GOUGH’S OAK.
SHENLEY ROUND-HOUSE.
Following the road indicated by the sign-post that stands prominently near the Oak, we make for Northaw, whose name means “Northwood.” The most exhilarating of coasts down through woodlands, with wide views, blue and beautiful, of woods and parks, leads to a cottage or two marked “Cuffleys” on the Ordnance map. Turn to the left here, and so, by a country lane, to the small village of Northaw, with a modern church standing on its pretty green. Thence it is as straight ahead as the winding but splendidly surfaced road will allow, to Potter’s Bar. Here the Great North Road is reached. Continue through the somewhat characterless village and turn off to the right where a sign-post points to Potter’s Bar Station and South Mimms, along what is called Mutton Lane. At a quarter of a mile from South Mimms turn to the left, and the old church tower presently comes in sight. Here we find the Holyhead road running right and left. Turn to the right, and then to the left off the highway, and up the rising gradient of the village street. At once the most concise and most readily understood direction to Shenley is this: “Follow the telegraph poles.”
In under three miles this village is gained—one of the quaintest and most old-world of places, with an old “round-house,” or village lock-up, standing between a horse-pond and the “Queen Adelaide Inn.” Local gossip tells how the last of the long line of petty offenders to be imprisoned here was the then landlord of that inn twenty-three years ago. He had, innocently enough, taken home for firewood a few pieces of wood he had found in a neighbouring park. So they locked him up, and the reeking dampness from the pond nearly killed him.
