Redbourn900
In 2010, Redbourn's St Marys Church is celebrating its 900th year anniversary. Click here for more information. This consists of village events such as redbourns got tallent and street parties.
History
The village has been settled at least since Saxon times and it is recorded in the Domesday Book. Around fifty years after its Norman Church ([St Mary's]http://www.stmarysredbourn.org/) was built, a small Priory was founded half a mile away on Redbourn Common, after the abbot of St Albans Abbey decided to hallow the ground: some bones had been found on the spot, reputed to be of St Amphibalus, the priest who converted St Alban to Christianity[1]. To the southwest of the town just beyond the motorway is the site of an Iron Age hill fort called The Aubreys.[1]
Local enterprise
Redbourn was, for a long time, the centre of a farming community and for a time had a successful watercress business on the River Ver's water meadows. Just south of the village, Redbournbury Mill, a recently restored watermill, produces flour.
Silk throwing was carried out at the steam driven Woollam's Mill near Redbourn Common. The mill was taken over by John Mangrove & Son and closed in 1938. At the outbreak of the World War II, Brooke Bond took over the silk mill. Whilst the factory was still open, a young gentleman in the village fell into a vat of jam and died. After a successful lobbying campaign by several school children in 2003, a memorial bench was unveiled to 'Sticky Joe'. After closing their factory in 1996 the old silk mill manager’s house (the Grade II listed Silk Mill House) was donated as the village museum, which opened in May 2000. The former silk mill site is now a housing estate. Local grocer Russell Harborough set up a jam making factory, which in 1956 was bought by Thomas Mercer Ltd, marine chronometer manufacturer. The site, just off the High Street, is now an industrial estate.
Old industries in the village included making straw plait and hat making — Redbourn Village Hall was formerly a straw hat factory.[1]
Coaching and other transport
During the coaching era, Redbourn was known as the Street of Inns, boasting at least 25 pubs and inns at its peak, but in 1838 the opening of the railway from London to Birmingham, sounded the death knell of stage-coaching.
A branch railway line - known as the Nicky Line - from Hemel Hempstead to Harpenden, passed through Redbourn. The line opened on 16 July 1877 and closed in 1979. The route is now a public footpath and cycle path. The first bus service through the village started in 1908 though buses took some years to become established.
Cricket in Redbourn
Redbourn Cricket Club was formed about 1823, but records show organised cricket was played on Redbourn Common some eighty years earlier. Some Hertfordshire County histories record cricket being played on the Common in 1666. This makes the village one of the oldest recorded cricketing locations in England
info here