Wharfs in Rickmansworth and Hemel now home to Tesco and B&Q

Last week’s article about the fire at Langley Wharf got me thinking. What is a ‘wharf’ anyway? Why were they important, and what’s happened to them?

A wharf was part of the canal, and (usually – not always) where you see the word you know that business was being done there. It was where the canal met the public – or industry – and allowed goods to be delivered to a customer, or a customer to despatch goods (or materials) to someone else. The point of the canal was that those destinations could be far apart, and the way in which goods were moved relied a great deal on what happened at the wharf.

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Batchworth Bridge Wharf, 1915. Image: Three Rivers Museum

A wharf wasn’t just a piece of flat canal bank to which boats (or barges) could tie up. It was owned by someone (sometimes the canal company, more often someone else), properly built and meant to last. It will have had some sort of office, a warehouse, at least one crane – and staff. It was supervised by a wharfinger, and had a number of ‘labourers’ who did the heavy lifting.

Batchworth Bridge Wharf, redeveloped 1990. Image: Three Rivers Museum

Not all wharfs were the same size or had the same capability. The wharf complex at Hemel Hempstead (Boxmoor) had a big basin, a large two-floor warehouse, a covered loading dock, several light cranes and ‘a crane suitable for lifting timber’ (ie most of a tree). In 1815, when it was advertised for let, it was said to be servicing the ‘coal, iron, timber, stone, soot, ashes and other trades’ – Hemel Hempstead was already a prosperous town. Many wharfs were much more local and less well equipped – Hunton Bridge and King’s Langley wharfs will have been more like this – but there was still business being done there.

Frogmoor Wharf – Walkers yard closed, 1990. Image: Three Rivers Museum

But the larger wharfs serving Watford and Rickmansworth will have been more like Hemel Hempstead. Two at The Grove (Grove Wharf and Lady Capel’s), two more at Cassio Bridge and three at Rickmansworth all did a great deal of trade, even after the railway came through, although we don’t have any real detail. They will have been pretty prosperous - boats passed heading to and from the whole country, and a lot of goods and materials of all sorts went across them during the 19th century. We know, for example, how John White received barge-loads of manure for his fields, and sent different produce away in exchange, and tanker boats collected by-products and waste from the gas works at (certainly) Hemel Hempstead and Rickmansworth, although that from Watford probably went by rail.

Frogmoor Wharf – Tesco being built, 1992. Image: Three Rivers Museum

So much for the history. What’s happened to them now?

Boxmoor Wharf – now B&Q. Image: Three Rivers Museum/Fabian Hiscock

None is still doing ‘trading’ business. Most have vanished and been redeveloped. The Hemel Hempstead (Boxmoor) dock has been filled in and is now the car park for B&Q. Lady Capel's and Grove Wharfs, side by side and ‘signed’ from the Hempstead Road, are now residential. Cassio Bridge wharf, which had a large timber yard until the 1960s, has actually been dug out: it’s now a small marina, so still doing canal business, while the ‘new’ wharf on the other side of the road bridge also has boat moorings. The wharf serving Croxley Mill was redeveloped in 1982 when the mill closed, and all the Rickmansworth wharfs have gone – the Town Wharf, built by the brewer Samuel Salter in 1804/5, has been filled in and is now Salters Close (still approached by Wharf Lane, though), Batchworth Bridge Wharf is now offices, and Frogmoor Wharf, once the home of Walker Brothers boatyard, is now used by Tesco.

So a ’wharf’ really does carry nostalgic memories. Where you see or hear the word, spare a thought for all the work that gave our area its first taste of ‘the fruits of industry’ 200 years ago.