Cambridge graduate who wrote a book all about Hertfordshire

A Natural Science graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge who became a naturalist, geologist, palaeontologist and writer, he participated in an eight-year-long Geological Survey of India, leaving Hertfordshire in his mid-20s. On his return, he spent several years cataloguing the Natural History Museum’s entire collection of fossil vertebrates, completing the work in 1889. His greatest honour was his election in 1894 as a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Advancement of Science.

Richard Lydekker wrote numerous books on natural history and was eminently qualified to write about the county in which he lived. He reported that in 1905 Hertfordshire’s 402,856 acres comprised 329,641 acres under cultivation, 60 per cent of which were still being ploughed; 1,917 acres of orchards; 26,568 acres of woodland; and 1,657 acres of heaths and commons used as animal grazing grounds. There were 94,461 sheep, 15,070 horses, 25,338 pigs and 38,636 ‘other’ cattle. A rural picture indeed, as can be seen from the local photographs from the book. But the population of the administrative county (smaller than the ancient county after several villages were reassigned to adjoining counties) was then around 260,00. Now it is heading for 1.2 million. A very different picture!

Richard Lydekker c1900. Courtesy of Harpenden & District Local History Society

In the chapter on chief towns and villages in Hertfordshire, Watford is listed as the only town with a population exceeding 20,000 and noted for its numerous mills and factories. Its exact population then was 29,327.

The author comments on the county’s geology, in particular the chalk which ‘extends or ‘strikes’ across all but the south-eastern section in a broad belt to the southward, its boundary runs approximately through Bushey and adds that ‘the Upper Chalk extends from the summits of the hills as far down as Rickmansworth and Watford. A series of gravelly beds assigned to the middle division of the glacial period are overlaid locally, as at Bricket Wood, by the chalky Boulder-clay of the Upper Glacial age, which is some 20 feet in thickness.’ Despite a large quantity of flints, he remarks that the soil is ‘admirably’ suited to corn growing, especially malting grain.

Chequer's Yard, Watford, 1909. The Homeland Association Ltd.

In a chapter on communications, he writes nostalgically about the ‘speed and smartness’ of the large number of mail coaches in the days after main trunk roads were laid with tarmacadam and of the many coaching and posting inns. But the introduction of the railway sounded the death knell for coaching traffic in the first half of the 19th century.

Netting the Gade, Cassiobury Park, 1909. H.W. Taunt & Co., Oxford

The London and North Western railway, passing through Watford, opened in 1838, whilst a branch line from Watford to St Albans opened in 1853 and another to Rickmansworth in 1862. But Richard Lydekker was not convinced about the efficiency of the rail service compared to the ‘marvellous’ mail coaches. I quote: ‘With such a multiplicity of lines, it might well be imagined that railway communication between nearly all parts of the county would be well-nigh perfect. As a matter of fact, this is by no means the case. The journey by rail from the western to the eastern side, owing to changes and delays, is so slow and tedious that it is frequently found convenient to hold important Hertfordshire meetings, like those of the County Council, in London.’ Interesting!

In those days, there was still a considerable amount of barge traffic on the canals although, according to the author, ‘nothing approaching that of pre-railway times.’

Onto the weather and the number of wet days in 1905, he informs us that Hertfordshire held ‘a very creditable position’, but its record for sunshine was ‘less satisfactory’!

'A Farm Near Rickmansworth', 1909. The Homeland Association Ltd.

In the chapter on natural history, Badger’s Dell in Cassiobury Park is mentioned as a well-known haunt of badgers prior to 1840. He indicates that in ‘comparatively modern times’ (late 1800s), the marten had been ‘exterminated’; a solitary individual having been killed near Watford in December 1872. Polecats had, by then, almost disappeared from the county and otters were rare. Among birds, the bustard had died out and the bittern was ‘known only as an occasional straggler.’ He related earlier sightings of rare birds in the county: sand grouses, a little auk or rotche, a great northern diver, a pair of storm petrels, snow buntings and a great purple heron.

Richard Lydekker noted that ‘extermination’ was not confined to animals. Fern hunters in the county were making a ‘clean sweep’ of certain species of ferns, specifically aspleniums, shield ferns, polypodies and false maidenhair ferns. The Victorian craze saw collectors, ladies included, searching woods until their baskets were full of fronds. Almost every house had a potted fern, well suited to cool dark Victorian rooms. But Richard Lydekker was proud that the sole remaining indigenous specimen of the false maidenhair was growing in his garden.

With thanks to Harpenden & District Local History Society

• Lesley Dunlop is the daughter of the late Ted Parrish, a well-known local historian and documentary filmmaker. He wrote 96 nostalgic articles for the ‘Evening Post-Echo’ in 1982-83 which have since been published in ‘Echoes of Old Watford, Bushey & Oxhey’, available at www.pastdayspublishing.com and Bushey Museum. Lesley is currently working on ‘Two Lives, Two World Wars’, a companion volume that explores her father’s and grandfather’s lives and war experiences, in which Watford, Bushey and Oxhey’s history will take to the stage once again.