Stanstead Abbotts Local History Society

Other drinking fountains and cattle troughs in Hertfordshire

Elsewhere in the county there are five surviving troughs, in Bushey, Hatfield, Watford, Croxley Green and Rickmnsworth. There are drinking fountains in Bishops Stortford, Hertford and Hertford Heath. The one in Hertford, already mentioned, is in Old Cross, outside the old Library. It was built in 1890, reconstructed from fragments of the former Hertford Church of St Mary the Less which were found on the site during the construction of the Library in 1880. Hopefully it will survive the current “restoration” activity!

The fountain in Hertford Heath is on the corner of Church Hill and Vicarage Causeway ,opposite the Goat Inn. It is a Grade II Listed Building and described on the website with these words:

“Dated '1898' on N side. Portland stone on blue brick base with York stone front slab. 3M tall, 1M square Gothick structure facing W , on green, beside road. Symmetrical in form of a pointed pinnacle with gabled faces and chamfered pointed panel on each face. Projecting bowl on W with disused outlet in panel over. Inscription from bible on S side. Red brick cross motif on each side of brick base.”

The Bible verse was, “Ho, everyone who thirsteth, come ye to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1)

A paragraph from the village website has the following information:

“The Rev Charles Barclay and his eighteen-year-old wife Florence came to the parish in 1881. The Mission Room was built in 1882 and there Florence began her Men's Bible Class on Sunday afternoons which was to last for more than thirty years. It is said that men came from far and near! Florence also played the organ, trained the church choir, organised Friday evening entertainments (to keep men from spending all their wages in the pubs), sewed layettes for village babies, nursed the village through a 'flu epidemic and brought up a family of eight children! After that she became a very famous authoress, her most popular book being The Rosary. Her books were translated into many languages and she travelled on lecture tours, twice to America. Meanwhile her husband served the parish well and in 1898 took great pleasure in providing the village with clean water from a well specially sunk in his garden at his own expense. He also provided the drinking fountain on the green, which survives to this day. The Metropolitan Water Board did not bring water to the village until 1909, so the water from the Vicarage well was very useful to the women who took in washing from Haileybury College, Christ’s Hospital and large houses in Hertford, Each washerwoman had her own drying line around the green and "billowing bloomers" were a regular sight.”

Fascinating stuff!!

So, the subject of drinking fountains has produced some facts of which we may not have been aware, including some interesting social history, especially about our much-maligned Victorian ancestors.

Ron Davies