Local History

Living Magazines James Osborne VC

James Osborne VC

Who was James Osborne? Born 13 April 1857 in a small cottage in Wigginton later demolished by Lord Rothschild and replaced with a new Huckvale design in 1912. He was a volunteer soldier before joining the regular army in early 1877 and later that year served as a Private with the Northamptonshire Regiment (58th Foot) […]

Living Magazines Skating Berkhamsted Castle Christmas 1890

A tale of two Christmases

Christmas can be a very different beast depending on how much money you have, and that was certainly true in the 19th century… In the 1800s the wealthy and the poorest people in the land were worlds apart, as this tale of two festive seasons shows. A report in the Bucks Herald in January 1887, […]

Living Magazines Father Christmas distributing gifts to the evacuees in Albert Street Tring in 1939

Ghosts of Christmas past

This Christmas may be a little different for all of us, but what was Christmas like for Tringalings in the past? As a hotel, Pendley Manor hosts Christmas for many guests each year, and when it was opened as a Centre for Adult Education by Dorian Williams in 1947, it also played host to a […]

Living Magazines Gravestone Peter the Wild Boy

A Wild Tale

How did a mysterious wild boy from Germany find his way to Northchurch? In the churchyard at St Mary’s, Northchurch, is a gravestone with a rather unusual engraving. It simply says PETER the Wild Boy 1785. So, who was Peter, and how did he come to be buried in a small Hertfordshire village? His tale […]

Living Magazines Bly family cinema

Bly Spirit

The Bly family has a long association with the town of Tring, as John Bly explains ‘The Bly’s first connection with Tring dates back to the 1440s when a group of French noblemen, their sires and assorted retinue arrived in the area and settled here. ‘And when a descendant of Stephen of Blois married into […]

Living Magazines Tring Cinema

The History of Tring Cinema

Tring has enjoyed a cinema in some form or other since the end of the 19th century. With help from our friends at Tring Local History Society and WHERE ELSE we’ve found out more The very first mention of a cinema in Tring was when, in 1897, the first motion pictures were reported as having […]

Living Magazines Berkhamsted Place Back garden

Berkhamsted Place

The Elizabethan country manor at the top of Castle Hill survived for almost 400 years before it was demolished. Here’s a potted history. Berkhamsted Place was a mansion house built at the top of Castle Hill, where it remained for almost 400 years, until 1967 when it was sadly demolished. The history of Berkhamsted Place […]

Living Magazines William Cowper

In Cowper’s Country

In the first of our new series, the Berkhamsted Local History and Museum Society tells more about our town’s history. According to the Bucks Herald, the poet William Cowper was born in Berkhamsted in 1731. This is from an article in 1892: ‘Berkhampstead is well worth visiting, firstly, because English history – or, at any […]

Living Magazines Nell Gwyn's Obelisk

Nell Gwyn in Tring?

In the first of our new series, we find out about Tring’s association with Nell Gwyn. Nell first came to the attention of Charles II around 1668 at the Drury Lane Theatre. By 1671 she had two sons by Charles. Just when, or even if, Nell stayed at Tring is not truly known. What is […]