Significant fires in Watford's past and a public execution

Accounts from the time indicate that the owner was Edmund Fearnley Whittingstall. The substantial estate bordered Vicarage Road, then a track, and extended to Croxley Green. The sole reminder today of the existence of the farm is the name Harwoods Road.

William White employed John Baldwin, a rat catcher who lived and worked at the Rookery, to catch rats around the farm. But when a dispute arose between the pair regarding payment for the captured rodents, John Baldwin declared his wish to see the place on fire.

The 59-year-old labourer was later observed in the One Bell public house in the High Street, where William Tyler was licensee, obtaining a light from a tinder box with flint, steel and a brimstone-tipped match.

Digitally redrawn version of Dury and Andrews 1766 Map of Hertfordshire showing Harrod Farm (later known as Harwoods Farm). Image: 'Dury and Andrews' Map of Hertfordshire: Society and Landscape in the Eighteenth Century by Andrew Macnair et al

Suspicion fell upon him after his utterances were overheard, which he later stated were motivated by revenge towards William White, the bailiff and the housekeeper. Returning to Harwoods Farm, he set fire to some hay with the tinder he had made and placed it under a pile of straw adjoining the barn where wheat was stored. Then he laid down to sleep. But the fire spread quickly to several barns and a haystack. ‘Being alarmed and unwell’, John Baldwin fled but not, he later stated, before trying to put out the flames.

The fire at Harwoods Farm was serious. Farm buildings, corn and farm stock were destroyed. In those days, awards were offered by a farmer’s protection society to those who reported criminal offences on farm land, so witnesses from the One Bell were likely to have come forward. The accused, who denied having an accomplice, was taken into custody. Mr Petersdorff conducted the prosecution and Mr Burney appeared for the prisoner who, after a short deliberation, was tried and found guilty of arson.

Startlingly, ‘the wretched culprit’ was convicted at the Hertfordshire Assizes and received the ‘extreme penalty of the law’ – death by public execution. According to Hertford newspapers, he confessed to the crime, ‘conducted himself with great propriety’ and ‘ascended the ladder to the scaffold with unusual fortitude’. Before the noose was fastened, he ‘addressed a few words to the assembled multitude, acknowledging the justice of his sentence and exhorting them to take warning by his fate’.

After his body was cut down, it was given to his friends and conveyed to Watford in a cart the same evening. The following Sunday he was buried in St Mary’s churchyard near the south wall, close to the west end of the church.

John Baldwin’s hasty execution on Wednesday, July 23, 1834 was one of 35 that year in Hertford County Gaol, which incorporated the Hertford County House of Correction.

James West with his Town Crier's bell made from the old Market House bell. Image: Watford, A Pictorial Record by Borough Librarian Robert C. Sayell, published by Festival of Britain Committee, Borough of Watford, 1951

Two other significant fires in the 19th century were in the Market Place.

In 1829, fat in a copper boiled over during the candle-making process at Sutton’s Candle Factory. The factory was destroyed, as was the Kings Head next door. The only water pump – cranked by a handle – was at one end of the adjacent Market House; a building 100-foot long, constructed primarily of wood and supported on substantial wooden blocks. Corn was stored underneath on market days and at annual fairs. The flames spread quickly and water from the old town pump proved ineffective.

Historian Henry Williams tells us that a ‘pond’ was formed from sacks, mud, dung and other refuse, helped by many women who gathered what they could in their aprons. Once the temporary reservoir was completed, groups of men brought buckets of water from a pond then in front of Watford House, roughly at the junction of the High Street and Clarendon Road. Combining it with water from the pump and with the assistance of the parish engine, the fire was eventually subdued.

Market House 1832. Note the town pump on the right. Image: Watford, A Pictorial Record by Borough Librarian Robert C. Sayell, published by Festival of Britain Committee, Borough of Watford, 1951

In 1853, there was another fire in the same area. It started two or three days after a fair, at which time ‘shambles’ (meat sellers) and other stalls were positioned around the Market House’s wooden columns.

Henry Williams notes that it was thought a spark from a light at the fair could have ‘settled in some crevice, set the wood on fire, which smouldered until, obtaining vent, it burst into a flame’. Once again, the old town pump was used at such a furious pace by several young men that it threatened damage to the old machinery.

The parish engine was then called into action. Many willing hands worked in relays with leather buckets between the Market House and the pump in the Essex Arms Hotel yard opposite, but to no avail. The wooden structure was highly inflammable and had to be left to burn. When the roof collapsed, the bell turret and bell that announced the opening of the corn market each week ‘made a fearful crash’ as they fell to the ground.

We learn more about the Market House fire and the bell from W.R. Saunders’ History of Watford, 1931 and Watford, A Pictorial Record, 1951. Greengrocer James West (1807-1893), was one of two Parish Constables or watchmen, the Parish Church Organ Blower and Watford’s Town Crier for many years. The damaged Market House bell was made into a town crier’s bell for him.

In later years, he passed his truncheon and the bell to his son Henry, who followed him into greengrocery. Henry later became caretaker of the Corn Exchange, Market Superintendent and Court Usher.

With thanks to Andrew Macnair, www.duryandrewsmapofhertfordshire.co.uk and Robbie Dunlop.

• 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.