River Gade Two Waters
River Gade
The Gade flows southwards and is joined by the River Bulbourne from the west. It then flows on in a number of channels
Post to the west Roughdown
Post to the north Magic Roundabout
Post to the east Apsley End
Post to the south Nash Mills
A41
Until the 1990 the road numbered A41 was the current London Road. A bypass road was built to the south and opened in 1993 as the Berkhamsted Bypass built by Amey Construction Ltd. This section is built to dual 2 lane standard with grade separated junctions. The first junction after the M25 is the Two Waters interchange a diamond junction with the A414 which has two dumbbell roundabouts which function as one roundabout.
Avia Close
This was previously called Thorpe Street
Apsley Manor School. On this site 1857 until 1949
Durrants Hill Road
3 Residential Care home. Possibly converted to flats.
The Albion Pub. This pub was known locally as The Wooden Box. It had a cottage, a garden and a wharf with stables for canal horses. It was demolished and replaced with six houses in the late 1990s. It was demolished suddenly in 1982.
Canal Bridge- of blue bricks with a cast iron space which replaced a wooden bridge
Durrants Fishing Lakes. Durrants Hill Fishery is in two old gravel pits dug in 1984 & leased from Dacorum Borough Council by Boxmoor and District Angling Society
Headquarters of 1st Aspley Scout Group. The group dates from 1934 and took over this building when it was derelict in 1973
Durrants Hill Playing Field. This includes a playground and what appears to be a sculpture.
Car park for the Aspley Paper Trail. This is on the site of filter beds used for hydraulic control by the Dickenson Paper Mill.
Frogmore Paper Mill Visitor Centre. Opened in 2008
Ebberns Road
The road follows some of the original route of the Grand Union Canal. The canal interfered with the water supply to the mill wheels so that John Dickinson went to court for an injunction forcing its diversion to its present route.
Ebberns was a Watford Coal Merchant who built a wharf here as well as the Albion Pub. It was not a successful development.
Featherbed Lane
Bridge over the A41 with a long diversion of the road
Railway Bridge, narrow and high with a long slope up to it with brick facings
The Salem Baptist Chapel was formed in 1817 and from 1818 was known as Salem Baptist Church associated with the Strict and Particular Baptist Churches. The building was sold in 1990 but still stands together with the Manse and has been used by other evangelical churches.
Home Wood. Woodland managed as amenity space by Dacorum Council.
Fourdriner Way
This is a new road built into the site of the Frogmore Mills and developed with new housing. The road is named for the Foudrinier Brothers who developed a machine for making paper in a continuous sheet
Frogmore Mills. Frogmore Mill was first recorded in the 13th. It was once called Covent Mill and used grinding corn but converted to paper-making in 1774 by Edward Holmes who leased it from Thomas Tower. In 1801 John Gamble and the Fourdrinier brothers leased Frogmore Mill and engaged John Hall of Dartford to build a machine with the help of his former apprentice, engineer Bryan Donkin. The machine was installed in 1803. A second machine from Donkin was trialed at Frogmore the following year. The Mill was bought by The Grand Junction Canal Company in 1817 when the 1804 Donkin machine was still being used. Various leaseholders followed and G.W.Hayes made newsprint here and in 1877 John Dickinson leased if to make partly pulped material from esparto grass. The Potosi Estate Company occupied it in 1887, producing pulps from bamboo, esparto and wood and from 1890 to 2000 the mill was run by the British Paper Company, set up by H S Sanguinetti who had acquired the lease from the Grand Junction Canal Company, and purchased it 1929. Initially they produced paper and lightweight board and in 1907 a second machine was installed. A Rotiformer machine was purchased the early sixties. T he mill is now used by Two Rivers Paper Co to make specialty papers. They use a Pilot Paper Machine built in 1902 for Manchester’s Municipal Technical College. It became the paper industry’s training machine and was given to Apsley Paper Trail in 2006. Watford Pulpers are also used and a modified Hollander beater is mixes additives and dyes. Power comes from an inverted vertical, two-cylinder duplex, by Ashworth & Parker of Bury. The buildings straddle the watercourse but the two waterwheels are no longer there. It is now fundamentally a museum with demonstration machinery in commercial use.
