Three Rivers Museum Trust chairman Fabian Hiscock continues his look at how people were - and continue to be - entertained in the district.
In the last couple of articles we’ve remembered how people came together to make their own entertainment, and before that being at the cinema. Things have changed a lot in more recent years. But have we now become completely dependent on TV and our computer (or phone) screens? I think not!
People find their entertainment in a huge number of ways, just as they always did, and many of these have developed in the last 50 or 75 years. Some perhaps are less well known, but they still offer great opportunities. Let’s recall some of them, many well remembered by Watford Observer readers.
How about sports? Football a great example - not the Hornets, but all the local clubs at which people actually play – and manage, and referee, and take youngsters to and fro, clean the changing rooms and wash the kit. Oxhey Jets is a Three Rivers favourite of mine – what a story! But there are others, and some have been there for 150 years. And cricket – Rickmansworth Cricket Club has its roots in 1787, the same year as the MCC, and all our surrounding villages have strong clubs as well as village cricket. How about bowls? The Pavilion Bowls Club at Oxhey Hall, but also Croxley Green, Rickmansworth… . Hockey? Local people were playing for Rickmansworth before 1900. And the Rickmansworth Tennis Club started in 1921.
All these and many more clubs are very nostalgic, but they’re still going strong, and are there for us all to enjoy into the future – as long, of course, as there are people willing to put their effort into what they love, for the good of others.
Not sports? How about music? Plenty of choice in Three Rivers – Chorleywood Music (playing jazz and classical) looks after the Rickmansworth Young Musician of the Year competition, which has run since 1983. And what about the Sarratt Festival of Music, each September? Community choirs are a great local feature, and you can play as well as sing (not usually at the same time) – Croxley Green Community Choir is a fine example, the South Oxhey Choir another, the Big Yellow Choir at Abbots Langley and the Chiltern Choir based at Chorleywood are all very much part of our local scene. Something less traditional? Many of our pubs provide live music, although Observer readers will be well aware of the problems some of them have – they stand in a long line of tradition as we saw last time, in which the classic folk club features proudly.
And as important as any of these is Amateur Drama (Am Dram), which is actually pretty professional. Just in Three Rivers, the Rickmansworth Players started in 1944, the Belmont Theatre (who rehearse at Carpenders Park Community Hall) in 1947 and the Abbots Langley Gilbert and Sullivan Society in 1951. All produce at the highest level, and while those on stage naturally get the applause, nothing would happen without the back-stage and behind-the-scenes volunteers. There has been, and still is, plenty for anyone to do.
Now, this is a ‘nostalgia’ piece, sparked by the fact that so many of the opportunities to do things together and just for enjoyment have been lost to ‘technology’. Well, to a point: but as you see, by no means all of our ‘entertainment’ is now just nostalgia – there’s lots to be done.
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