A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



was used a* a workhouse and afterwards as a school. 

 It has lately been bought and given for a church house 

 (ice Charities, no. l). 11 * On both sides of Bell Street 

 are several 17th-century cottages built of timber and 

 brick coated with cement and having projecting upper 

 stories. A cottage on the south side has its original 

 brick chimneys. There are also some pleasing 1 8th- 

 centory houses in the town. On the road to High 

 Wych is the Hand and Crown Inn, a 16th-century 

 gabled building of two stories which has been added 

 to in the last century. It is of timber and plaster 

 with a projecting upper story and a porch. There is 

 an original window on the south side. On the Stort- 

 ford Road, a little way past North End, is Three Mile 

 Pond Farm, a 1 7th-century pargeted house. Clay 

 Lane (now called West Road), leading west from the 

 town, has also several old farm-houses. Great Beazleys, 

 on the north of it, is now a small cottage, but incor- 

 porates a fragment of an earlier 17th-century timber- 

 framed farm-house of two stories. On an interior 



Successive grants of market (see manor) hire 

 never resulted in making Saw bridge worth a com- 

 mercial centre. Probably the neighbourhood of a 

 flourishing market at Bishop's Stortford interfered 

 with the success of the Saw bridge worth market. From 

 the number of inhabitants who contributed to the 

 various local assessments, however, it would seem 

 that the town has always been a thriving one, and in 

 the 15th century there is record of burgage tenure 

 there (see manor). In the 14th century the parish 

 was divided for fiscal purposes into the districts of 

 Cherchegate Street, Pyshoo Street, Nethynhoo, West- 

 wood Street, Frere Street, Mynton Street, Smith 

 Street, Chames Well Street, Haleynes Grene (Allen's 

 Green), Brod Street, Speibrok and Northende. 

 Clutterbuck, writing in 1817, mentions that the 

 parish contained three hamlets, Town Quarter, 

 Spelbrook Quarter and Highway Quarter. In 1901 

 part of the parish of Sawbridge worth was made into 

 a new civil parish and urban district. The town it 



SplaM I JWmm"' 



-jg^pa • 



beam is cut I.R. 1612. To the east of the house is 

 an old barn built of sun-dried mud bricks. Crump's 

 Farm, on the same side of the road, is a red brick 

 building of two stories and attics, with the inscription 

 ,* 1628 over the front door. Little Beazleys, on 

 the south side, is a two-storied building with thatched 

 roof and the date 1662 on the north front. Due 

 north of Great Beazleys is Tharbies, now a modern 

 farm-house occupied by Mr. J. L. Kirkby. Close to 

 the house is a small square dove-house, timber- 

 framed. The lower part is weather -boarded and 

 the upper part covered with lath and plaster and 

 ornamented with square flush panels. The pyramidal 

 roof is tiled and has two small gables at the apex. 

 About half a mile north of Tharbies there was an 

 old moat marked on the ordnance map. This has 

 been recently filled up by Mr. Kirkby and ploughed 



ovei 



ition from Rev. H. A. Lip 



now governed by an urban district council of twelve 

 members. 



The hamlet of High Wych lies on the road from 

 Sawbridgeworth to Gilston, about half a mile south- 

 west of Sawbridgeworth. It was formed into an 

 ecclesiastical district in 1862. 11 St. James's Church 

 stands on the north of the road. To the south of 

 the church is the school, and on the other side of the 

 road is the vicarage. Spelbrook 12 is another hamlet 

 on the main road to the north of Sawbridgeworth. 

 The school, which was built in 189 1, is used for 

 services on Sunday, 



There is little of antiquarian interest in the history 

 of the parish of Sawbridgeworth. Only one dis- 

 covery of prehistoric remains has beeo made, that of 

 two cinerary urns containing ashes or calcined bones 

 found about 300 yards north of the Stort and 

 1 70 yards east of the high road from Sawbridgeworth 



ar. 1862, p. 1605. tuTy(«eeAt»«eR.j*5[isEdw.I],whi* 



d in the 13th «D- mentions ' Richard Fiber de Spelebrok 1 ). 



