Thrale history

Search • Advanced Search • Search Families • Search Site

First Name:   Last Name:   ID:  

The first William Paul, besides being a tailor, was also the village carpenter as were his descendants after him. It was he who carried out those delicate operations on the church roof in 1786.⁴ The third William had eight children in twelve years, and one more later. His first child Matthew William met trouble by heaving a stone at the verger; his nickname was Captain and he went to St Albans School. Another child was Harry, who joined the army, but while home on leave was accidentally drowned in the gravel pits. The seventh child, born during the Crimean War, was named Alma after the British victory. The Paul family were the terror of the village, and the gang was known as:

Captain and Carry, Phil,
Pete and Harry,
Ann Selina⁵, Eugena⁶
And little Shallot.

The last three were all removed from the school for continually playing up the teacher. Ann Selina was the worst. The father of this family was a great character and it was he who more than anyone asserted the rights of the artisan class to a share in village government. He broke the tradition that only gentry and farmers should attend vestry meetings and he opposed the squire George Marten in the appointment of a rate-collector for the village. In 1875 he was the vicar’s right hand man in founding the men’s club, and in his old age he look a leading part in road management and street drainage, an ever present problem in Sandridge. Paul was one of the original members of the parish council which first met in 1894, and he served on it to within seven weeks of his death. He was present with his long white beard on a famous occasion when news came through that Pretoria, the Boer capital, had been captured. The five old councillors broke off their discussions and sang the National Anthem and gave three cheers. During his long life William Paul worked hard and put his savings into cottage property in the parish. One bakehouse and at least twenty-five cottages are mentioned in his will.

In 1844 the four principal landowners of the parish were the Earl Spencer, Drake Garrard, Viscount Melbourne, and George R. Marten. The remaining acres consisted of the two commons of Bernards Heath and No Mans Land and a large number of small freeholdings.⁷ Of the four major landlords the only one who lived in the parish was George R. Marten of Marshalswick who inherited the estates in 1826 and lived there for fifty years as a bachelor. It appears that his half-sister Cecilia fell in love with William Holloway, the tenant of Marshalswick Farm; this house stands at the bottom of Kings Hill Avenue. The Marten family, however, did not approve of the match. Readers of the novels of Anthony Trollope will realise that a lady in the position of Cecilia might find obstacles put in her way if she wished to marry a tenant farmer; at the age of forty-eight she was still single, but she died in Welwyn in 1881 as Mrs. William Holloway.

It was the freehold and tenant farmers who ruled the village and held in turn the offices of overseers, guardians and stonewardens. No one below this class; appears to have attended the Vestry meetings before 1870. Each year on Lady Day the vestry meeting appointed a guardian of the poor, two churchwardens, a number of overseers and two stonewardens, who were responsible for maintaining the fifteen miles of roads in the parish. The title stonewarden first appears in 1832, thirteen years after John Macadam had invented a new way of making roads with stones. Formerly the same officers were called surveyors of the highways. In 1846 the stonewardens were George Young of Nashs Farm and Ralph Thrale of No Mans Land, each taking an area. Mr. Young employed three roadmen. Certain work was paid for at piece rates, the price being sevenpence a yard for stone breaking, and sixpence a yard for digging gravel; Mr. Thrale employed a different gang at similar rates. When Lady Day came round again Mr. Young produced to the vestry his account for £52 and Mr. Thrale’s was for £33.

It was during this period that the Thrales left the parish they had lived in and worked for so long. The stonewarden just mentioned was the head of the last family to live in the parish. His son Ralph Norman gained local distinction by shooting a large panther which had escaped from a

Footnotes

4. She died in 1949.↩︎
5. Alma Eugenie.↩︎
6. Tithe Commission Report.↩︎
7. Herts. Reformer, 30th May 1836.↩︎