Ashwell, Herts: the Beresford connection
'Ashwell End, Baldock, Herts.'
All Woodforde enthusiasts will be familiar with this short postal address, given without fail by the rector's first editor John Beresford (1888–1940) at the end of his introductory matter in each of the five volumes of The Diary of a County Parson (published 1924–31) and in his one-volume abridgment (1935).
Ashwell's place of honour
Ashwell, nestling in the north-east corner of Hertfordshire where it adjoins Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, holds great significance for all those interested in Parson Woodforde's diary. The Woodforde family's associations with the village, and the fact that John Beresford's monumental work was conceived and executed in the outlying farmhouse of Ashwell End, have secured for Ashwell a place of honour in the Woodforde story.
John Beresford's beloved home, known then as Ashwell End, is now called Beresfords in his honour. It lies in Gardiners Lane, which winds from the centre of Ashwell past the parish church [photo Margaret Bird 2025]
The creation of a masterpiece in a Tudor farmhouse
The upper part of the tower of St Mary's, Ashwell: the tallest church tower in Hertfordshire. Beresford calls it 'a cathedral among village churches' [photo Margaret Bird 2025]
The late-sixteenth-century house stands slightly remote from the village centre at Ashwell near Baldock in Hertfordshire, forty miles north of London. The Beresford family would have regularly walked along the lane to the main village, the soaring church tower topped by its flèche forming a beckoning landmark on their way.
It was Beresford's wife Janet who found the house in 1918 and they quickly secured the tenancy. Ashwell End became their cherished sanctuary from the pressures of his work in London. Here he transcribed long extracts from Woodforde's manuscript diary and prepared his editorial introductions and footnotes; Janet checked the proofs. Beresford worked at extraordinary speed in his whole-hearted commitment to the project which was to capture the public imagination at home and abroad. He is pictured on the Lost Diary and Publications pages of this website.
As he laid down his pen at Ashwell End on 23 February 1931, at the close of his eight-year transcription of parts of the diary, Beresford reflected on what had been achieved. This is from his Introduction to volume 5, published by Oxford University Press later that year (pages xii and xiii):
'The interest and, I think, the affection created by the Diary has been wonderful,' writes the present Rector of Weston, the Rev. Edward Clark, who further tells me that numbers of people have visited Weston for the Diarist's sake, 'some of them pilgrims from very far afield'.
John Beresford then takes his farewell of 'the illumination of village life in England' which Parson Woodforde affords us. Beresford names a few of the various people and rituals described in the diary which have caught his readers' attention. He ends:
Nor can you meet John Springle carrying on his head a skep of bees tied up in a cloth, walking all the way from Sparham, nor watch Briton, the Diarist's servant, giving Bread to the Poor at Church 'from Money which he had received for that Purpose from some Person who desired that it may not be known from whom it came'.
Nevertheless these things have not passed away, for Parson Woodforde has kept them for ever.
JOHN BERESFORD
Ashwell End, Baldock, Herts
February 23, 1931
James Woodforde's MS diary held in Ashwell for 24 years
Ashwell Springs: the view from the street beside Spring House. Five springs gush into this shallow pool, forming one of the sources of the River Cam [photo Margaret Bird 2025] Ashwell was already established as a settlement by the reign of King Edward the Elder, the son of King Alfred the Great; Edward reigned from 899 to 924.
Its inhabitants would have benefited from its abundance of pure, clear water, at the site known as Ashwell Springs. The water pouring from five springs at this one point in the village centre maintains a level temperature of 10 degrees Celsius (50°F) winter and summer. The swirling shingle-bottomed pool forms the start of one of the principal headstreams of the Cam, the river which runs beside King's College, Cambridge – Beresford's college.
For 24 years from 1909, the year of his father's death, the manuscript diary in the form of 73 small notebooks and more than one hundred loose sheaves of paper was on view in the second Ashwell property belonging to Dr Robert Edmond Heighes Woodforde (1874–1957), the great-grandson of the diarist's nephew William Woodforde ('Nephew Bill').
On arriving at Ashwell and setting up in practice Dr Woodforde lived at Fairview, the house now known as Spring House, at 7 High Street. About four years later he and his family moved to the imposing new house he built next door, at 5 High Street. The redbrick house in the Georgian style, then known as The Mount, is now Ashwell House. It was there that John Beresford became Dr Woodforde's patient and friend and, in 1923, started to take an interest in the family manuscripts by which he was to make his name.
