1 King George V Playing Fields

The playing fields opened in 1935 with a cricket match against Abbotts Langley. Sarratt was beaten decisively – all out for 22 runs! The King George V Jubilee celebrations on 6 May 1935 were held on the grounds with sports and tea and a broadcast of the Kings speech. The ground became known as The King George V Fields after a grant was received from the Kings Foundation in 1936. During the war the entrance gates and posts were removed and “lost” and the cricket club and football club games stopped as most of the young men from the village were away on war service. An American bomber, whose crew had bailed out over the North Sea, crashed onto the Playing field and the cricket square was badly damaged by the salvage squad who towed the plane across the field before putting it on a salvage truck. In the mid-1970s the recreation ground had become overgrown and the pavilion dilapidated. A new Committee was formed and major refurbishment started. The memorial gates and fences were restored, and a new pavilion was erected, financed by grants and lots of small fund raising activities. These included sponsored walks, bingos, sweepstakes and “Joe and Beryl Biggerstaff’s sing alongs”. The new playing fields opened in 1978.

2 The Cart and Horses

The Cart and Horses has a history dating back 250 years having been built as an ale house in 1765. Unlike many local beer houses, which were established following the 1830 beer act that allowed any homeowner to set up their own public house for the price of 2 guineas a year. Later in the 1800s local breweries started to lease or buy beer houses to extend their customer base beyond their town or place of operation. Clutterbucks of Stanmore are the first brewery known to have owned the Cart & Horses. The Clutterbuck family owned and resided at Micklefield Hall and Goldingtons. Ownership passed to Edmund Fearnley-Whittingstall of the Whittingstall Watford brewery by the 1850s. In 1862 the Whittingstall brewery was passed to the Watford Sedgwick brewery until 1923 when Benskins brewery purchased Sedgwicks. Benkins was later taken over by Ind Coope. Local Chipperfield family the Ricketts were landlords of the Cart & Horses for 20 years from the 1950s-70s. Ian Reynolds is the current landlord, and the pub has been in his family for more than 30 years. The Cart and Horses is well known for its excellent food which has been recognised by several prizes including the Watford Observer’s pub of the year.

3 Rose Hall Manor

The history of Rose Hall Manor can be traced back to 1166 when it was owned by the Abbots of St Albans Abbey. It was bought by William Kingsley in 1583, and when he died in 1611, his widow installed an alabaster memorial on the South wall of the chancel in Sarratt’s 12th century Church of the Holy Cross.

Kingsley was rich and influential, and moved in the same circles as friends of Sir Thomas More. He had five sons and a daughter and it appears from fragmentary Holy Cross church records that several of the children were baptized in the Norman font. William died in 1611 and is buried there, and his widow Katherine erected an alabaster memorial on the South wall of the Chancel, which depicts him kneeling at a prayer desk with their sons behind. Facing him is Katherine, also at prayer, in front of their daughter.

Despite a centuries-old apocryphal story, current research reveals no tunnel from the cellar at Rose Hall to Holy Cross, but rather a short tunnel from the orchard to the woods behind. It would seem that this was an escape route, possibly used by William Kingsley's Royalist grandson, also William, during Cromwell's Interregnum and who was arrested in Amersham in 1658.

The last Kingsley to own Rose Hall was William's great-grand-daughter, Dorothy who married Robert Gilbert and in 1659 the title was passed to him. Their daughter married into the Williams family who held the title until the 19th century.

4 Crestyl Watercress Beds

The River Chess rises near Chesham in the Chiltern Hills and flows for 11 miles to its confluence with the River Colne in Rickmansworth. The clear chalk stream water is ideal for growing watercress; and the industry flourished in the Victorian era, with nineteen farms between Sarratt and Chesham. Their watercress was transported on the newly-constructed Metropolitan Railway, supplying London with a healthy reliable salad crop for most of the year. Packed with iron, calcium and vitamin C, watercress was known as the "poor man's bread" in Victorian times. The crops were all hand cut - back breaking work and long hours in sometimes very harsh weather conditions. Even in winter, rather than cutting, the crop is 'pulled over' by hand, leaving gaps into which cushions of new growth will regenerate. The watercress was cut into hands, which allowed the packaging workers to form bunches to be packed into wicker boxes, then later into cardboard boxes, ready for the train journey to the wholesale markets in Covent Garden, Borough and Spitalfields. By the late 20th century, greater regulation and more competition led to the demise of the local watercress industry.

6 Holy Cross Church

Holy Cross Church, consecrated in April 1204, may stand on the site of a wooden Saxon field church. The name Holy Cross could date from this period, alternatively it may have been inspired by the Holy Land Crusades or it could reflect the church layout. Inside the walls of the church were covered in paintings depicting the life of Christ, the scriptures and allegorical scenes. Fragments remain showing the Angel Gabriel speaking to Mary and later the Shepherds and scenes from the last supper, the resurrection and the ascension. Extensively extended, along with the growing village population, a large vestry was added for the Sunday School and galleries built either side of the tower arch to accommodate an extra 74 worshipers. By 1864 the church fabric was in a poor state with holes in the roof letting in water. The Rector, Gilbert Ryley, recruited the architect Gilbert Scott, famous for building Kings Cross Station, to restore and remodel the building taking out the galleries, the box pews and the vestry, moving the Jacobean pulpit to its present position and adding the north and south aisles to accommodate the organ and baptistry and building a new porch, vestry and altar. Further repairs to the roof, the tower and the flintwork were undertaken in the 20th century and were funded by villagers.

