Woolmer Green - History

History

Situated between the villages of Welwyn and Knebworth, Woolmer Green was first settled in the Iron Age. The Belgae colonised the area in the 1st century BC, and later it was settled by the Romans. Many Roman artefacts have been found in the surrounding area with a Roman bath house existing at nearby Welwyn. The village was at the junction of two thoroughfares, the Great North Road and another road called Stane Street (or Stone Street) from St Albans. The route of this road runs across the parish along the path of Robbery Bottom Lane, continuing on as a public bridleway to Datchworth and then Braughing, on its eventual way to another major Roman town, Colchester.

Thomas de Wolvesmere is recorded as having lived in a dwelling here in 1297, and his name is considered to have led to the current name of the village.

Woolmer Green has always been one of those places which is “neither here nor there”. In the Middle Ages part of the village was in Mardleybury Manor, part in Rectory Manor, with the northern part owing allegiance to Broadwater Manor or Knebworth. Things have not changed; the village is still at the point where the Districts of North Hertfordshire, East Hertfordshire and Welwyn Hatfield meet.

Apart from the trade generated by travellers, life in Woolmer Green was agricultural and feudal until the middle of the nineteenth century. Things started to change, however, when the railway arrived in 1850 (although the nearby station in Knebworth was not opened until 1884 after intervention from Viscount Knebworth). The village school, which was opened a few years after this, obtained much funding from the railway.

In 1863, only a gunsmith and a shoemaker were listed in the trade directory. By 1898, when the population of Woolmer Green stood at 363 and that of Knebworth at 382, there were five shops including two beer retailers; no mention in the trade directory of the many ‘front room shops’! This level of service persisted until recent years with a general store and Post Office, a baker, a small supermarket and a butcher. Sadly these have all now closed. The former Post office was later used as a hair salon and most recently a furniture shop which was opened in June 2010.

The main road through the centre of the village was still the Great North Road down which thousands of cattle and sheep were driven ‘on the hoof’ to London markets each year. The area around Knebworth and Woolmer Green provided what was probably the last overnight stop for the animals and their drovers before they reached London.

Life sounds good when looked at in retrospect but the majority of the residents of Woolmer Green were dependent on farming and the 1879 harvest, which was the worst of the century, resulted in the leases of many farms in the area being relinquished, and thus labourers not being employed to work on them. At this time there was quite an influx of farmers from Scotland and Cornwall. They must have considered the prospects here to be better than their own, and indeed they were actively lured here by the owners of the local agricultural land, which at that time was largely owned by the big land-owning estates, particularly in this immediate area by the Knebworth Estate.

During the 20th century the village became a popular destination for tourists travelling to and from London as it lies on the old Great North Road from London to Edinburgh. Many who passed along the road would have visited the cottage inhabited by the late Harry McDonald, who for many years adorned both the cottage and garden with intricate carvings of animals and other objects. He became famous as the Woodcarver of Woolmer Green; sadly The Woodcarvers Cottage, as it came to be known, was demolished after his death.