Stevenage, Hertfordshire - Parish Church, St. George - Frith RP postcard c.1960s

• Postcard

   

• Picture / Image:  Parish Church of St. George, Stevenage [Hertfordshire]
• Publisher: Frith (Z 9)
• Postally used: no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Stevenage (/ˈstiːvənɪdʒ/ STEE-vən-ij) is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 28 miles (44 km) north of London.[2] Stevenage is east of junctions 7 and 8 of the A1(M), between Letchworth Garden City to the north and Welwyn Garden City to the south. In 1946, Stevenage was designated the United Kingdom's first New Town under the New Towns Act.

Stevenage lies near the line of the Roman road from Verulamium to Baldock. Some Romano-British remains were discovered during the building of the New Town, and a hoard of 2,000 silver Roman coins was discovered in 1986 during new house building in the Chells Manor area. The most substantial evidence of activity from Roman times is Six Hills, six tumuli by the side of the old Great North Road – presumably the burial places of a local family.

A little to the east of the Roman sites the first Saxon camp was made in a clearing in the woods where the church, manor house and the first village were later built. Settlements also sprang up in Chells, Broadwater and Shephall (though before the New Town Shephall was a separate parish and Broadwater was split between the parishes of Shephall and Knebworth).

In the Domesday Book the Lord of the Manor was the Abbot of Westminster Abbey. The settlement had moved down to the Great North Road and in 1281 it was granted a Royal Charter to hold a weekly market and annual fair (still held in the High Street).

The earliest part of St Nicholas' Church dates from the 12th century but it was probably a site of worship much earlier. The known list of priests or rectors is relatively complete from 1213.

The remains of a medieval moated homestead in Whomerley Wood is an 80-yard-square trench almost 5 feet wide in parts. It was probably the home of Ralph de Homle, and both Roman and later pottery has been found there.

Around 1500 the Church was much improved, with decorative woodwork and the addition of a clerestory.

In 1558 Thomas Alleyne, a rector of the town, founded a free grammar school for boys, Alleyne's Grammar School, which, despite becoming a boys' comprehensive school in 1967, had an unbroken existence (unlike the grammar school in neighbouring Hitchin) until 1989 when it merged with Stevenage Girls' School to become the Thomas Alleyne School. Francis Cammaerts was headmaster of Alleyne's Grammar School from 1952 to 1961. The school, which has been since 1989 a mixed comprehensive school and is now an Academy as of 2013, still exists on its original site at the north end of the High Street. It was intended to move the school to Great Ashby, but the Coalition government (2010–15) proposed scrapping the move owing to budget cuts.

Stevenage's prosperity came in part from the North Road, which was turnpiked in the early 18th century. Many inns in the High Street served the stage coaches, 21 of which passed through Stevenage each day in 1800.

In 1857 the Great Northern Railway was constructed, and the era of the stage coach had ended. Stevenage grew only slowly throughout the 19th century and a second church (Holy Trinity) was constructed at the south end of the High Street. In 1861 Dickens commented, "The village street was like most other village streets: wide for its height, silent for its size, and drowsy in the dullest degree. The quietest little dwellings with the largest of window-shutters to shut up nothing as if it were the Mint or the Bank of England."

In 1928 Philip Vincent bought the HRD Motorcycle Co Ltd out of receivership, immediately moving it to Stevenage and renaming it the Vincent HRD Motorcycle Co Ltd. He produced the legendary motorcycles, including the Black Shadow and Black Lightning, in the town until 1955.