Garage Doors Harpenden, Hertfordshire | Garage Door Repair Harpenden, Hertfordshire | Roller Shutter Garage Doors Harpenden, Hertfordshire

ACE Garage Doors have supplied and fitted many new garage doors to customers in the Harpenden area over the years. We also service and repair garage doors and their mechanisms to ensure many years of trouble free use. Like anything in life, garage door mechanisms will need servicing or even replacing on the odd occasion. We work quickly and carefully to make sure our customers are not left without the use of their garages for too long. Regardless of where you live, join the long list of satisfied customers that we have in Harpenden today, you'll be glad you did.

Some Harpenden history

Harpenden really is a lovely and historical village that grew out of Westminster Abbey's gradual clearing of woodland for farming and settlement within its Wheathampstead manor, granted by Edward the Confessor in 1060. A first reference to a parish church is in 1221 so it is inferred that the village grew up around then. The church of St Nicholas is the oldest church in the town, originally built as a Chapel of ease in 1217. Just beyond the southern edge of the town lies no man's land upon which part of the Second Battle of St Albans was fought during the Wars of the Roses. Nomansland Common as it is also known saw the first annually contested steeplechase in England, in 1830 when it was organised by Thomas Coleman, and the last fight of nineteenth century bare-knuckle fighter, Simon Byrne. It was also the haunt of the highwaywoman known as Lady Katherine Ferrers, better known as the "Wicked Lady". Unlike the Wicked Lady, ACE Garage Doors promise not to rob you of your wealth. All of our garage doors are very competitively priced, which is why we have so many satisfied customers.

There is evidence of pre-Roman Belgic farmers in the area of Harpenden. In 1867, several items were found including a bronze escutcheon, rams-head shaped mounts, and a bronze bowl.

There are Roman remains in land around Harpenden, such as the site of a mausoleum in the park at Rothamsted. A tumulus near the river Lea was opened in the 1820s and it contained a stone sarcophagus of Romano-Celtic origin. Five objects dating from around 150 AD were inside, including a glass jug with a Mediterranean stamp and samian ware dishes used for libations.

Up to the 13th century, the area of the Harpenden parish consisted of woodland with small hamlets and single farmsteads around cleared areas called "End" or "Green"; today, there are nineteen Ends and eighteen Greens in the areas of Harpenden and Wheathampstead parishes.

A widespread but now little-known industry of Harpenden was straw-weaving, a trade mainly carried out by women in the 19th century. A good straw weaver could make as much as a field labourer. The straw plaits were taken to specialist markets in St Albans or Luton and bought by dealers to be converted into straw items such as boaters and other hats or bonnets.

The arrival of the railway system from 1860 and the sale of farms for residential development after 1880 changed Harpenden's surroundings considerably. First the Dunstable Branch of the Great Northern Railway passed through the Batford area, with a station later named Harpenden East railway station. The Midland Railway main line was built in 1868 with a station near the main village, which still exists today, and the listed Southdown Road Skew Bridge nearby. The Harpenden and Hemel Hempstead Railway, known locally as the Nicky Line was opened in 1877.

Between 1848 and 1914 the common was a regular venue for horse racing. In his History of Hertfordshire in 1879, John Edwin Cussans commented "Notwithstanding that these meetings are under the most unexceptional patronage as regards the Stewards, yet for two days in the year all the London pickpockets, sharpers and blackguards who happen to be out of gaol are permitted to make Harpenden their own and to make travelling in a first-class carriage on the Midland Railway a danger to men and an impossibility to ladies." Golf has been played on the Common since 1894 and it was at that time Harpenden Golf Club was set up by a group of Harpenden people with the help and a financial contribution of 5 pounds from Sir John Bennet Lawes of Rothamsted Manor. The club moved to a new course at Hammonds End in 1931, at which time Harpenden Common Golf Club was formed by those who wanted to remain at the Common. In 1932 Bamville Cricket club was formed and shares part of the Common with the Golfers.

Harpenden is the home of Rothamsted Manor and Rothamsted Research, which was formerly named Rothamsted Experimental Station and later the Institute of Arable Crops Research, a leading centre for agricultural research. In front of its main building, which faces the common, is a stone, erected in 1893, commemorating fifty years of experiments by Sir John Bennet Lawes and Joseph Henry Gilbert.

Lawes inherited the family estate at Rothamsted in 1834. Acknowledged as "the father of agricultural science", his early field experiments on Hertfordshire farms led him to patent a phosphate fertiliser, the sales of which enriched him immensely. With the proceeds, he established the experimental station, building laboratories in the 1850s. The station continued the development of the artificial fertilisers on which most modern farmers now depend. Some of the long-term 'classical field experiments' begun by Lawes and Gilbert remain in place to this day representing a unique resource for agricultural and environmental research.

Harpenden leads the way in child care provision

In 1913 the National Children's Home moved to Harpenden with a large site Highfield Oval which was home to over two hundred children. The site featured a print works, a carpenters' and joiners' shop, a boot makers shop and a farm where boys undertook apprenticeships. Girls were mainly trained in domestic service with some being trained in sewing and office work. The children lived in a "family" of eight to ten children each run by a sister or house mother. The chapel was gift from Joseph Rank and was built in 1928. The home was run on site until 1985. The site is now the head office of Youth with a Mission an international Christian missionary organisation. The Harpenden Growth Study, one of the earliest longitudinal tests, was overseen by James Mourilyan Tanner and monitored the development of many of the children over a number of years.

During the Second World War, Harpenden was used to evacuate children from heavily bombed London. However, Harpenden was not totally confident in its safety, as evidenced by the now decaying Bowers Parade air raid shelters, soon to be secured for the future. It has been suggested both that it be used for educational and emergency training purposes.

If you live in or around the Harpenden area, call ACE Garage Doors today for a free, no obligation quote for a new garage door or a service or repair to an existing garage door.