Harefield’s total is greater than the sum of its parts. Although the village lives together as one and the villagers pull together in times of crisis, several separate smaller communities co-exist side by side and like anywhere there will always be differences and petty squabbles. There is much one-upmanship and rivalry between the various factions although not nearly as severe as there are between the Shangri-La  of Harefield and the badlands of somewhere like, say, Maple Cross. Let’s have a walk around the village and investigate further. 

To the north of Harefield lies the hamlet of Hill End. Surrounded by open fields, cut off from the rest of the village by footpaths and country lanes, with its quaint flower bedecked cottages, small green, pond and farmland, the inhabitants could be excused for considering themselves to be a cut above average. Scratch beneath that veneer of respectability however, the church committees, reading groups, pottery evening classes and amateur dramatics and there lies an underbelly of witchcraft, swingers parties, dogging and car boot sales. Go down Springwell Lane past the witch’s castle on the right before the lane narrows into a one track road and there lies the farm that No One Dare Say Its Name where the tarmac layers and tree fellers stay in their caravans. Wild dogs hunt in packs here feeding on escaped minks from the farm next door and the area is best avoided. 

Hill End is a ‘dry’ area, the nearest public house is the Kings Arms a mile away in the village or the Rose And Crown across the border into Rickmansworth although the latter is more of a tavern where fights are likely to break out between the local dwarves and parties of raiding orcs. You can’t get a decent pint of Old Bedwetter in there either, just the local Rickmansworth brew, Batchworth’s Hand Shandy, a much weaker ale. Hill End used to have two of the best pubs in Middlesex, the Vernon Arms and The Plough, within a hundred yards of each other. Local young bucks would do the race of the flamin’ arseholes as a kind of mating ritual to attract potential partners. This involved stripping naked, inserting a rolled up newspaper up the rectum, setting light to it and sprinting between the two pubs before the arsehole caught fire. The Vernon was run by an Irish couple, Tom and Lily O’Blimey, who kept a well ordered house with its own micro brewery that produced O’Blimey’s IPA, (Irish Pale Ale) and Beer Goggles on draught. A few pints of Beer Goggles on a Saturday night and a  young man would never go to bed with an ugly woman. He might wake up with one though if she came from West Hyde. The Landlady of The Plough was a witch called Sybil and she ruled the roost with an iron fist if it is possible to mix metaphors, with her servant Alan Bedfordshire. Sybil once cast a spell on the Vernon’s beer to make it sour and undrinkable. Punters deserted the pub in droves in favour of the Plough until Tom sent some of the boys from the Provos round to blow up the Plough’s cellar, with the unfortunate Bedfordshire in it at the time. 

Across the road from the Plough was Harefield Squash Club, a respectable sounding establishment that was in reality a den of rogues. Managed by a local villain Doug Graves and his wife Phil, the place was a round the clock drinking paradise and permanent bring and buy sale. Doug’s catch phrase was “Yes mate!”  ” Alright for a late drink Doug?”  ” Yes mate”. ” Know anyone selling dodgy videos Doug?”  “Yes mate”. ” I need someone bumping off Doug”. “Yes mate”.  Formerly North Harefield Football Club, the Squash Club was home to the Rams FC, an acronym for Rape And Murder Squad. A fondness for being attached to my testicles forbids me from relating tales about these bunch of lads so I will just say they were the most talented group of footballers from their generation and won fair play awards year after year. 

There is still a place where you can get pissed in Hill End Road but it’s so secret that if I told you, I would have to kill you. Ah, go on then but promise you won’t tell a soul. It’s the Harefield Hospital Bowls Club in Taylor’s Meadow but membership is limited to octagenarians with both parents alive to stand as proposers. Beer prices are still set as they were in 1945 and strip bingo is very popular on a Friday night. The green is surrounded by a twelve foot high hedge so that the nude bowling sessions on a Sunday morning may not be overlooked. Security is heavy here with electric fences, Doberman guard dogs and machine gun toting security officers to keep out intruders ever since the summer of 1976 when protesters broke in one night and carved WHISTLE WEST IS INNOCENT on Gordon Lilac’s bowling green. 

Just off Hill End Road lies Black Heart Farm, managed by Farmer Turncoat and his sons. Ostensibly a dairy farm, in one of the barns is a genetically modified twenty five foot high Holstein Friesian cow called Daisy that is kept in a refrigeration unit to directly manufacture ice cream and frozen yogurts from its udders.  The family farm supplies dairy products to all the supermarkets and corner shops in the village and the surrounding areas with the exception of the Co-Operative who refused to stock his produce after the then Councillor Turncoat defected from the Labour Party in 1967 following Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Budget that brought in super tax for millionaire tenant farmers. It is said that the farmer’s boys have an illegal still in an outhouse two fields over where they make moonshine for the lucrative Northwood Hillbilly market but this is unconfirmed and as you know, I am not one for spreading unsubstantiated gossip or making up stories. 

