The group started to collect old photographs in 1976 and copies of many of these are deposited with Hitchin Museum in the Helen Hofton Collection. We are very grateful to all the people who have given these photos to enable viewers to see how the village has changed over the last hundred years.

1910s   This is Palmers Row along Little Green, sometimes known as Laburnum Row as laburnum trees were planted in front of some of the houses.  Frank Palmer, a travelling butcher from Shillington, bought the houses in 1890 and they were described in the sales document as “the best in the village.” Each had two bedrooms, a sitting room, and a kitchen with a range for cooking. The wash-house with its copper and the shared privy were across the yard. Mains water was laid on in 1934, but electricity was not connected until the houses were sold to their tenants in 1946.

1900s   Little Green and the Blacksmiths Pond.  The pond appears to be fairly full, flooding into the road. Railings were not added until 1917. Flooding was a regular occurrence before a drainage ditch was dug to take the overflow along Walnut Tree Road to Larkin’s Pond in the Bury.  The domesticated ducks belonged to Dickie Weedon who lived in one of the cottages known as Workhouse Yard (since that is what the cottages originally were), just visible between the trees beside the pond.  Many people kept ducks in the early years of the century as a way of earning extra money.