Three Rivers Museum has just been given a diary. It’s very small, and relates only to a single year – but it’s given us a glimpse into life in our area.
She was Elizabeth Giles, who was born in 1903 and has left us her diary for 1917. Her son, Giles Browne, who has generously given it to us, has already painstakingly transcribed it, and has also given us Elizabeth’s photo album: she took and processed herself a number of photos of her family, although sadly very few are now clear enough to see properly.
Her father, Henry Giles, was of a Cornish farming family and moved to Stockers Farm in 1915 or 16 (a number of Cornish, Devonian and Scottish farmers had moved to Hertfordshire over the previous 40 years).
Stockers at this time was a mixed farm, as many were in this area, and Elizabeth only hints at the activity on the farm. But it’s a couple of allusions she makes to the local watercress beds which attract our attention.
Watercress had been grown in the area since the 1830s, and was taken into London by canal boat. By the 1860s it was going by train from Rickmansworth. By the time she visited the watercress beds in 1917 the business was very considerable: but what will she have seen and known?
Her visit was very likely to the beds and shed of Richard Bradbery, on the river just to the south of the Uxbridge Road, no great distance from Stockers Farm. Our photos show what a watercress bed actually looked like at this time, how it was harvested, and the packing team: pictured in mid-winter, we see (we think) Mr Bradbery and his packers, probably the women, and the cutters and labourers, probably the men. You can see the way baskets (called ’chips’), another important industry, are being used to pack the watercress, before it’s taken off on the cart to be loaded for market. Three dozen bunches went into each chip, and Bradbery produced about 4,000 chips a year.
West Hyde at this time was a small place on the border with Middlesex, not long a parish of its own, very much agricultural with Woodoaks, Maple Cross, Lynsters and Pynesfield farms important (M25 junction 17 and the business park now rather dominates the area, but not then). Stockers lay a mile or so to the east on the other side of the river and canal. There was, of course, a bit more by the start of World War One, with the asbestos works at the old Copper Mill site and Mill End paper mill still working – but watercress was a significant agricultural product.
Elizabeth Giles’s youthful diary entry reminds us of it – an example of why local historians are so keen on the diaries of local people.
Three Rivers Museum’s exhibition on South Oxhey is now open in the museum – visit www.trmt.org.uk.
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