Mill House, 19th house in yellow brick. Used as offices by the British Paper Company.
Frogmore Crescent
This row of houses was on the south side of the canal east of Durrants Road. They seem to have been built by John Dickenson for workers at Frogmore Mill in the early 19th. They were demolished and the road closed in 1965.
Frogmore Road
This road was built along the north side of Frogmore Mills and has trading and light industrial units.
Grand Union Canal
Railway bridge was demolished in 1960
River Gade Junction
Two Waters Road Bridge
Durrants Hill Road Bridge
Kents Avenue
G. B. Kent, brush makers, built five cottages for employees here in 1901.
Apsley Industrial Estate
Footpath from the junction with Weymouth Road across the railway to High Ridge Road.
Lawn Lane
Canal View House. Flats on the site of Lawn Lane Nursery School
Lawn Lane Nursery School was built at the junction with Durrants Hill in 1942 to look after babies and young children whilst their mothers worked on the war effort. In 1946 it was taken over by the Education Department and for children aged 2-5. In 1989 the building was declared unsafe and was moved to temporary accommodation at Belswains Infant and Junior School until the new school was built at Heath Lane.
Lawn Park. Big house now demolished
Lawn Lane Open Space
Frogmore Cottages
British Paper Co. Built a terrace and a detached house in 1918
New Life Pentecostal Church, previously known as Bethel Pentecostal Church
London Road
This is the line of the original A41 road. It was previously the Sparrows Herne Turnpike Road itself built on the line of Roman Akeman Street.
Railway crossing. This is the point at which the Harpenden to Hemel Hempstead Railway - ‘Nicky Line’ crossed the main road. The abutment of the bridge is still there on the north side among trees which continue northwards along a wooded embankment where some sleepers still remain.
Two Waters Junior School. This first opened in Apsley Village as a non-conformist school in the mid-19th and by 1869 was on the site now occupied by Pilling’s car dealership. In 1875 it was taken over by the School Board. It was rebuilt in 1858 and a bell tower added and rebuilt again in 1913. In the 1930s it also became a Central School and in the Second World War took evacuees. In 1973 it moved to a new building on the Manor Estate
Two Waters Bus Garage. This opened in 1935 to replace the bus garage in Bury Road. Designed by Wallis Gilbert it fronted onto the main road with a round ended office block at right angles to the main shed. It was the first garage to run RW-types in 1960. It was replaced in 1995 by a bus garage in Whiteleaf Road and the site is now a trading estate
241 Bell Inn. 17th timber framed building. Now an American fast food chain restaurant.
Apsley Business Centre
62 Spotted Bull Pub
Community Centre in Two Waters Methodist church which was sold and no longer used as a church. A Wesleyan chapel at was acquired by the St Albans Circuit in 1846. It was rebuilt in 1867 and enlarged in 1889. After fund raising activities a new church was built nearby in 1908. The old church continued to be used until 1930 when it was declared to be unsafe – it was wooden and called Noah’s Ark following a flood. A new Sunday School was opened in 1931
44 White Lion pub
Kent’s Brush Factory. G B Kent and Sons have made high quality specialist brushes since the 18th. . They were founded in 1777 by William Kent and the firm remained in the family until 1932. Since then it has been run by the Cosby family. They moved to Apsley in 1984 and had a site of five acres with their own wharf on the canal. In 1984 their landmark chimney was blown up and Kents built a smaller factory0n their present site fronting the road in 1982.
Oddfellows Arms
10 Fountain Inn. Now under Sainsbury’s goods entrance
Manor Avenue
Built on the area shown on maps as Manor Farm.
River Bulbourne
Bulbourne Meadow. Owned by the Boxmoor Trust and used for festivals and public events
New bridge. Footbridge installed by the Boxmoor Trust in 1997.
