Richard Attfield

   User ID: 107.

  General Notes:

Occupation: surveyor, of Friern Barnet, Middlesex

At the corner of High Road and Oakleigh Road North in 1486 John Doggett owned a cottage "with curtilage and three crofts called Beldam, Middlefield and Cokkefield". By 1796 Richard Attfield had replaced the cottage by three cottages running east down Oakleigh Road. Attfield, who came to Whetstone in 1790, was a grocer and a parish clerk. He had beautiful handwriting. It is in his hand that a moving entry in the parish accounts reads: "To burying a poor unknown boy 6d, and a box for putting him in 4d".
Attfield planted a row of elm trees along the High Road which were a feature that the Whetstone Society today seeks to emulate. The cottages were demolished after 1881 and the present row of yellow brick shops erected.
Source: "Finchley and Whetstone Past" by John Heathfield (Historical Publications Ltd, London, 2001)

RICHARD ATTFIELD: "I am bailiff to Mr. Bacon, who has a house at Finchley." In trial of William Sanders & Thomas Barford, 12.4.1820, Proceedings of the Old Bailey Ref: t18200412-155.

Richard Attfield is also mentioned in the Victoria County History of Middlesex: "Richard Attfield built 10 cottages on former common land at Whetstone by 1825." (Vol.VI, 1980, chapter on Finchley, pages 38-55)

Richard married Ann Unknown before 1778. (Ann Unknown was born about 1757, died in 1827 in Friern Barnet, Middlesex and was buried on 24 Oct 1827 in St James The Great, Friern Barnet, Middlesex (Aged 70).)

  Marriage Notes:

Reference Number:2842