The Watford Observer has been delighted to team up with Three Rivers Museum for a series to remind readers of some of the people who, often now forgotten, made an impact on how their neighbours lived and worked.
Museum chairman Fabian Hiscock ends the series with a round up of those who have featured and the links between them.
Fabian said: "Our series of 12 portraits of local people who have influenced the lives of their fellow residents has focussed mainly on the late Victorian and Edwardian period, and it’s time to close it off. But we can finish by making links between these individuals, living and working as they did in and near a single small town.
"We started with the teacher and writer Tom Bevan, head master of the National Boys School. Not only was he busy with many local activities, but in nearly 40 years he will have started the careers of many young men of the town, and pretty well everyone will have known him.
"Certainly he as a councillor, and the hugely influential council surveyor Albert Freeman will have worked closely together as the town developed in the early part of the century.
"Much of that development was captured by the lens of Edith Price, daughter of the local newsagent, who as the wife of the landlord of the White Bear was involved in running one of Rickmansworth’s best-known pubs.
"Meanwhile, local businesses of real significance were started. Beesons, the plumbing supplies and building contractor later to add a large ‘homewares’ shop, came first from 1870, with Colin Taylor following as a coal and grain merchant from about 1880 and also to be a district councillor for many years.
"Harry Walker started in 1905, growing his boat building, coal and building supplies business rapidly to include what’s now the Aquadrome less than ten years later: two of his brothers married daughters of Stephen Beeson. And after the end of World War One, Amy and Edith Coster opened their ladieswear business, which will have clothed many local women for 40 years.
"Meanwhile, the local doctor Roderick Henderson not only provided medical services to the townspeople, but also initiated and ran the volunteer Fire Brigade for around 50 years. He will have been another personality well known to everyone, including the Boy’s School just along the road from his home.
"Up at Croxley Green at the same time Henry ‘Neggy’ Wilson ran the Boy’s School, and he and Tom Bevan will have inevitably have worked closely behind the scenes. And with the manager of Croxley Mill the main employer of people across the area, his daughter May Barton Smith served the village and its families in various ways, not least as a Girl Guide leader, for so many years.
"And from the 1920s Jim ‘Stick’ Walsh was there to draw local buildings, scenes and events.
"In the early part of this time the events, and people were recorded by the farmer John White in his diaries. Readers will remember that these very important records have been unknown to us since 1970: they have now been most generously donated to the Museum, and next time we’ll review a little of what they contain.
"But for this instalment, we can reflect on the personal relationships between business owners, local councillors, teachers, doctors and indeed clergymen as a small town like Rickmansworth developed and grew a hundred and more years ago. Does life now allow the same relationships?"
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