Castle Street Crawl – Heritage Open Day event | Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Castle Street Crawl – Heritage Open Day event

Reminiscences of Berkhamsted by Henry Nash (1890)

Saturday 11 September 2021  11:00 and 14:00

As part of this year’s Heritage Open Days, we are taking our tours beyond the Cemetery Gates to explore some fascinating connections between Rectory Lane Cemetery and the historic town of Berkhamsted. Join Henry Nash for a nostalgic stroll down Castle Street. In the 1890s, when he wrote Reminiscences of Berkhamsted, it was packed with drinking establishments and shops selling all manner of food. Castle Street used to be the grand main thoroughfare to the Castle, but when Henry grew up there, he recalled that the cottages were more or less in a state of dilapidation. During the nineteenth century, the street regained its stature and became the principal connection between the High Street and the canal, railway station, the Common, and the Ashridge estate beyond. ‘Modern buildings of a better class’ began to appear, a number serving to quench the thirst and hunger of its inhabitants and passing trade. Henry’s memories will help to re-create a street teeming with life – the local inhabitants popping into its shops for groceries, fish, fruit and the like, the workforce employed in the local factories and on the local wharves populating the pubs at lunchtime, schoolboys buying sweets from the confectioners, cows sauntering to the dairy, church and chapel-goers looking for spiritual nourishment, commuters and travellers stopping on their way home at one the hostelries. We might even get a chance to peep inside some of these places to get a sense of the Castle Street ’scene’ at that time.

Please be sure to book in advance so that we can manage numbers in line with current public health guidelines

This tour of one of Berkhamsted’s historic streets is part of the 2021 Heritage Open Days “Edible England” programme, with events taking place all over England. Find out about events near you.

Heritage Open Days

Don’t miss

The 2021 Heritage Open Day Victorian Picnic
Saturday 11 September


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