Ware, Hertfordshire

The town lies on the north–south A10 road which is partly shared with the east–west A414 (for Hertford to the west and Harlow to the east). There is a large viaduct over the River Lea at Kings Meads. The £3.6m two-mile bypass opened on 17 January 1979. At the north end of the bypass is the Wodson Park Sports and Leisure Centre and Hanbury Manor, a hotel and country club. The former route of the A10 through the town is now the A1170. The railway station is on the Hertford East Branch Line and operated by Greater Anglia and is on a short single track section of the otherwise double track line.

Archaeology has shown that Ware has been occupied since at least the Mesolithic period (which ended about 4000 BC).[3] The Romans had a sizable settlement here and foundations of several buildings, including a temple, and two cemeteries have been found.[4] Ware was on Ermine Street, the Roman road from London to Lincoln. A well-preserved Roman skeleton of a teenage girl was found beside the road and nicknamed 'Ermintrude'.[5] It has been said that Ware is one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe.[6]

In the Domesday Book of 1086, the town was named Waras from the natural weirs in the River Lea.[7] The historic rivalry with nearby Hertford can be traced to 1090 when the Lady of Ware (Petronilla de Grandmesnil, Countess of Leicester) diverted Ermine Street from the Roman ford to create a High Street and new bridge over the Lea. The bailiff of Hertford tried to destroy the new bridge before it was recognised as part of the King's Highway by Henry III in person.[8] In 1381, during the so-called Peasants' Revolt, 42 prominent Ware townsmen, led by the Vicar, joined others in destroying Hertford Castle, then owned by John of Gaunt.[9] Many inns were established in the High Street, reflecting Ware's importance as a coaching stop on the Old North Road. Chaucer mentioned Ware twice in The Canterbury Tales. The Great Bed of Ware, cited by Shakespeare and other playwrights, was housed in a succession of Ware inns.

Mary I had Thomas Fust burned at the stake in Ware marketplace for refusing to convert to Catholicism.

In the 17th century, Ware became the source of the New River, constructed to take fresh water into London. The Ware Mutiny occurred on 15 November 1647, between the First and the Second English Civil War at Corkbush Field, when soldiers were ordered to sign a declaration of loyalty to Thomas Fairfax, the commander-in-chief of the New Model Army (NMA), and the Army Council. When some with Leveller sympathies refused to do this they were arrested, and one of the ringleaders, Trooper Richard Arnold, was court-martialled and shot.[10] 62 children were sent to Ware after the Great Fire of London. In 1683, the Rye House Plot involved assassinating Charles II after he passed through Ware. It failed.

England's first turnpike (toll) road was established at Wadesmill, two mile north of Ware, in 1633 in an attempt to control the malting traffic into and from Ware. The town had become a major maltmaking centre during the Civil War and soon became the most important supplier of malt to the Common Brewers of London, with its own quoted price on the London grain market, particularly for brown malt, used in brewing porter beer. The Ordnance Survey First Edition of 1880 showed 107 malt kilns in Ware, more than twice as many as in any other Hertfordshire town [11] The last working malting in Ware, Pauls Malt at Broadmeads, closed in 1994. In November 1999, the bronze Maltmaker statue by Oxfordshire sculptor, Jill Tweed, was unveiled outside St Mary's Church to commemorate the end of the industry and the Millennium. The unveiling was done by Hugo Page Croft, member of a famous Ware malting family; others involved in the project were Guy Horlock, chairman of the Stanstead Abbots maltsters, French & Jupps Ltd, and David Perman, curator of the Ware Museum [12]

Two legends associated with the 17th century are sometimes mentioned. One is that bargemen born in Ware were given the "freedom of the River Thames" — avoiding the requirement of paying lock dues — as a result of their transport of fresh water and food in during the great plague of 1665–66. In fact, Ware barges were freed from having to carry a pilot in the Port of London as a result of their relieving the Dutch blockade of the Thames in 1667, by bringing in coal brought overland from the Wash. The other legend is that Ware bargemen brought plague bodies out of London in 1666 and interred them at the Buryfield. The truth is that the Burymead was mentioned as early as 1513 and referred to the present Glaxo site where a number of Roman cemeteries have been found; the Buryfield Recreation Ground was established in 1931 on charity land, the Bell Close, now partly covered by the GSK multistorey carpark.[13]

At the end of the 19th century, malt-making in Ware was joined by two other industries. In 1886, Dennis Wickham, member of a brewing family, established a bottling plant which in 1900 moved to Viaduct Road and became an engineering company. The world-famous firm of D. Wickham & Co. became manufacturers of railcars and construction equipment, closing eventually in 1991 [14] In 1898, the pharmaceutical company, Allen & Hanburys, acquired a lease on the Ware corn mill and began building a medicines, dried milk and health foods factory at the nearby Buryfield. A new plant for pharmaceutical research and development was built in Park Road during World War II. Allenburys, as it was known, was merged with Glaxo in 1958 and is now part of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

