Heronsgate (or formerly Herringsgate) is a settlement on the outskirts of

Chorleywood Chorleywood is both a village and a civil parish in the Three Rivers District, Hertfordshire, on the border with Buckinghamshire, approximately northwest of Charing Cross. The village is adjacent to the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Na ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

founded by Feargus O'Connor and the

Chartist Cooperative Land Company The National Land Company was founded as the Chartist Cooperative Land Company in 1845 by the chartist Feargus O'Connor to help working-class people satisfy the landholding requirement to gain a vote in county seats in Great Britain. It was w ...

(later the National Land Company) as O'Connorsville or O'Connorville in 1846.

O'Connorville

The Chartist Cooperative Land Society was launched by the National Charter Association in 1845 with the aim of resettling industrial workers from the cities on smallholdings, making them independent of factory employers and potentially qualifying them for the vote. Chartists were invited to subscribe regular amounts towards an eventual £2.50 (£2/10s) share in the venture. Soon the money began to flood in, pennies and shillings at a time, and was deposited in an account held by Feargus O'Connor in the London Joint Stock Bank. The land was bought on 14 March 1846, the plots allocated by ballot on 20 April 1846 (

Easter Monday Easter Monday refers to the day after Easter Sunday in either the Eastern or Western Christian traditions. It is a public holiday in some countries. It is the second day of Eastertide. In Western Christianity, it marks the second day of the Octa ...

) and settled on 1 May 1847. The 35 plots of land covering , consisted of 17 plots of 2 acres, 5 plots of 3 acres and 13 plots of 4 acres. A beer house established on the edge of the estate is now known as the Land of Liberty, Peace, and Plenty public house. The National Land Company was wound up by Act of Parliament in 1851. The estate was administered by the Court of Chancery until the freeholds were sold off by auction on 27 May 1857.

Location

Heronsgate lies by junction 17 of the M25, to the south of Chorleywood.

Notable residents

* From 1936 to 1955, a villa in Heronsgate was the global headquarters of the International Esperanto-League (since 1947 called

World Esperanto Association The Universal Esperanto Association ( eo, Universala Esperanto-Asocio, UEA), also known as the World Esperanto Association, is the largest international organization of Esperanto speakers, with 5501 individual members in 121 countries and 9215 t ...

). * Composer Maurice Jacobson lived at White Lodge, Long Lane in the 1960s * Socialist writer Johnny Speight, creator of the TV series '' Till Death Us Do Part'' and the character Alf Garnett, lived in a house called 'Fouracres' * Kim Philby and his family rented a gatehouse in 1951 at the time of his resignation from MI6.

References

External links

Map of O'Connorville - British Library CollectionThe Land of Liberty, Peace & Plenty: O'Connorville, the Chartist settlement at Heronsgate - Andrew Whitehead's blog/visit - 2 August 2018
Chartism Villages in Hertfordshire Three Rivers District {{Hertfordshire-geo-stub