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A History of Preston in Hertfordshire
Analysis of the 1921 census
1811c
1766
Between 1911 and 1921, there was a significant change to Preston’s landscape of buildings. Because
much of it was orchestrated by Edwin Lutyens, there is a pleasing and unifying architectural theme
which, beginning with the alterations to Temple Dinsley, runs through the breadth of the village and
even spills over to Hitchwood and Hill End.
The village housing stock was increased by seven or eight buildings when compared with 1911.
Almost a score of dilapidated, tumbledown cottages had been demolished and replaced by the
Fenwicks at Temple Dinsley and Major Harrison of Kings Walden Bury. This reflected a social
conscience not displayed tangibly in bricks and mortar by previous owners of Temple Dinsley.
Houses demolished
Replacement houses
New houses
Crunnells Green Cottage
Kiln Wood Cottage
School Lane - 4
Castle Farm Lodge (after a fire in 1912)
Chequers Lane N/E side - 6
Back Lane - 5 or 6
3 Crunnells Green
Kiln Wood Cottage
School Lane bungalows - 3
Castle Farm Lodge
Hill End
1 & 2 Hitchwood Cottages - 2
Chequers Cottages, Chequers Lane - 6
Crunnells Green House
Holly Cottages - 8
Homes at Home/Minsden Farm - 2
(Notes: * (1) One of the School Lane Bungalows was Preston’s Women’s Institute. (2) Holly Cottages
were not built on the site of the demolished cottages at Back Lane. (3) The process of knocking down
homes on the N/E side of Chequers Lane and building council houses had only begun in 1921. The
new houses were not completed by then and a few old cottages still stood. (4) The thirteen homes
known to have been designed by Lutyens are shown by a blue font.)
Total 18/19
Total 6
Total 20
Unlike earlier censuses, the 1921 count revealed that the core names at Preston featured only two
family names that had more than ten examples: Jenkins (18) and Peters (13). This is an indication
that old, established Preston families had been disappearing during the previous twenty years or so.
For the first time employers were noted on the census. Unsurprisingly, thirty-three villagers worked for
Douglas Vickers at Temple Dinsley and his farms, eight for Major Harrison at Kings Walden Bury, eight
also for Hugh Seebohm at Poynders End and five for Mr Priestley at the newly-built Tatmore Place.
There were thirty-nine farm labourers and ten gardeners in the village.
Several occupations reflected the fact that the modern age was impacting on Preston’s twentieth
century development, particularly changes in modes of transport. The village now had a lorry driver, a
lorry driver’s mate, a coal carman and a garage labourer.
Thirteen villagers travelled between three and seven miles to work at Hitchin, Stevenage, Letchworth
and Luton. How did they commute? There was probably no bus service from Preston (the earliest I’ve
seen in operation was during WW2) - and using buses would have involved impractical changes for
many. Cars were probably not available to most of the working class. Some may have walked. Others
perhaps travelled to work by bicycle. My aunt, Maggie Wray, cycled from Preston to her work at
Letchworth and my father and a friend cycled to greyhound races at Purwell near Hitchin in 1932.
However, one resourceful woman used a motor-bicycle to travel to Preston School from Chiltern
Green, near Kimpton, in the 1920s. Another aunt, Flossie Sugden, used a Quickly motor-bicycle to get
to work from Preston to Stevenage in the 1950s.
Preston and poultry farming
The war effort of 1914 - 1918 concentrated minds on how to feed the nation and at the end of the war
other minds focused on how men returning from military service might earn a living - whether they
were Privates or Majors. Many men who had been involved with agriculture before 1914 had been lost
and land could be readily purchased at low prices - ‘between 1918 and 1922, a quarter of the land in
Britain changed hands’. Suitable properties were bought with optimism; but often soon sold with
disillusion. Poultry farming was an attractive solution to several problems - but it was not without its
own peculiar issues often caused by putting all one’s eggs in a single basket.