Dr R.E.H. Woodforde's first home in Ashwell, where he lived 1900–04. Known then as Fairview and today as Spring House, it stands in the High Street facing the springs [photo Margaret Bird 2025] Beresford pays tribute to his close working relationship with the doctor in the project to bring James Woodforde's diary before the public. In his Introduction to the final volume of 1931 he relates that Dr R.E.H. Woodforde 'owns the manuscript and introduced me to it eight years ago.' He adds, on page xiii, that he was indebted to the doctor 'for so freely putting the manuscript at my disposal' and for writing the appendices.
Three of Dr Woodforde's children were to play a part in securing Parson Woodforde's legacy. In 1932 Dorothy Heighes Woodforde brought out her important compilation Woodforde Papers and Diaries containing, amongst other records, her transcription of Nancy Woodforde's diary for 1792 written at Weston Parsonage. A later edition is available from the Parson Woodforde Society, as described under Publications.
After their father's death Christopher and Oliver Woodforde arranged for the precious manuscripts to be handed to the Bodleian Library in Oxford for storage. There they remain today in a set of small boxes made specially for the purpose and as shown to Parson Woodforde Society members attending the Oxford frolic of 2024.
Ashwell End, John Beresford's beloved home
Ashwell End (now called Beresfords): the main front, with its delicate scalloped pargetting. The cream walls of Beresford's time are now pastel pink [photo Margaret Bird 2025]A fascinating account of Beresford's life by Martin Brayne appears in the Parson Woodforde Society Journal vol. 36 no. 3 (Autumn 2003). Beresford, a civil servant at the Treasury after serving in France and Italy with the Royal Army Service Corps during the First World War, studied the manuscript diary to counteract the toll taken by his London life and work.
He and his wife Janet, née Spicer, whom he had married in February 1915, made Ashwell End their country base with their four children. On pages 23–4 of his biography of Beresford Martin Brayne observes, before quoting from Beresford himself, 'The joy and solace which that house provided is graphically described in this extract from the 1932 Journal:'
20th May In the evening Janet and I met at King's Cross for spending Saturday and Sunday at Ashwell. As we arrived at the garden gate and looked over the low wall we could hardly suppress a cry of delight at the rainbow beauty of the garden in front of the house. It has never looked so well. The forget-me-nots are so abundant that the sky seems to have fallen in splashes, and the pansies of every colour and kind, with tulips and wall-flowers and tall yellow daisies make a pattern of compacted glory.
Behind the house the apple-trees are in full and crowded sail of blossom and this small Jacobean house – once a little farm – smiles in between with its red tiled roof and cream pargetted walls. Entire tranquillity descends as one goes in at the front gate and enters the front door which opens directly into the long low room – the sitting room with all the books, the grandfather clock, the great oak beams and the brick floor of faded rose pink.
An open casement at Ashwell End. The leaded windows date from the 18th century [photo Margaret Bird 2025]The house loved by John Beresford is described and illustrated in the article in Country Life of 14 January 1949 by Christopher Hussey, when the widowed Janet Beresford was living there. On page 101, beside a photograph of the long, low sitting room described in her husband's journal, Hussey refers to the parish of Ashwell (which had also featured in the magazine on 21 March and 28 March 1947) when describing the setting of Ashwell End:
It is not only one of the best-preserved houses in that parish, which has changed so remarkably little since the late Middle Ages, but is also an excellent example of the sympathetic conversion of an old building to contemporary requirements . . .
It became the home of the late Mr John Beresford, remembered as the editor of the Woodforde Diaries, to whose lively sense of English tradition Ashwell, with its continuity of development since Saxon times, made a strong appeal.
Beresford's death in the Blitz
John Baldwyn Beresford, himself the son of a country rector, was killed in London on the night of 17 October 1940 while serving with the Home Guard during the Second World War. He was fire-watching from a building in Whitehall which suffered a direct hit. He was aged 52. He had been made a CBE two years earlier for his work as Secretary of the University Grants Committee. His widow Janet died in 1974.
Beresford's name is listed among the war dead in the memorial chapel at King's College, Cambridge. He lies buried in St Mary's Churchyard at Ashwell. He recorded his great affection for the parish church in his journal:
Ashwell Church viewed from the lane by Beresford's home [photo Margaret Bird 2025]
Sunday 27 December 1931 Went to church with the entire family in the morning – Janet and the four children. Ashwell Church is a cathedral among village churches, in its beauty of line, arch and tower. The tower is gigantic and wherever you ride [on a bicycle] in this part of the country you suddenly see it coming up from behind rolling hills or beckoning along grassy tracks. It works itself into the background of the mind and emerges suddenly in your thoughts.