Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

The shop at 1 Castle Street used to be the premises of Bailey & Sons Jewellers (1872 ). The owner,  John Henry Worner Bailey lived in adjoining premises around the corner 116 High Street. Both properties were rented from Miss E.K. Miller. John ran the business continuously until his death in 1923, whereupon his sons took over.

The business changed hands and in 1981 the business moved premises to Lower Kings Road – where they continue today, still trading under the Bailey name.

Bailey’s jewellers was mentioned briefly by Graham Greene; in his 1971 autobiography A Sort of Life, he recalled in Castle Street:

“A jeweller’s called Bailey’s (an old man with a white beard at perpetually behind the window with a magnifying glass in his eye mending watched, and when they read to me about Moses and the Tablets of the Law, I always thought of him)”

1 Castle Street is now occupied by Castle hairdressers.