The Ware Town Council coat of arms was issued in 1956 by the College of Arms to Ware Urban District Council, and transferred to Ware Town Council in 1975. The arms are derived from matters with which Ware is associated — the barge rudders reference the bargemen of Ware, with the red and white striping on the rudders being the livery colours of the City of London, associating the Ware bargemen's free entry rights to that City (q.v.); the crossed coach horns reference the town's long history as a coaching town; and the sheaves of barley reference the malting history of Ware. The motto of the town, "cave" (Latin for "beware") was suggested by the College of Heralds, with the intent of its being a pun on the town's name.[15]

St. Mary's church, Ware

Ware has many listed buildings by Historic England, many timber framed, four grade I, fifteen grade II* and 181 grade II,[16] including the remains of a fourteenth-century friary,[17] now the local council offices and a conference centre called The Priory and Fletcher's Lea. Recent restoration work has shown that it dates from the thirteenth century. Opposite the priory is the large fourteenth-century parish church of St. Mary. It is known for its elaborate font with large carved stone figures. The town is also famous for its many 18th-century riverside gazebos, several of which have been restored recently.

Ware is also known for the Great Bed of Ware, which was mentioned by Shakespeare. It is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, but from April 2012 until April 2013 it was loaned to the museum in Ware. The bed is 10'9" square and 7'6" high and has reputedly accommodated 12 London butchers and their wives.

Ware is mentioned in The Canterbury Tales. Ware was also the unintended destination of John Gilpin in William Cowper's comic poem.[18]

Some of the buildings along the High Street date back to the 14th century. Ware used to have many coaching inns and passageways between some shops lead to their stables. Many of these passageways also have former maltings. Crib Street has a good sequence of timber framed buildings which have been restored since the 1970s.[19] Today the town's main employer is GlaxoSmithKline which has large manufacturing and research plants in the town. The Ware company was formerly Allen & Hanburys and has a long connection with the town, with many historical items on view in a section on the company in the Ware Museum. There are also many other small factories.

It is also a commuting town for London, with regular Abellio Greater Anglia services between Ware railway station and London Liverpool Street.

Fairport Convention's 1971 album "Babbacombe" Lee was inspired by an old newspaper story that fiddle player Dave Swarbrick bought in an antiques shop in the High Street of Ware when the band lived at The Angel former public house in nearby Little Hadham.

Ware Weir. The GSK offices are in the background.

Ware has a number of churches.[49]

• Cormeilles-en-Parisis, France
• Wülfrath, Germany

• Michael William Balfe — composer, owned the country estate Rowney Abbey, where he died in 1870
• Russ Ballard — musician and composer, lead singer and guitarist of Argent; lives between Ware and Thundridge
• Henry Coddington — vicar of Ware, 1832–45, FRS and optics inventor
• Richard John Carew Chartres, Baron Chartres, KCVO, ChStJ, PC - A retired bishop of the Church of England, was Bishop of London
• Samuel Herbert Dougal — notorious villain hanged for murdering a woman he had conned; was one time licensee of the Royston Crow public house in Baldock Street which he tried to burn down in an insurance scam
• Sir Richard Fanshawe — poet, translator, MP, ambassador to Spain 1662-66
• Nino Firetto — radio presenter, TV host and actor; born in Ware
• Richie Firth — Absolute Radio Drivetime sidekick to Andy Bush
• William Godwin — philosopher; congregational minister in Dead Lane (now part of Church Street) 1778-9 and was said to have lost his faith here
• Sir Nigel Hawthorne — actor, lived in the nearby village of Cold Christmas
• Billy Lunn — singer, songwriter and guitarist of The Subways
• Marc North — professional footballer with Leicester City and Grimsby Town; born in Ware
• Henry Page Croft — maltster, soldier, 1st Baron Croft, Secretary of State for Ware 1940-45
• John Pelly — cricketer and Royal Navy officer; born in Ware
• Stuart Storey — athlete and sports commentator; long associated with Ware and the Wodson Park Sports facility[50]
• Brian Wilde — played Foggy in Last of the Summer Wine and Mr Barrowclough in Porridge; lived in Myddleton Road, Ware
• William of Ware — Franciscan friar and philosopher 1290-1305

• Hertford
• Hoddesdon
• Thundridge
• Dane End
• Great Amwell
• Wareside

• Ware Tourism Office
• Sports facilities in Ware

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Ware.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ware, Hertfordshire.