The Watford Observer is delighted to team up with Three Rivers Museum for a series that will remind readers of some of the people who, often now forgotten, made an impact on how their neighbours lived and worked. The next in the series looks at the legacy of the founder of one of Rickmansworth's best known businesses, including what became the Aquadrome.

Museum chairman Fabian Hiscock said: "Harry Walker was born in 1881, the second of five sons and two daughters of Alfred, engineering supervisor for the Grand Junction Canal, and Sarah Walker, who moved to Lot Mead in 1885.

"Harry was apprenticed to the wooden boat builders Bushells near Tring, and in June 1905 he leased the large Frogmoor Wharf at Batchworth. The lease allowed him to be a timber merchant and general merchant, and by September he was selling coal and coke as well as timber and builders’ supplies, and was docking boats for repair. He built boats for his own use from 1907 and for others from 1908, including one of the first ever oil-powered boats in 1911.

"The full story of the business, which quickly included several of his brothers, is told in the book ‘Walkers of Ricky’. It went on to be a major local business, building boats and dealing in huge amounts of builders’ materials as well as coal, and taking on the Town Wharf as well. But it is his other activities, some of which still benefit the public, that we remember here.

Watford Observer:

The boat building – a butty boat just completed, c1937. Picture: Three Rivers Museum/Godfrey Cornwall collection

"The firm leased Batchworth Lake, from which they had already been extracting sand and gravel, in 1912, buying the freehold the next year with the intention of making it into ‘pleasure grounds’ and a boating lake, on which they also tested canal boats. Now the heart of the Aquadrome, it opened on August 3, 1914, just as World War One was breaking out.

Watford Observer:

The Aquadrome - Batchworth Lake in 2022. Picture: Three Rivers Museum/ Deborah Young collection

"Later, when Salter’s brewery closed in 1924, they bought the whole site, and between then and late 1928 they provided allotments and market facilities in which livestock were traded and auctions held. The market was not commercially viable and closed, but Harry remained involved with the Rickmansworth Picture House, built on part of the site in 1926, opening in 1927 and including a ballroom and an orchestra. It was a huge success, competing with and outlasting the Odeon along the High Street from 1936 to 1957, but it too closed in 1963.

Watford Observer:

The Rickmansworth Picture House just opened in 1927. Picture: Three Rivers Museum

"Harry Walker was involved in many of the town’s business initiatives in the first half or the 20th century. He married Doris in 1924, but they had no children: he died aged 68 in 1949, leaving behind not only a business which would endure for 40 more years but also some well-loved facilities now in public ownership and care."