Great Hormead in 1931

From  A Pilgrimage in Hertfordshire

 

It is a direct road from Brent Pelham to Great Hormead, and this is a village which one saunters through with delight. All manner and conditions of houses, and by the roadside in part of the main street a little rippling stream, or maybe a "winterbourne." One quaint old cottage is dated 1728; and above the village, on the ridge, a most delightful windmill group, one of the most fascinating scenes in the county. Approach is by means of a cart-track or an alternative footpath. Immediately to the east and north is a large orchard, at the time that I was there white with blossoms. Both of the mills are built of timber; one is a "smock," and the other of the "post" or " stump" type.

It is to be hoped this group will not be allowed to go derelict; one hears so much lately of our fast-vanishing windmills. It would not take a very great sum of money to maintain these two good specimens intact. Great Hormead's church is on the road leading to Little Hormead, and is an early fifteenth century edifice, much restored. The most interesting object therein has, paradoxically, nothing to do with the church at all, and that is a beautiful old oak door with seventeenth century ironwork, which stands within the chancel, for it really belongs to Little Hormead church, and has been removed here for preservation (see under Little Hormead). At the time I examined it, it had evidently been recently oiled and the ironwork blackened; personally, I would prefer it in the original state. On the north wall of chancel is a mural monument to Lieutenant-Colonel Stables, age 33 years, of Great Hormead Bury, killed at Waterloo, and buried near the battlefield on June 18, 1815. And here I would remark having seen and noted that in Betchworth Church, Surrey, is a brass on which appears, Edward Stables, obit. June 18, 1815, "whose body lies buried near the Field of Waterloo."