Site of an old cress bed shown as a depression near the new bridge
Two Waters Road
Confluence of the Bulbourne and the Gade
Two Waters Mills. This was also called Tot Mill and was recorded in Domesday. In 1580 this was a fulling mill. It was a corn mill when, in 1791, Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, stationers in the City of London, bought it to make paper. Brian Donkin installed the third continuous paper machine here in 1805 – and it is said to have been the first machine which was a success. In 1877 the mill was taken over by Dickenson who made paper from esparto here but left the mill in 1888. The Universal Barrel Company made seamless barrels from paper here before 1890 and Herbert Sanguinetti was involved. He used the Mill House here as his home. The top mill was destroyed in an explosion when the mill was used for extracting grease from rags in 1918 and not rebuilt. The mill was demolished in 1920. The site is now Dacorum Council Nursery and Recreation Depot which was built in the 1950s
5 K2 Balti House. This was a delivery depot built in 1936 for beer delivered by canal, it later became the Whip and Collar Inn. Boats could be hired from the pub
Two Waters Open Space
Two Waters Way
This is the A414 which goes from here to Maldon. It originally began form the old A41, now the London Road. When the bypass road, now the A41, was built the A414 was extended south to meet it. It starts from a dumbbell roundabout under the bypass road and goes downhill to a signal controlled junction with the London Road where it meets its original line
Balderson’s Bridge also called High Bridge went over the canal. It was built in the 1790s but named after Balderson who had a nearby wharf nearby. It was a hump backed structure with a load restriction to 5 tons. The new County Bridge dates from 1935 and is a steel tough on concrete abutments
Swing Bridge - this was alongside the hump backed bridge and crossed the Gade which originally ran in a straight line to meet the Bulbourne. The section was back filled when the new town was built.
Whiteleaf Road
Eastern Electricity depot
Bus garage built in 1995 following the closure of the Two Waters garage.
Sources
Apsley Scouts. Web site
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Boxmoor Trust. Web site
CanalPlan. Web site
Dacorum Council. Web site
Donkin, History of Bryan Donkin & Co.
Glazier. London Transport Garages
Heath Lane Nursery School. Web site
Hills, Papermaking in Britain
History of the British Paper Company. Web site
K2. Web site
Mee. Hertfordshire
Nash Mills Parish Council. Web site
National Archives. Web site
Nobbs. A walk along the canal towpath
Our Dacorum. Web site.
Paper Trail. Web site
Sabre Wiki A41. Web site
Sabre Wiki A414. Web site
The Engineer
Two Waters Junior School. Web site
The Gade flows southwards and is joined by the River Bulbourne from the west. It then flows on in a number of channels
Post to the west Roughdown
Post to the north Magic Roundabout
Post to the east Apsley End
Post to the south Nash Mills
A41
Until the 1990 the road numbered A41 was the current London Road. A bypass road was built to the south and opened in 1993 as the Berkhamsted Bypass built by Amey Construction Ltd. This section is built to dual 2 lane standard with grade separated junctions. The first junction after the M25 is the Two Waters interchange a diamond junction with the A414 which has two dumbbell roundabouts which function as one roundabout.
Avia Close
This was previously called Thorpe Street
Apsley Manor School. On this site 1857 until 1949
Durrants Hill Road
3 Residential Care home. Possibly converted to flats.
The Albion Pub. This pub was known locally as The Wooden Box. It had a cottage, a garden and a wharf with stables for canal horses. It was demolished and replaced with six houses in the late 1990s. It was demolished suddenly in 1982.
Canal Bridge- of blue bricks with a cast iron space which replaced a wooden bridge
Durrants Fishing Lakes. Durrants Hill Fishery is in two old gravel pits dug in 1984 & leased from Dacorum Borough Council by Boxmoor and District Angling Society
Headquarters of 1st Aspley Scout Group. The group dates from 1934 and took over this building when it was derelict in 1973
Durrants Hill Playing Field. This includes a playground and what appears to be a sculpture.
Car park for the Aspley Paper Trail. This is on the site of filter beds used for hydraulic control by the Dickenson Paper Mill.
Frogmore Paper Mill Visitor Centre. Opened in 2008
Ebberns Road
The road follows some of the original route of the Grand Union Canal. The canal interfered with the water supply to the mill wheels so that John Dickinson went to court for an injunction forcing its diversion to its present route.
Ebberns was a Watford Coal Merchant who built a wharf here as well as the Albion Pub. It was not a successful development.
