Facts about Rickmansworth
General Info
Rickmansworth is a small town in southwest Hertfordshire, England, about 17 miles northwest of central London and inside the perimeter of the M25 motorway. The town is mainly to the north of the Grand Union Canal and the River Colne. The nearest large town is Watford, about 5 miles to the east. Rickmansworth is the administrative seat of the Three Rivers District Council.
History
There was a settlement in this part of the Colne Valley in the Stone Age. Rickmansworth was one of five manors with which the great Abbey of St Albans had been endowed when founded in 793 by King Offa. Local tithes supported the abbey, which provided clergy to serve the people until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. Around the time of the Domesday Book, the population of “Prichemareworth” may have been about 200.
In 1533, they leased it from the end of this term for twenty-six years to Richard Wilson of Watford. He was to keep in repair the mill and also two millstones, 10 inches thick, and 4 ft 8 in breadth. The mill was leased in 1544 to William Hutchinson, yeoman of the spicery, and Janet his wife for their lives. It afterwards came to John Wilson and was granted in 1576–77 to Richard Master. There was also a water-mill called Batchworth Mill, and a fishery called Blacketts Mill in Rickmansworth.
