Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Eliza Wood was born Eliza Hurst on 6th September 1823 in Berkhamsted and baptised on the same day at St Peter’s Church.  She was the daughter of Thomas Hurst, cordwiner and shoe maker, who was born in 1779 in Aylesbury and died in 1869 in Berkhamsted and Lydia nee Barnes (1780 – 1869) and granddaughter of William Hurst and Hannah Maria (nee Webb).  See Hurst family history for grave number 48.

On 25th December 1844 Eliza Hurst married Berkhamsted baker William James Wood at St John’s, Waterloo, Lambeth.  They had seven children, including Emma Hurst Wood (1845-1925) who married George Lingard the stonemason (1838-1901). (Emma and George are buried in Grave number 603).

By 1901 William had started a family business, the Music Warehouse shop in Berkhamsted.

Eliza and William were a pioneering couple, the first owners of a motorcar in Berkhamsted!

“It was just sixty years after the railway was opened at Berkhamsted that a pioneer local motorist, Mr. J.W. Wood, bought a second-hand 4.5 h.p. Benz from a St. Albans doctor. If it wasn’t the first car seen in Berkhamsted, it was almost certainly the first car owned by a Berkhamstedian. It was tall, sturdy, noisy, with solid tyres, large wire suspension wheels, coach-style brass lanterns with candles, and no windscreen. The whole town turned out to see this strange contraption. Mr. Wood’s car tackled the steepest Chiltern hills and then disgraced itself on a level stretch of the road at Broadway. After a damaging swerve into the roadside verge, it was necessary to hire one horse to tow 4.5 horse-power to Berkhamsted’s first garage, a greenhouse. Neddy was still supreme.”

Beorcham, Berkhamsted Review, Nov 1967). 
With thanks to Berkhamsted Local History and Museum Society for this article and the photograph.

Eliza Wood died on 23rd November 1908 and William on 21st March 1918.