Discover the history of Tring Parishes & Villages

The fight for Puttenham Manor

Episode 1 - John Duncombe’s Story

Episode 1

William Southernwood’s story

Wartime and Showtime in Long Marston

Episode 2

Christopher Urswick

The Adventures of the Rector of Puttenham

Episode 3

Odo in Puttenham

Imagined scenarios in the life of the famous Bishop Odo

All Episodes

The Life and Times of a Remarkable Survivor

Cheddington Airfield – A Lifetime Passion

The Saviour of Puttenham Church

How Father Christmas, Balloons and a Helicopter came to Puttenham

Book Reviews

The Church and Manor of Puttenham by Margaret Vincent

In some ways, there could not be a greater contrast than between this tidily produced book and the previous history of Puttenham reviewed elsewhere on this website.

The History of Puttenham – A Savage Review

This is a review of a book that was published 85 years ago and has almost certainly never been reviewed before. It was written by a man who was a leading character in Long Marston during World War II and the years before and after. He was the Headmaster of Long Marston School, Gordon Savage.

A Potted History of Long Marston and Puttenham

When looking for sources to put together the timeline for our new website, we took more from this book than any other. The Long Marston and Puttenham Horticultural Society deserve great credit for putting it together.

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Airfield
Book Reviews
Farming
General
House Histories
Interview

Local Families
Long Marston
Long Marston School
Pubs
Puttenham
Railway
Schools

Village Halls
Village News
Village Show
Wilstone
World Wars

Tring Rural Parish Council

This is a volunteer project with anyone in the area that would like to get involved. It originally started out as adding a page to the tringrural-pc.co.uk website, but it seems our little slice of Hertfordshire has much more history than a single page can accommodate and so the project has over a very short space of time grown into it’s own website.

Woman not Witch! Ruth Osborne remembered

In collaboration with “Woman not Witch! Ruth Osborne remembered” – a campaign to raise awareness & donations for a memorial to Ruth Osborne, a woman from Long Marston, we are publishing a 5-part series of imagined scenarios in novel form, describing the events from 1751 from different perspectives. The campaign has been organised by Long Marston Book Group. Donate on JustGiving

Read all 5 episodes

House Histories

View our interactive 3D map of the Parish and explore the history within.

Note: this feature is very much still in development and research into individual properties is underway. As it stands it’s very much a proof of concept.

Parish Papers (Village News) Archives

From 1939 to the 50s and from 2005 onwards when the Village News went full digital. Available to download in PDF format.

The latest issues can always be downloaded from www.wilstone.me.uk

New Articles

The fight for Puttenham Manor, Episode 1

The sources for this episode are Margaret Vincent’s History of The Church and Manor of Puttenham and the History of Puttenham as contained on British History online.

Wartime and Showtime in Long Marston Episode 2

This story is a semi-fictional version of events, based on the actual minutes of the meetings which took place in Long Marston 1936-1940, and further information obtained from interviews with long term residents. The information from residents is based on their memories of past discussions with those who were there at the time so may not be totally accurate

Wartime and Showtime in Long Marston Episode 1

Tring Rural History

This website has been developed on the initiative of Tring Rural Parish Council, to enable all residents of our villages to have the opportunity to find out more about our history. It has been created by a number of interested villagers working on a voluntary basis, putting together information from a variety of sources.

Evolving Process

We see this as an evolving process, starting in the first instance with a timeline of the most important events in our village histories since the beginning of the First World War in 1914. We hope to extend this foundation in two ways; firstly by creating links to pictures, articles and other websites and secondly by going back to previous periods of history, ultimately as far back as Roman times.

How you can help...

The other way in which we hope the website content will evolve is via the feedback of as many villagers as possible, either to add to the timeline or to challenge us to prove that we have got it right. We would also like any pictures or articles which can be added to those we have already found.

Keep up-to-date

The website will be strongly linked to the Village News, to which we will be submitting articles on our history, based on interviews with villagers, which will also feature on this website. We will also ask the editors to inform villagers when significant updates to the website are taking place.

Found Something Interesting?

Send in your photos, stories, documents and we’ll get them added!

Read more interviews...

Making History in Tring Rural