In May 1834, William White was the tenant at Harwoods Farm (originally known as Harrod Farm).
Accounts from the time indicate that the owner was Edmund Fearnley Whittingstall. The substantial estate bordered Vicarage Road, then a track, and extended to Croxley Green. The sole reminder today of the existence of the farm is the name Harwoods Road.
Digitally redrawn version of Dury and Andrews 1766 Map of Hertfordshire showing Harrod Farm . Image: 'Dury and Andrews' Map of Hertfordshire: Society and Landscape in the Eighteenth Century by Andrew Macnair, Anne Startlingly, ‘the wretched culprit’ was convicted at the Hertfordshire Assizes and received the ‘extreme penalty of the law’ – death by public execution. According to Hertford newspapers, he confessed to the crime, ‘conducted himself with great propriety’ and ‘ascended the ladder to the scaffold with unusual fortitude’. Before the noose was fastened, he ‘addressed a few words to the assembled multitude, acknowledging the justice of his sentence and exhorting them to take warning by his fate’.
James West with his Town Crier's bell made from the old Market House bell. Image: Watford, A Pictorial Record by Borough Librarian Robert C. Sayell, published by Festival of Britain Committee, Borough of Watford, 1951In 1829, fat in a copper boiled over during the candle-making process at Sutton’s Candle Factory. The factory was destroyed, as was the Kings Head next door.
In 1853, there was another fire in the same area. It started two or three days after a fair, at which time ‘shambles’ and other stalls were positioned around the Market House’s wooden columns.
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