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Little Heath Wood House.

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Joan Gooding is researching the origins of the former Little Heath Wood House. Can you help? Please respond via the 'Contact Us' link.

Little Heath Wood House

As a very new member of the Society I have been amazed, delighted and excited at the wealth of information stored up by its members who have discovered and recorded so much of the history of Potters Bar and its surroundings. It is encouraging to find so many willing people to help preserve our past for the benefit of future generations, and I am hopeful someone out there may help me to fit in an important missing piece of my personal puzzle.

I moved into the flats at GRESLEY COURT on 9th May 1972, a week after another lady, and now my flat is the only one that hasn’t changed hands. From April 1973 until October 2011 I was the Honorary Secretary of the Gresley Court Management Company and am currently recording its history during those 43 years. This would be incomplete without recognising the unique 3+ acre site on which Gresley Court is built and I have been researching the history of LITTLE HEATH WOOD HOUSE that stood there previously, having discovered a picture of it in Brian Warren’s book “The Growth of the Little Heath Area to 1914”.

A copy of an 1844 Tithe map, kindly given to me by Peter Miller, shows the house on the triangle of land from along Hawkshead Road, down the A1000 to Swanley Bar Lane and up to Folly Arch, with the landowner shown as Matthias Gilbertson, who appeared to be renting out plots of land to various other named. He lived and died in Egham, Surrey on 7th September 1870. Despite searches by the Archivist at Hertfordshire County Council and after checked Matthias Gilbertson’s Will, Little Heath Wood House was not included in his estate and so far it has not been possible to discover when and by whom the house was built. Census records have been viewed from 1861 so subsequent owners / occupiers are known.

Hopefully, some magical person out there might have the missing piece of the puzzle…….?

Joan Gooding.

20th November 2015.

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