7 The Cock Inn

The Cock became a pub in the early part of the 18th century, at the time the Williams family owned Goldingtons and their family crest was a Cockerel. We learn from contemporaneous diaries that it was “the Williams Cock” on the sign board. This is probably the source of the name and not the “Cock Horse", which dragged paper up the hill from the papermill. There are several tales of tunnels under Sarratt, leading variously from the Cock Inn to Goldingtons, the Church and Rose Hall (a distance of at least 2.35 kilometres!), many Sarratt residents claim to have been inside! We know coffins were carried to the church from the village and may have been laid in the public bar of The Cock, hence the wide door, which was shut off to house the coffin and mourners – sometimes for a week! The Cock was certainly used as a makeshift Coroner’s Court for inquests into mysterious deaths.   There is also a story that the last man in Hertfordshire to hang for murder (Charles Coleman and Rosa Anna Gurney) was apprehended by Police at the bar at the Cock Inn in 1911. The Cock has always attracted walkers and nature lovers and like today there was a garden at the back – known for its afternoon tea!

8 The Cricketers Pub

The Cricketers is an attractive and fascinating structure for it is made up of three distinct buildings constructed between 1700 - 1830. The oldest part is the middle section which was once two agricultural labourers' cottages, the mansard roof dating it to around the early 18th century. The second oldest part is the brick-built construction to the left with its Georgian sash windows and distinctive Georgian rectangular panes of glass. The last to be built around the early 19th century is the structure to the right, also farm workers' cottages. The Cricketers itself owes its existence to a Jonathan Dyer who in the 1840s established a beer house in one of the cottages - and as the establishment became more successful over the decades that followed it slowly expanded, incorporating the other buildings. The first recorded use of the name Cricketers was on the 1871 census, but it may have been called that from the very beginning. Beer houses were a product of the 19th Century, a result of the Beer Act of 1830 which enabled any householder whose name was on the rate book, to sell beer but no other intoxicating liquor. A license did not have to be obtained; just one payment of 2 guineas had to be paid to the local Customs and Excise. Beer houses operated until 1872 without any controls, opening whenever they liked. The aim of the legislation was to curb the consumption of spirits, especially gin, which was seen to be having a detrimental effect on the lives of the labouring poor. The aim of the 1830 Act was for beer houses to restore the popularity of the ancient national beverage - beer. Jonathan Dyer married Betsy, a townie from Watford. He continued as an agricultural labourer and no doubt Betsy ran the beer house when he was at work. This was common practice: the beer house keeper of the now closed Wheatsheaf, for instance, was also a brushmaker. Jonathan passed the beer house to his son Gabriel, who was a 'Licensed victualler and master wheelwright employing 4 men'. This suggests Gabriel had a full licence and, with a successful wheelwright's business as well, the money to expand. Gabriel continued to run the business into the 20th Century and still carried on his wheelwright's business along with one of his sons. It is said he used to use the Cricketers Pond to shrink the hot iron onto the wooden cartwheels.

9 The Boot Pub

The Boot Public House dates back at least as far as 1739 but it is uncertain if this is the date of the building or the pub itself, many old timber buildings having been upgraded and refaced. Nothing much is recorded about the Boot until the Land Tax Returns of 1786 when James Boarder was the licensee. We know he was still there in 1822 from the Victuallers Recognizances records. By 1867 Edward Stevenson was running the pub and in 1881 Jonathan Dyer at the age of 75 took over The Boot, leaving his son Gabe to run The Cricketers, which Jonathan had run for the previous 30 years. In 1895 Joseph Stone was the Landlord, he and his brother were also dealers in local fruit and veg and sold this in the part of the building to the left as viewed from The Green. People would bring their surplus to be sold, and the Stone Brothers would sell it at Watford Market. Local children would gather mushrooms, blackberries and acorns for pig feed and earn a few pennies. Joseph was there until at least 1935, but from 1937 and through World War Two John Cornell was Landlord, followed by Arthur Smith in 1952. Samuel Salter, Brewer of Rickmansworth, owned the pub, Salters being was bought out in 1924 by the Canon Brewery of Clerkenwell, which was swallowed up by Taylor Walker, and they were eventually taken over by Ind Coope in 1960.

10 The Water Pump

The Village Water Pump provided water to Sarratt from the early 1800s. - mains water didn’t arrive in the village until 1912. Indeed, the name Sarratt may have evolved from the Saxon ‘Syre’, or ‘Syreth’ - meaning 'dry place'. The shaft of the well is over 200 feet deep and it took two people to turn the handles to bring the pail of water up. It is is still possibe to see the depressions in the stones worn by their feet. There is an old story that the pump actually retrieved deposits of treacle from a mine deep below the Green which ran down to Sarratt Bottom, where it was collected by a special train. This came about after a young child happened to spy the bottom of the well, and saw the thick, black mud coating it! The legend of Treacle wells are common all over the country. They were named at a time when 'treacle' meant 'a healing liquid'. For many years the pump wasn’t filled in, so the visible ironwork, which was produced by a local blacksmith, made it look like a knife sharpener!