Historian discusses Elstree's Dickens connection
2:25pm Tuesday 7th February 2012 in Where I Live By Bruce Thain
Charles Dickens
To mark the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens a local historian has revealed how the great writer was a regular visitor to the area.
Charles Dickens came to Elstree on a number of occasions to visit his friend, actor William Macready, who lived in Elm Place in a house which overlooked the Aldenham Reservoir.
Alan Lawrence, of the Elstree and Boreham Wood Museum, said: “Dickens would regularly come and visit Macready and he was godfather to one of his children.
“The two of them would go for walks around the area and go boating together on the reservoir.
“Macready lived in the house in Elstree from 1831 for ten years and during that time Dickens came to see him and his family a number of times.”
Dickens had another connection with the area with his writing about the Elstree Murder of 1823 which was one of the most talked about crimes of the 1800s.
He wrote his account of the crime which appeared in both his weekly journal and the novel Martin Chuzzlewit.
The Elstree Murder, as Dickens referred to it, took place in October 1823, where William Weare was killed in Radlett and his body dumped in a pond in Elstree by John Thurtell.
