Ware

The town lies on the north-south A10 road which is partly shared with the east-west A414 (for Hertford to the west and Harlow to the east). There is a large viaduct over the River Lea at Kings Meads. The £3.6m two-mile bypass opened on 17 August 1976. At the north end of the bypass is the Wodson Park Sports Centre, with an athletics track, and the Marriott Hanbury Manor Hotel and Country Club. The former route of the A10 is now the A1170. The railway station is on the Hertford East Branch Line and operated by National Express East Anglia and is only single track.

Archaeology has shown that Ware has been occupied since at least the Mesolithic period (which ended about 4,000 BC) The Romans had a sizable settlement here and foundations of several buildings, including a temple, and two cemeteries have been found. A well-preserved Roman skeleton of a teenage girl has been found as well. Ware was on Ermine Street, the Roman road from London to Lincoln. It has been said that Ware is one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe.

The Ware Town Council coat of arms (shown on the left) was issued in 1956 by the College of Arms to Ware Urban District Council, and transferred to Ware Town Council in 1975. The arms are derived from matters with which Ware is associated — the barge rudders reference the bargemen of Ware, with the red and white striping on the rudders being the livery colours of the City of London, associating the Ware bargemen's free entry rights to that City (q.v.); the crossed coach horns reference the town's long history as a coaching town; and the sheaves of barley reference the malting history of Ware. The motto of the town "cave" (Latin for "beware") was suggested by the College of Heralds, with the intent of its being a pun on the town's name.

With the River Lee (aka River Lea) flowing through the centre of Ware, transport by water was for many years a significant industry. As an old brewing town (and some of the old maltings still stand, although none are functional), barley was transported in, and beer out via the river. Bargemen born in Ware were given the "freedom of the River Thames" — avoiding the requirement of paying lock dues — as a result of their transport of fresh water and food in during the great plague of 1665–66. A local legend says that dead bodies were brought out of London, but there is no evidence for this. "Buryfield" in Ware is thought by many to be where these supposed bodies were buried. The name apparently originating before 1666, with the burial of large numbers of Roman inhabitants of Ware.

[ see less ]