The History of Berkhamsted Common

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Undated but apparently 1934 c.1950?159p portrait frontis, plates and maps. "FOUR GENERATIONS of Berkhamstedians have chuckled over the story of Augustus John Smith's fight to save Berkhamsted Common from enclosure in 1866. It was really no laughing matter; the rights of the commoners had been flouted, and only a man of great bravery and wealth would have thought of hiring London labourers to smash down the iron railings. Augustus Smith was ever a doughty fighter, and his part in the "Battle of Berkhamsted Common" has tended to over-shadow his other good works for Berkhamsted. From his home, Ashlyns Hall, where he was born in 1804, Augustus Smith pulled many of the strings which reawakened the town in the reign of William IV and in early Victorian times. He campaigned to put our educational institutions in good order, notably Berkhamsted School, of which he was described as the refounder. when Lord Brownlow was so ill-advised as to enclose Berkhamsted Common in 1866. -He had previously tried without success to dissuade Lord Brownlow from interfering with ancient rights. Tall iron fences were erected, excluding commoners from the waste. Augustus Smith took drastic action. He hastily recruited a miniature army of Cockney "toughs" and Irish labourers and chartered a special train to convey them from Euston to Tring in the dead of night. One hundred and twenty men, shouldering crowbars and other implements, marched two by two into the moonlight. Within an hour they reached the first of the 5-ft. high iron fences, made and erected by the Berkhamsted firm of iron-founders, Messrs. Wood and Son, beside the Ringshall road. This obstruction, and another long fence nearly a mile and a half away, from the old rifle range to Frithsden Beeches, was thrown down before daylight. The joints of the railings were loosened by hammers and chisels; crowbars did the rest. Inhabitants of Berkhamsted and neighbouring villages flocked to the scene. To quote a newspaper report: "In carriages, gigs, dogcarts and on foot, gentry, shopkeepers, husbandmen, women and children at once tested the reality of what they saw by strolling over and squatting on the Common and taking away morsels of gorse to prove, as they said) the place was their own again. The cost of the three miles of iron railings is said to have been more than £1,000, and that of its removal must have been considerable." While Berkhamsted folk celebrated the reopening of the Common, Lord Brownlow instituted legal proceedings against Augustus Smith. This defender of ancient rights won the case and the plaudits of the Press, and it is pleasant to add that ill-feeling between Lord Brownlow and the townspeople was short-lived. the book is clean and unmarked apart from a neat owners name on the fep. The prelims are toned. Uncommon. see scans. N° de ref. del artículo 011760

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