22 June 2009

A few days in rural Hertfordshire

High Leigh ... venue for the annual conference and council of USPG this week (Photograph/orangejack)

Patrick Comerford

I’m in beautiful English countryside this week, attending the annual conference and council meeting of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (USPG – Anglicans in World Mission) at the High Leigh Conference Centre, on the edges of Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, half-way between Cambridge and London.

I was last in High Leigh three years ago, when I was invited to be the chaplain at a conference organised jointly by the China Forum of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) and the Friends of the Church in China.

High Leigh is set in the heart of the Hertfordshire countryside and stands in 40 acres of lawns, parkland and woodland. Local historians say the earliest house at High Leigh dates back to 1403. In 1851, it was acquired by Charles Webb, a gold lace manufacturer, and two years later he started building the main part of the present building.

Robert Barclay from a banking and missionary family bought the place in 1871, and named his house High Leigh. When he died in 1921, the estate was bought by First Conference Estate Ltd, a company founded in 1909 and of which Robert Barclay had been a director, to provide affordable conference facilities for any and all Christians.

Since then, High Leigh has been expanded extensively. The centre offers residential conference facilities for up to 220 guests, along with a self-contained day conference facility, and hosts over 450 Christian, missionary, business, educational and charity conferences each year.

First Conference Estate also owns the Hayes Conference Centre at Swanwick, in Derbyshire, which opened in 1910 and where USPG met last year.

The charms of Hoddesdon

The War Memorial in Hoddesdon town centre (Photograph: Chris Hunt/Geograph)

This morning I had coffee in Hoddesdon and had a stroll around the town. Hoddesdon (population 20,000) is the nearest town to High Leigh. It a charming Hertfordshire town in the Lea Valley, close to Cheshunt and a few miles from Bishop’s Stortford.

The name Hoddesdon derives from a Saxon or Danish personal name combined with the Old English suffix “don,” meaning a down or hill. The earliest historical reference to the name is in the Domesday Book.

From an early date, a large number of inns lined the streets of Hoddesdon. A market charter was granted to the lord of the manor, Robert Boxe, in 1253. By the 14th century, the Hospital of Saint Laud and Saint Anthony had been established in the south of Hoddesdon. The hospital survived the dissolution of the monasteries but ceased to exist by the mid-16th century. It is commemorated in the name of Spital Brook, which divides Hoddesdon from the neighbouring town of Broxbourne (population 13,000).

The town was considerably enlarged in the reign of Elizabeth I, and a number of inns in the High Street date from this time. She granted the town a royal charter in 1560, giving the town its own council, with a bailiff, warden and eight assistants. The charter also set up a free grammar school on the site of the former hospital. Neither the borough council nor the grammar school flourished, however, and they had ceased to exist by the end of the 16th century.

In 1567, Sir William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, acquired the manor of Hoddesdonsbury and two years later Elizabeth I granted him the neighbouring manor of Baas. In 1622, Sir Marmaduke Rawdon built Rawdon House, a red-brick mansion which still stands. Rawdon also gave the town its first public water supply, flowing from a statue known as the “Samaritan Woman.”

The Cecil family maintained its connection with Hoddesdon in the centuries that followed. This link is preserved in the name of the Salisbury Arms (anciently the Black Lion Inn) – the family has held the title of Marquis of Salisbury since 1789. By the late 18th century, Hoddeson had become an important coaching stop on the route between Cambridge and London, and at its height, more than 35 coaches a day passed through Hoddesdon.

In 1803, William Christie established a brewery in the town. The brewery was a major employer and one of the largest breweries in England until it closed in 1928. By the mid-19th century, the town still consisted principally of one street, and had a population of 1,743. Malt was produced and sent to London on the River Lee.

Trade in Hoddesdon centred around the weekly hops market each Thursday. Later, as more and more hops were carried on the river rather than the roads, the Wednesday meat market took predominance. This Wednesday market has survived in Hoddesdon and it was joined in the late 20th century by a Friday market.

After World War II, Hoddesdon became more of a dormitory town. The opening of a by-pass in 1974 changed the nature of the town, with a noticeable drop-off in through-traffic. Hoddesdon saw a boom in the mid-20th century as gravel was extracted from the area. But the gravel supplies ran out by the 1970s, and the lakes and water pits left behind have since been adapted as local leisure facilities.

Today, Hoddesdon has a little light industry but it is mainly a London commuter-belt town. Much of Hoddesdon High Street is pedestrianised. At the north of the High Street, behind the Clock Tower, is the Tower Centre shopping centre, while Fawkon Walk stands to the west of the High Street. The town now forms three wards of the Borough of Broxbourne – Hoddesdon North, Hoddesdon Town and Rye Park – and is twinned with the Belgian city of Dinant.

Hoddesdon’s famous residents

Richard Rumboldt (ca 1622-1685) was one of the Cromwellian conspirators in the Rye House plot.

The missionary and author William Ellis (1794-1872), missionary and author, lived in Hoddesdon from 1844, and was a minister to an Independent congregation. The Anglican theologian William Josiah Irons (1812-1883), was born in Hoddesdon.

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour (1848-1930), Conservative politician and British Prime Minister (1902-1905), went to school at the Grange Preparatory School, Hoddesdon, along with his younger brother, Francis Maitland Balfour (1851-1882), comparative embryologist and morphologist.

The road-builder and engineer John Loudon McAdam (1756-1836), who gave his name to tarmacadam, lived in Hoddesdon from 1827. The singer Lena Zavaroni (1963-1999) also spent some of her final years here.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological College.

No comments: