Golden Square, Hitchin, circa 1891

April, 2007

Tina Timlett (ttimlett @t hotmail.com) of Stevenage writes: Using census details I have located  a gg grandfather, Fred Stevens, who lived at 20 Golden Square, Hitchin. I am trying to find out if this address changed name or just doesn't exist anymore.

It is often possible to find out where a property mentioned in a census is by looking at the neighbouring properties - see Locating Census Addresses on Maps. If you look at the 1891 census again you will find that shortly before coming to Golden Square the census enumerator visited two public houses at the south end of Bancroft. These are The White Lion and The Crown - the two P.H. shown in the detail from the 1897 Ordnance Survey map. After Golden Square he visited Church Yard, and bizarrely the house numbers form a continuous series. This is confirmed by the route the enumerator took, described at the front of the enumerator's book - but not available online if you were using Ancestry. This defines his route as "... Wool Pack, Mr Fell's House, East side of Bancroft, Golden Square & Houses in East corner of Churchyard.

Looking up the Stevens family in the 1901 census it is clear that the census enumerator took a different route, which reads "Bancroft and Yards therein, east side of High Street, Golden Square, Church Yard and Almshouses, School Cottages ..."

From the census evidence it would appear that relevant area is the south end of Bancroft and the passageway to the Churchyard. This is confirmed by the booklet The Street Names of Hitchin (Book 1) which says:

Earlier, though, this end [of Bancroft] and its link to the Churchyard had been called Golden Square, originally Gilden Square, after the Guildhouse of the Brotherhood of Our Lady, which existed from 1475 until its dissolution by King Henry VIII's commissioners in l548. The building still survives in an altered form adjacent to Lloyds Bank. There is evidence that at one time a market cross stood nearby and until the beginning of the twentieth century, the sheep and cattle market was held here.

The Trooper at the southern end of Bancroft in 1860
Photograph by T.B. Latchmore reproduced in Old Hitchin
The building in the centre is The Trooper public house, which was demolished in 1899 to be replaced by Moss's cafe - which is why this location is sometimes referred to as Moss's Corner. The White Lion is the public house whose inn sign hangs over the entrance to the alley to the churchyard.

There are many other views of the area in the many books on Hitchin - including a view of the N.W. corner of the Churchyard (the other end of the passage) by T B Latchmore in Hitchin Old and New.

I don't know modern Hitchin well, but there have been major developments in the area and Hitchin Inns and Incidents records that the White Lion and the Crown were demolished in 1966 to be replaced by the Crown and Lion and a Tesco Supermarket.