The 1921 census revealed that at Preston alone there were four poultry farms. Imagine then, how
many there now were throughout the realm! A House of Commons briefing report estimated that there
were around 30.75 million heads of poultry in the UK in 1925 - a figure that rocketed to more than
sixty-one million in 1934, and this was before intensive farming methods were introduced. Some of
the countryside’s landscape was altered as hen houses were dotted around fields.
The writing was on the wall in April 1906 when the Hertfordshire Advertiser printed an article which
had this prelude:
The article that followed featured a poultry farm occupying thirty-two acres at Kings Langley, Herts
which produced 207,106 eggs (sold for £1,039), 780 stock birds and 4,000 pure bred birds (to be
sold) in one year. It highlighted that it wasn’t just the production of eggs that was involved but the
breeding of hens for future egg production. It was the combination of work (it was not for idlers) and
brains that was the difference between success and failure for poultry farmers. The ‘brains’ were
needed in the breeding decisions, the buying of the best feed and opening access to the best
markets. One expert believed that it would take an apprenticeship of two years before someone could
venture successfully into poultry farming - there was more to it than met the eye.
This was poultry farming on an industrial scale, but the basic principles were the same for the smaller
egg producer, even if they bought their stock of hens. These were regularly advertised in newspapers
such as the following example from my uncle, Arthur Wray, at Gosmore:
Hitchin had its dedicated poultry market which was in operation in November 1912 and there were
weekly reports of trends and prices in various newspapers such as these from January 1915 and
1929:
Poultry farming was well and truly in the public eye in the 1920’s.
The Herts and Essex Observer ran a weekly page-length column
by Gallus (Latin; rooster, cock, male chicken) which informed
readers about a variety of subjects - how to build light, airy, dry
hen houses; warnings about avian diphtheria epidemics, the
Government’s Chicken Distributor Scheme; avoiding early
laying birds and overfeeding; the importance of grit; dealing with seasonal fluctuations in egg prices;
small flocks meant more eggs and leg marking with colour rings to identify the best birds for stock.
Clearly, poultry farming was a complex subject. One article suggested that a good set-up would be
twenty-five houses for twenty birds in a ground space of 100 square feet occupying an eighth of an
acre and space for ten breeding pens.
To illustrate how mismanagement of a poultry business might occur, there was a salutary case at
Willian, Herts in 1916, when corporation managers of a poultry farm were accused of cruelty to birds.
The corporation had been formed two years earlier and included prominent agriculturists and Members
of Parliament. The initial stock was sixteen hundred head of fowl. After a successful start-up, ‘diseases
(such as consumption and roup) crept in and many birds had been lost’. Visits by a RSPCA inspector
in December 1916 found large numbers of weak birds (estimated at 1,300), piles of dead fowl which
were ‘skin and bones’ and birds which should have weighed five or six pounds, being little more than
two. They had been starved of food because of lack of funds. This extreme example outlines some of
the potential pitfalls of poultry farming - disease, lack of capital and poor administration.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were signs that after being the Cinderella of the
farming community, there could be opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop poultry farms
The oldest inhabitant was eighty-seven-year-old William Scott, who was living at Church Road. The
youngest residents were Barbara Kathleen Cook (whose parents, William and Jessie, were living at
The Bothy in the grounds of Temple Dinsley) and Joan Irene Boston (daughter of Ezra and Daisy
Boston who were living near Hitchwood) both of whom were both born three months before the
census was taken.
When examining to where families at Preston moved between 1911 and 1921, those who were
working at Temple Dinsley or who were in transient work (such as policemen) have not been included.
The following describes where established Preston family heads relocated: Jessie Smith (six people)
moved to Hitchin; Josiah Prutton (four), to Kings Walden; Wallace Cannon, to Chertsey, Surrey and
two moved back to their homes: the Andersons (seven, from the Red Lion) to Canterbury, Kent and
William Thrussell (seven) to St Albans.
Of the 255 residents, 120 had been born at Preston (47%). A further thirty-one were born in local
villages: Kings Walden (21), Langley (6), Offley and Whitwell. A total of 171 of Preston’s people were
born in Hertfordshire (67%). Twelve had been born in the neighbouring county of Bedfordshire.
