Ware is a town and civil parish in the East Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It lies to the east of the county town of Hertford. At the 2021 census, the parish had a population of 19,627.
History Archaeology has shown that Ware has been occupied since at least the Mesolithic period (which ended in about 4000 BC).Ware and Hertford, From Birth to Middle Age, Robert Kiln and Clive Partridge, Castlemead Publications, Welwyn Garden City, 1994 (page 8) The Romans had a sizeable settlement here and foundations of several buildings, including a temple, and two cemeteries have been found.Ware and Hertord, From Birth to Middle Age, Robert Kiln and Clive Partridge, Castlemead Publications, Welwyn Garden City, 1994 (pages 30 - 54) 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'. It has been said that Ware is one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe.
In the Domesday Book of 1086, the town was named Waras from the natural weirs in the River Lea. 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. 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. 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 court-martialled; one of the ringleaders, Trooper Richard Arnold, was shot. 62 children were sent to Ware after the 1666 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 miles 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.An Historical Atlas of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire Publications, 2011 (page 89) 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.The Malthouses of Ware, David Perman, Ware Museum, 2017 (page 52-53)
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 London 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 multi-storey car park.
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 firm of D. Wickham & Co. became manufacturers of railcars and construction equipment, closing in 1991. 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 GSK plc.
Features
Ware has 202 listed buildings including fourteen grade II* and three grade I, one of which is the remains of a 14th-century friary, now the offices of Ware Town Council and a conference, wedding and function venue called Ware Priory and Fletcher's Lea. Recent restoration work has shown that it dates from the 13th century. Opposite the priory is the large 14th-century St Mary's parish church. 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.
The Lee Navigation is a canalised river incorporating the River Lea, which runs through the centre of the town; it is one of its most popular tourist attractions, as well as being home to a thriving boating community.
Ware is also known for the Great Bed of Ware, which is mentioned in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and is reputedly able to accommodate at least four couples. 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.
Ware is mentioned in The Canterbury Tales and was also the unintended destination of John Gilpin in William Cowper's comic poem.
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.Pevsner, Nikolaus, Hertfordshire (The Buildings of England), , pages 378 - 379 Today the town's main employer is GSK plc, 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.
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.
Places of interest Ware Museum Ware has its own museum which, in 2008, received full accreditation from the Museums, Archives and Libraries Council. The museum is independent and run completely by volunteers. In 2012–2013, Ware Museum was home to the Great Bed of Ware on loan for one year from The Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The bed is reputedly haunted by the ghost of its alleged maker, Jonas Fosbrooke, who is said to harass any non-royal person who attempts to sleep in the bed.
The museum is partially housed in the former Priory Lodge and partly inside a Second World War Command Bunker used to co-ordinate local defences and respond to air-raids; this part was refurbished for 2010. The museum contains many interesting items from the history of Ware, including Roman archaeology, exhibits relating to the Second World War and Allen & Hanburys pharmaceuticals. There are also a number of exhibits for children and many special activity days throughout the year.
Scott's Grotto
Ware is home to Scott's Grotto, built for John Scott, an 18th-century poet who owned Amwell House from 1768. The grotto, the largest in the UK, is a series of chambers extending over into the chalk hillside. The chambers are decorated with shells, stones such as flint and coloured glass. The grotto was restored in 1990 by the Ware Society and is now owned and managed by the Scott's Grotto Trust; it is grade I listed.
Bluecoat Yard In Bluecoat Yard is Place House, Ware's oldest extant surviving building. It dates from the early 14th century, with additions in the 16th and 17th centuries, and was once Ware's Manor House. It has a crown post roof.Nikolaus Pevesner, Hertfordshire (The Buildings of England), page 379
Governance
There are three tiers of local government covering Ware, at parish (town), district, and county level: Ware Town Council, East Hertfordshire District Council, and Hertfordshire County Council. The town council is based at Ware Priory at the western end of High Street.
Administrative history Ware was an ancient parish in the Braughing Hundred of Hertfordshire. As well as the town itself, the parish also included adjoining rural areas, particularly to the north-east of the town around Wareside. Prior to the 16th century Ware was sometimes called a borough, but it never had a borough charter from the monarch nor sent members to Parliament.
The town was given improvement commissioners in 1811, with responsibilities to pave and light the streets. In 1835, Ware became the centre of a poor law union, a group of parishes which collectively administered their responsibilities under the poor laws. The Ware Union Workhouse was completed in 1840 on Collett Road (then called Musley Lane) to serve the union.
The town was made a local board district in 1849, administered by an elected local board. The board replaced the improvement commissioners and had more extensive powers, particularly regarding sewerage and water supply. The district covered the built up part of the parish of Ware plus an area known as Amwell End, a southern suburb of the town which was in the neighbouring parish of Great Amwell.
Such local board districts were reconstituted as urban districts under the Local Government Act 1894. The 1894 Act also directed that civil parishes could no longer straddle district boundaries, and so the old parish of Ware was split into two parishes: Ware Urban for the part within the urban district, and Ware Rural for the part outside it. Ware Rural parish was included in the Ware Rural District and was renamed Wareside in 1991.