Featherbed Lane
Bridge over the A41 with a long diversion of the road
Railway Bridge, narrow and high with a long slope up to it with brick facings
The Salem Baptist Chapel was formed in 1817 and from 1818 was known as Salem Baptist Church associated with the Strict and Particular Baptist Churches. The building was sold in 1990 but still stands together with the Manse and has been used by other evangelical churches.
Home Wood. Woodland managed as amenity space by Dacorum Council.
Fourdriner Way
This is a new road built into the site of the Frogmore Mills and developed with new housing. The road is named for the Foudrinier Brothers who developed a machine for making paper in a continuous sheet
Frogmore Mills. Frogmore Mill was first recorded in the 13th. It was once called Covent Mill and used grinding corn but converted to paper-making in 1774 by Edward Holmes who leased it from Thomas Tower. In 1801 John Gamble and the Fourdrinier brothers leased Frogmore Mill and engaged John Hall of Dartford to build a machine with the help of his former apprentice, engineer Bryan Donkin. The machine was installed in 1803. A second machine from Donkin was trialed at Frogmore the following year. The Mill was bought by The Grand Junction Canal Company in 1817 when the 1804 Donkin machine was still being used. Various leaseholders followed and G.W.Hayes made newsprint here and in 1877 John Dickinson leased if to make partly pulped material from esparto grass. The Potosi Estate Company occupied it in 1887, producing pulps from bamboo, esparto and wood and from 1890 to 2000 the mill was run by the British Paper Company, set up by H S Sanguinetti who had acquired the lease from the Grand Junction Canal Company, and purchased it 1929. Initially they produced paper and lightweight board and in 1907 a second machine was installed. A Rotiformer machine was purchased the early sixties. T he mill is now used by Two Rivers Paper Co to make specialty papers. They use a Pilot Paper Machine built in 1902 for Manchester’s Municipal Technical College. It became the paper industry’s training machine and was given to Apsley Paper Trail in 2006. Watford Pulpers are also used and a modified Hollander beater is mixes additives and dyes. Power comes from an inverted vertical, two-cylinder duplex, by Ashworth & Parker of Bury. The buildings straddle the watercourse but the two waterwheels are no longer there. It is now fundamentally a museum with demonstration machinery in commercial use.
Mill House, 19th house in yellow brick. Used as offices by the British Paper Company.
Frogmore Crescent
This row of houses was on the south side of the canal east of Durrants Road. They seem to have been built by John Dickenson for workers at Frogmore Mill in the early 19th. They were demolished and the road closed in 1965.
Frogmore Road
This road was built along the north side of Frogmore Mills and has trading and light industrial units.
Grand Union Canal
Railway bridge was demolished in 1960
River Gade Junction
Two Waters Road Bridge
Durrants Hill Road Bridge
Kents Avenue
G. B. Kent, brush makers, built five cottages for employees here in 1901.
Apsley Industrial Estate
Footpath from the junction with Weymouth Road across the railway to High Ridge Road.
Lawn Lane
Canal View House. Flats on the site of Lawn Lane Nursery School
Lawn Lane Nursery School was built at the junction with Durrants Hill in 1942 to look after babies and young children whilst their mothers worked on the war effort. In 1946 it was taken over by the Education Department and for children aged 2-5. In 1989 the building was declared unsafe and was moved to temporary accommodation at Belswains Infant and Junior School until the new school was built at Heath Lane.
Lawn Park. Big house now demolished
Lawn Lane Open Space
Frogmore Cottages
British Paper Co. Built a terrace and a detached house in 1918
New Life Pentecostal Church, previously known as Bethel Pentecostal Church
London Road
This is the line of the original A41 road. It was previously the Sparrows Herne Turnpike Road itself built on the line of Roman Akeman Street.
Railway crossing. This is the point at which the Harpenden to Hemel Hempstead Railway - ‘Nicky Line’ crossed the main road. The abutment of the bridge is still there on the north side among trees which continue northwards along a wooded embankment where some sleepers still remain.
