Great Stanmore: Social life

SOCIAL LIFE.

Fines were ordained by the manorial court in 1584 for any person found at 'tables or other unlawful games for money'. In 1637 the lord agreed to a request that about one acre of land on Stanmore Common should be inclosed as a bowling green. (fn. 1) The green itself, with Bowling Green House, (fn. 2) was leased out with a further 9 a. in 1714 (fn. 3) and may still have existed in 1754. (fn. 4) Coursing for hares was punished by fines in 1638 and 1640, and four members of the Norwood family were twice fined for shooting with crossbows or guns within the manor. (fn. 5)

There was a coney warren on the common by 1667. (fn. 6) Nine years later 200 a. of warren ground, furze, and heath had been leased out with two messuages, the Round House, mentioned in 1579, (fn. 7) and the White House, (fn. 8) one of which was presumably the ancestor of Warren House. Hunting over the heavy soil by the Old Berkeley Hounds, which was not a local pack, drew protests in 1808 from many landowners, including Lord Abercorn, George Harley Drummond, and the rector. Legal actions led to the temporary dispersal of the hounds (fn. 9) but hunting was still carried on in the neighbourhood in 1840. (fn. 10)

A messuage called the assembly room passed from John Snoxall to his son Joseph Ironmonger Snoxall in 1764 and to Joseph's son Edward in 1810, by which time it had been divided into six dwellings. After Edward Snoxall's death in 1813 it was bought from his executors by the surgeon Richard Andrews, who leased it out for 21 years in 1847. The old assembly room stood on the east side of Stanmore Hill, south of the workhouse. (fn. 11) The Ernest Bernays memorial institute, a red-brick building with stone dressings on the south side of Broadway, was built in 1870 to commemorate a son of L. J. Bernays, (fn. 12) rector from 1860 until 1883.

Stanmore cricket club was established in 1853 after the lord had granted some 7 a. in trust for a cricket ground or, if there should be no club, for the parishioners' general recreation. The lord's right passed to Hendon R.D. in 1929 but six years later, after an electors' meeting, the club persuaded Harrow U.D. to abandon a Bill which would have vested ownership of the land in the local authority. (fn. 13) Stanmore golf club was founded in 1893. The club-house stood south of Gordon Avenue in 1971, when the golf course comprised some 120 a., which covered part of the former grounds of Stanmore Park and extended into Harrow parish. (fn. 14)