Chapman, of Chester Road, Watford.

August 19, 2002 14:30