How development changed Parsonage and Woodoaks farms in Rickmansworth

We tend to think of farmland being taken for building as a modern phenomenon, don’t we? It can’t ever have been so really – almost any building by definition stands on what was farmland at some time (unless it’s on the flood plain, and even that had examples in the past, none ending well). We can look at just a couple of the many examples round here.

As we’ve already seen in this series, towns like Rickmansworth and Watford were generally pretty well contained within their boundaries for hundreds of years. Breaking out was often the result of industrial development, which was pretty slow to take off in this area with so little in the way of raw materials or indeed fuel. The railway was one of the main reasons for it happening here, and during the 19th century a lot of land was needed – and taken.

This sketch copy of the 1839 tithe map shows the full extent of Parsonage and other farms nearby. Image: Three Rivers Museum Trust collection

Parsonage Farm, so close to the middle of Rickmansworth, is just one example. In 1839 its fields extended from the Chorleywood Road to Belfry Lane, and from the Uxbridge Road towards Dog Kennel Lane approaching Chorleywood; and for about another 20 years it changed very little. But all sorts of other uses for the land were emerging.

Bullsland Farm with its barn, typical of our farm houses and still standing in its open fields. Image: Pat Hamilton, 2017

In 1861 some land in the Town Field was sold for what would become Parsonage Road School – the rent was adjusted. Some more was sold from Nightingale Ash field for the cemetery on Chorleywood Road. Much of the farm itself was bought in 1871 by John Saunders Gilliatt of Chorleywood, and then a sizeable chunk of Town Field was sold to the Metropolitan Railway in 1886 – the rent was adjusted again. Several new roads were laid out – Nightingale Road, Rectory Road and Parsonage Road by 1890 for completion later, and then Cedars Avenue and the rest of the Cedars estate, as we saw last time. By World War One there was not much left of the Parsonage Farm.

Elm Way in the 1930s, leading up to what was then still farm land behind. Image: Three Rivers Museum Trust collection

Most of the other farms in all our villages went the same way, although the Green Belt provisions of 1947 have been important. Woodoaks (Woodwicks) Farm, further out from the town, is still there and working, but a quite different set of events starting much later has reduced it greatly from its 500 acres in 1847.

The Black Barn of Woodoaks Farm in 2017 (now restored) reminds us of the strength of our local farm buildings.Image: Pat Hamilton

The enlarged A412 took some in the 1950s as the North Orbital Road emerged, and the development of the Berry Lane estate caused the water and sewage mains to be laid across Woodoaks fields. In the early 1980s the M25 cut the farm in two and threatened its very viability, and other nearby developments have had their effect. It’s now working in quite a different way, but is a more recent example than Parsonage of how changes to farm land have their roots in much earlier incursions by us people into our own historical environment. It has always been so!

Three Rivers Museum’s entry into the Hertfordshire Museums’ Object of the Year Award is the important Diaries of Farmer John White of Parsonage Farm. Readers can vote for them, or other objects, at https://www.hertfordshiremuseums.org.uk/object-of-the-year-2023.aspx