Seventy-two Prestoners were born outside Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire (29%), including nineteen
Londoners.
After making some adjustments so that the same area is compared (ie extracting those living at
Poynders End in both 1911 and 1921 censuses and boarders living in the village in 1911 who were
working at Temple Dinsley for a short time), Preston had 255 inhabitants - twenty-six less than in
1911. (There were approximately thirty folk living in the Poynders End area, making around 285 living
in Preston and its environs.) There were 136 males and 119 females. The village had sixteen widows
or widowers, six of whom lived in the cottages on the north side of Church Road.
The folk who moved into the village with their families during the decade were mainly specialists in
their trades, such as three game keepers (John Armour, Charles Biles and Frederick Woodrow);
Temple Dinsley managers (Reginald Dawson and William Miles); the new licensee of the Red Lion
(James Hedley); the latest farmer at Castle Farm (Hamilton MacFarlane) and the Corbett brothers who
had a poultry farm at Crunnells Green - although the last three made only a brief appearance in
Preston history.
When the 1921 census was released, many family historians must have been intrigued by and
grateful for the information it revealed. For example, I knew that my grandfather, Alfred Wray,
had a leg amputated, but didn’t know when. The census described him as having ‘total
disablement’ - the amputation therefore likely pre-dated June 1921. I also discovered that my
father had worked for Joseph Priestley at Tatmore Place, of which I had been unaware.
Despite this decade to 1921 being a time of world war, there was a noteworthy upgrading to
Preston’s housing stock during these ten years.
Also, a new type of farming had been introduced to the village.
At Preston there were four enterprises (one hesitates to call three of them farms) where hens were
kept to provide income. At 6 Chequers Cottages, forty-year-old Gertrude Armstrong described herself
to the census enumerator as a ‘poultry farmer’. The land from the cottage’s barn to the far end
measures approximately 38 x 11 meters (around 450 sq mtrs), although how much of that which was
used to keep hens is unknown. My aunts, who lived next door, had a large hen house which still left a
lot of garden to grow vegetables.
Sixty-four year-old William Sharp, who was helped by his daughter, Ida May (29), kept hens at The
Wilderness, Butchers Lane. The map from 1898 (shown below, left) indicates the land associated with
the house (3784) - the frontage to the road is almost thirty metres. Although again, the area given over
to hens is not known, there was sufficient scope for egg production.
At Fig Tree Cottage, Preston Green there was a substantial amount of land (3767) associated with
the house as shown by the map from 1898 (shown above, right). Here, sixty-six-year-old widow, Ellen
Cannon, was attempting to make ends meet as a poultry farmer following her husband’s death in
1917, likely using several bales of chicken wire!
But by far the most ambitious undertaking of poultry farming at Preston was that at Crunnells Green
Cottage in the hands of Ernest Oliver Corbett (born 1886) and Major Robert Wilfred Corbett (born
3 May 1877) from Warrington, Lancashire. The brothers were the sons of Thomas (variously
described as foreman or manager of Orford Tannery and a Parish councillor) and Emma Corbett.
Ernest’s life is described in detail at this link: Ernest Oliver.
Robert had enlisted in the Army before The Great War as he was initiated into the Freemasons at
Bombay, India in 1909 when he was serving as a Sergeant Major. He married Florence Burthem in the
summer of 1911 and was mentioned in dispatches in January 1916 (see below).
During the war, Robert (Service No. 9788) served in the Royal Field Artillery as a Second Lieutenant,
then Lieutenant (1918) and was demobbed with the rank of Major.
Of the brothers, it was Ernest (a trained and qualified teacher) who first lived at Preston. On
7 July 1913, his wife, Margaret Corbett, began her first term of office as Head Mistress of Preston
School. Ernest probably didn’t serve during WW1 because he was suffering with TB.
In the spring of 1919, Ernest and Margaret were living at Crunnells Green (in one of two newly-built
semi-detached cottages [Nos. 3842 and 3843] on the south-eastern side, see below) with Ernest and
Ethel Payne as their immediate neighbours. The Paynes stayed there until around the middle of 1920.