Two Waters Junior School. This first opened in Apsley Village as a non-conformist school in the mid-19th and by 1869 was on the site now occupied by Pilling’s car dealership. In 1875 it was taken over by the School Board. It was rebuilt in 1858 and a bell tower added and rebuilt again in 1913. In the 1930s it also became a Central School and in the Second World War took evacuees. In 1973 it moved to a new building on the Manor Estate
Two Waters Bus Garage. This opened in 1935 to replace the bus garage in Bury Road. Designed by Wallis Gilbert it fronted onto the main road with a round ended office block at right angles to the main shed. It was the first garage to run RW-types in 1960. It was replaced in 1995 by a bus garage in Whiteleaf Road and the site is now a trading estate
241 Bell Inn. 17th timber framed building. Now an American fast food chain restaurant.
Apsley Business Centre
62 Spotted Bull Pub
Community Centre in Two Waters Methodist church which was sold and no longer used as a church. A Wesleyan chapel at was acquired by the St Albans Circuit in 1846. It was rebuilt in 1867 and enlarged in 1889. After fund raising activities a new church was built nearby in 1908. The old church continued to be used until 1930 when it was declared to be unsafe – it was wooden and called Noah’s Ark following a flood. A new Sunday School was opened in 1931
44 White Lion pub
Kent’s Brush Factory. G B Kent and Sons have made high quality specialist brushes since the 18th. . They were founded in 1777 by William Kent and the firm remained in the family until 1932. Since then it has been run by the Cosby family. They moved to Apsley in 1984 and had a site of five acres with their own wharf on the canal. In 1984 their landmark chimney was blown up and Kents built a smaller factory0n their present site fronting the road in 1982.
Oddfellows Arms
10 Fountain Inn. Now under Sainsbury’s goods entrance
Manor Avenue
Built on the area shown on maps as Manor Farm.
River Bulbourne
Bulbourne Meadow. Owned by the Boxmoor Trust and used for festivals and public events
New bridge. Footbridge installed by the Boxmoor Trust in 1997.
Site of an old cress bed shown as a depression near the new bridge
Two Waters Road
Confluence of the Bulbourne and the Gade
Two Waters Mills. This was also called Tot Mill and was recorded in Domesday. In 1580 this was a fulling mill. It was a corn mill when, in 1791, Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, stationers in the City of London, bought it to make paper. Brian Donkin installed the third continuous paper machine here in 1805 – and it is said to have been the first machine which was a success. In 1877 the mill was taken over by Dickenson who made paper from esparto here but left the mill in 1888. The Universal Barrel Company made seamless barrels from paper here before 1890 and Herbert Sanguinetti was involved. He used the Mill House here as his home. The top mill was destroyed in an explosion when the mill was used for extracting grease from rags in 1918 and not rebuilt. The mill was demolished in 1920. The site is now Dacorum Council Nursery and Recreation Depot which was built in the 1950s
5 K2 Balti House. This was a delivery depot built in 1936 for beer delivered by canal, it later became the Whip and Collar Inn. Boats could be hired from the pub
Two Waters Open Space
Two Waters Way
This is the A414 which goes from here to Maldon. It originally began form the old A41, now the London Road. When the bypass road, now the A41, was built the A414 was extended south to meet it. It starts from a dumbbell roundabout under the bypass road and goes downhill to a signal controlled junction with the London Road where it meets its original line
Balderson’s Bridge also called High Bridge went over the canal. It was built in the 1790s but named after Balderson who had a nearby wharf nearby. It was a hump backed structure with a load restriction to 5 tons. The new County Bridge dates from 1935 and is a steel tough on concrete abutments
Swing Bridge - this was alongside the hump backed bridge and crossed the Gade which originally ran in a straight line to meet the Bulbourne. The section was back filled when the new town was built.
Whiteleaf Road
Eastern Electricity depot
Bus garage built in 1995 following the closure of the Two Waters garage.
Sources
Apsley Scouts. Web site
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Boxmoor Trust. Web site
CanalPlan. Web site
Dacorum Council. Web site
Donkin, History of Bryan Donkin & Co.
Glazier. London Transport Garages
Heath Lane Nursery School. Web site
Hills, Papermaking in Britain
History of the British Paper Company. Web site
K2. Web site
Mee. Hertfordshire
Nash Mills Parish Council. Web site
National Archives. Web site
Nobbs. A walk along the canal towpath
Our Dacorum. Web site.
Paper Trail. Web site
Sabre Wiki A41. Web site
Sabre Wiki A414. Web site
The Engineer
Two Waters Junior School. Web site
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