Tewin is an ancient village whose history dates back to Saxon times circa 449 AD, and beyond. There are indications that people settled here many hundreds of years before the Romans invaded Britain. The name Tewin comes from the Anglo Saxon word "Tew", God of War, Ing means enclosure or meadow - the name varies over the centuries and in the Doomsday Book it is Tewinge and Theinge, and in the 16th century Tewinge, Tewing and Twying.
St. Peter's Church is the oldest building in the village and was probably first built around 604 AD on the site of the ancient Temple of Tew. This church was possibly destroyed at the time of the Norman Conquest. In 1086 it was rebuilt and the present building has gradually developed over the centuries, the last major restoration was by Earl Cowper of Panshanger in 1903.
In the 16th and 17th centuries people in the village found employment on the land and in large houses such as Queen Hoo Hall, Tewin House, Marden Hill and Tewin Water. In 1900 the population was about 550, but now it is nearer 2500. Tewin is now very much a commuter village for people who work in nearby towns or London. Many new houses have been built since the Second World Wwar, including the development of Tewin Wood to the north of the village.
There are many stories and legends associated with Tewin, and there are many interesting people who have lived in or visited the village. One of these visitors was the young Queen Elizabeth I who rode over from Hatfield House to visit Queen Hoo. It is thought that perhaps she stayed there, using it as hunting lodge - hence the name Queen Hoo Hall.
Elizabeth M. Wilson, author
After the war, in the early Fifties, there were many “displaced persons” coming to Britain as refugees. There was a general feeling that we should do something to help these people and every town and village had fund-raising activities for this purpose. In Tewin the moving spirits were a group of women who frequented the Plume of Feathers of whom my wife, Christine Edwards, was one.
They arranged a Christmas fancy dress party in the Memorial Hall and a weekly collection (one shilling from every house in the village). As a result, Tewin collected more per head than any other town or village in the country.
The Old School House is one of a small group of houses in Lower Green, Tewin, which has both architectural and historical importance. Architecturally, it was built at the same time and by the same hand as the "modern" part of the Rose & Crown Public House. Historically, in its middle age it became for a period the village school. the School was significant in that it was used up to c1777 to give 10 free places to both boys and girls (at a time when girls were not thought educable).
It also had a Sunday school which was free, but during the week, in addition to the free 10 children, the schoolmaster took day pupils on a fee paying basis of 1d a week and boarders at 3d a week. It was therefore an early (Dickensian) public school! Charles Dickens revealed the horrors of boarding schools in Yorkshire and elsewhere when he published 'Nicholas Nickleby' in 1838.
You can see where it is on our Map of Tewin.
Although there were only around 700 persons in Tewin Parish at the turn of the nineteenth century, nevertheless there were at least 40 boys boarding (many from London) at the school. There were also village boys and girls daily and at the Sunday School. Indeed at one of the Cowper (Lord of the Manor) weddings in 1805, 87 children were part of the wedding feast at the School.
Do not even think about the sanitary arrangements for 87 boys and girls. There was no water supply. There was only one earth privy in 1950. No wonder there were so many epidemics. " Epidemics were an annual event... measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, diphtheria, mumps, influenza and typhoid'. Tragically children sometimes died".
With this crowding, the headmasters (Mr Pridmore) drunkenness, the squalor and the School's closure in 1839 surely it is not too fanciful to assume that Tewin School was one of the models, along with the famous or infamous Yorkshire Schools, for 'Dotheboys Hall' in Nicholas Nickelby published by Charles Dickens in 1838? Or at least was involved in and affected by the public outcry against such schools that followed?
Consider the evidence:
Dickens was a reporter covering the fire in the west wing of the Hatfield House
in 1835. He refers to a small pub in Hatfield in 'Oliver Twist' written in
1836-6. Dickens refers later to another pub in Stevenage and "Our Mutual
Friends" was named after Dickens' novel. Tewin and Welwyn are, of course,
between these two towns. Even more significantly Dickens was a friend of the
author, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who was his son's godfather. They Lyttons'
house was Knebworth Castle which stood less than 4 miles from Otway's (the
schoolmaster of Welwyn) school and 5 miles from Pridmore's. Both schools would
be known to Bulwer-Lytton and thus probably to Dickens.
After the publication of 'Nicholas Nickelby' in 1839 there was a public outcry about, and interest in such schools.
Pridmore's fees of 3d a week were pitifully small not only for tuition but also for board for growing boys. Malnutrition must have been rife even with the orchards and gardens and free labour.
While this can not yet be proved, a biographer of Dickens records "certainly Dickens' description of Dotheboys Hall provoked a severe public reaction... Pupils were withdrawn, establishments closed and, within a year of 'Nicholas Nickleby' the 'Quarterly review' stated that'... the exposure had already put down many infant bastilles..'.
Both Pridmore's School and Otway's School had closed by 1840.
© Patrick Holden