Robert and his family probably joined Ernest and Margaret at Preston in around the middle of April
1920 as their son, John Wilfred Corbett, began to attend Preston School then. Robert’s family were
then living at Church Road, which was likely a temporary arrangement because when his second
son, Robert Denys Corbett, first went to the school in February 1921, his family of five was
squeezed into one of the newly-built bungalows along School Lane (see later comments).
In the meantime, now that the Paynes had left their
home at Crunnells Green during 1920, Ernest placed an
advertisement for ‘Preston Poultry Farm’ in a local
newspaper in October 1920 (see right).
As he was offering cocks and hens from 1919 and 1920,
it is reasonable to deduce that the farm had been
established by the end of 1919. Indeed, Ernest had left
his job with St Ippollitts Parish Council by August 1919.
Taking some rough measurements from Google maps,
the land at the rear of Crunnells Green Cottage may
have been as much as 1,200 square metres - more than
a quarter of an acre (see photograph above).
So it seems likely that Ernest set up the poultry farm and was soon joined by Robert who was seeking
employment after leaving the Army. It may be inferred that Robert had taken over the managing of the
farm as, when the census was taken, Robert stated that he (and not Ernest) was an employer (see
below). In the census the sixteen-year-old son of Herbie and Phyllis Jenkins, Frank Jenkins (my first
cousin once removed), was recorded as working there.
For whatever reason, Robert didn’t farm poultry for long. The school log book shows his family as
moving back to Warrington around the end of March 1922. His dalliance with farming poultry lasted
less than two years.
Ernest evidently soldiered on, possibly even well into 1924 as he was shown to be occupying
Crunnells Green Cottage in the autumn electoral register of that year. Meanwhile, his wife, Margaret,
had started her new job as head mistress of Gravenhurst Beds. School in April 1923.
Without knowing precisely why the project failed so quickly, one might only speculate about the
reasons for this. Lack of specialist knowledge and training in poultry farming; not understanding the
hard work involved for small profit (especially as Margaret had a full time job and Ernest had TB); lack
of governmental protection of agriculture, resulting in price rises of feed etc.
With hindsight, perhaps it was an unwise move for someone with phthisis pulmonalis such as Ernest
to immerse himself in a life of hen-keeping and its resulting respiratory problems. There would have
been bacteria, fungi, spores, toxins and allergens in in the farm’s organic and inorganic dust, odorous
compounds from their droppings, feed, skin and feathers. As a result, respiratory disease is an
affliction commonly found in poultry farmers. Ernest was dead within four years of quitting the farm.
As to why Robert didn’t stay at Preston, perhaps a further contributory factor may have been that his
family of five was shoe-horned into the small bungalow at School Lane (shown on the right, below):
This row of four bungalows was built by Douglas Vickers, the owner of Temple Dinsley and
armaments manufacturer, in 1920. The property on the left (which is now Preston’s Village Hall) was
the meeting headquarters of the local Women’s Institute. Its neighbouring home was originally known
as School Bungalow and today as Old School Bungalow - Miss Deed, Margaret’s successor as
Preston school mistress, was living there in 1928.
The front door and entrance area of the bungalow divide the sitting room (on the right) from the single
bedroom. Behind the latter is the toilet. A small kitchen is at the rear, and a bathroom abuts the back
of the property. Excluding the bathroom, the bungalow measures approximately 9.1m wide by 7.3m
(ca 30 x 24 feet). Living there with three young children would have been a challenge.
As mentioned earlier, the electoral registers show Robert and Florence Corbett residing at School
Bungalow between the springs of 1921 and 1922 which is confirmed by the note in the school log
book (see earlier).
A sick Ernest (whose wife was also not well enough to work in 1922) was evidently left holding the
reins of the poultry farm and which he soon relinquished. But maybe it took Ernest some time to run
down the poultry business as there is an indication that he continued to live at Preston well into 1924.
Thus, he farmed in the village for just four or five years.
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