Back towards the village centre, turn right at the crossroads and we’re walking towards Harefield West. On top of the hill is the area known as Mount Pleasant where the inhabitants look down on their neighbours towards the canal and beyond both literally and figuratively. With their superior views over the lakes and rolling fields, the locals here believe they are a cut above the regular Harefieldian. Mounties as they are known are descended from the original hobbit like creatures who first settled in the village and are very inbred. It is not unusual for a man to unwittingly marry his sister. You can generally tell them by their hairy feet and missing fingers from farming accidents. Ideally employed in the fields or for menial work at the hospital, these people cannot afford to drink in the nearby pubs such as the Old Orchard or the Coy Crap and you would more likely find them down in Maple Cross at the Little House On The Prairie with a pint of Trophy Bitter and a packet of pig scratchings.  Further down the hill are the new estates build on land which once housed industry and employment for the indigenous population. Now home to new comers who enthusiastically throw themselves into village life, joining the village fete committee or the local historical society in the Church Hall, these people never really integrate by taking their turn at being the village idiot. What they don’t realise is that you could live in the village for absolute donkey’s year but will never be accepted as a true Harefieldian unless your family name is on the war memorial on the village green. You will find newbies having coffee in the Coy Crap or taking the children for a walk along the canal towpath on a Sunday morning or even joining the Cricket Club at a push but you won’t find them in Bill the Bookies or the public bar of the Kings Arms playing pool for a fiver a game.  

Coming back  towards the village and facing towards Ruislip is the Ash Grove district. Consisting of 1940s housing stock built for returning war heroes, this is a quiet community that proved so popular that an extension was built, with roads named after songs by Gilbert O’Sullivan, whose connection to the village is a tenuous link that he once shared a dressing room with Russell Grant on Russ Abbott’s Mad House. Here you will find Claire Close, Nothing Rhymed Road, Alone Again Naturally Avenue and Ooh Wacka Doo Wacka Day Drive. There is also a small corner shop called Rameshe’s Revenge and All Nite Convenience Store where you can purchase lottery scratch cards and strong cider around the clock. Every other property in Ash Grove will have a touring caravan or a white van parked on the concreted over front garden. The more well-to-do residents would have a static van on a mobile home site by the coast. They’re basically pikies in stone-clad houses and they know they are.  An Ash Grovian will drink and drive home from the Spotted Dalmation pub just around the corner. Their idea of a great night out is a disco at the Football Club and a mini cab home. Ash Grovians are very insular and, if forced to move house, would never consider moving into a different road, even Spring Close which is a cul-de-sac off the Grove. Properties rarely come onto the market because secret deals are done between generations of families to keep a monopoly here with outsiders frowned upon. Ash Grove sometimes has the prefix ’round’. ‘I live round Ash Grove’ ‘I’ve been round Ash Grove’ ‘I shagged a bird round Ash Grove’. Ash Grove is often compared to the old East End of London where people look after their own, are always in and out of each other’s houses, never lock their doors and gangsters love their dear old silver haired mums. Just don’t try leaving your car unlocked, that’s all I’ll say. Across the Northwood Road from Ash Grove lies the Newdigate region, with the Harefield Academy for Somalian footballers in Northwood Way. Once a year here on St. George’s Day Ray Pond has a disco on the green where the natives dance the night away in their undercrackers, high on alcopops and lust. The rest of the year it is a dumping ground for burnt out cars stolen from Denham. 

Then there is South Harefield down the hill.  The residents here consider themselves to be separate from the rest of the village. In some respects they are self sufficient with their own post office, Chinese takeaway, fish and chip shop and off licence. They have a large open park, a community centre, tennis courts, St. Mary’s Church, the council dump, a cafe in Widewater Place and easy access to Denham Station. An independent settlement whose residents would occasionally venture ‘up the ‘ill’ to the village. But what they didn’t have was a pub. The Halfway House was a popular pub with live bands, all nighters and live football on the telly but when the landlord organised a Sixties Mod Mayday Weekend the pub was filled with over sixties mods on their Lambrettas. A passing Hells Angels Chapter from Mill End stopped by and recreated the Brighton Riots of the sixties in the name of authenticity, kicked the shit out of the mods and then some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground. There was smoke on the canal and fire in the sky. Funky Claude was runnin’ in and out robbing the fruit machines. The pub lay derelict for several years and the South Harefieldians were forced to relinquish their independence and drink in the Royal British Legion and Ex-Servicemans Club in the village. Recently renovation work began on the old pub and the southerners got all excited about the possibility of their local re-opening but it was painted a gaudy colour and renamed Rupert the Bear on a Yacht. Advertising itself as being in the heart of the Denham Heartland (?) there are bouncers on the door at all times instructed to refuse entry to anyone looking even slightly Harefieldish, you know, webbed feet, squints, large breasts (on the men) and over-developed tattooed  biceps (on the women). So the People’s Republic of South Harefield still hasn’t got its pub back and its citizens still catch the 331 bus ‘up the ‘ill’ to the fleshpots of downtown Harefield village. 

Coming back up the hill on the left, situated between the lower High Street and the allotments is the jewel in Harefield’s crown, the bijou upmarket Dovedale estate. Containing the country retreats of two of Harefield’s most celebrated residents, Panda’s Palace to the south and South Towers to the north, this select development is home to bohemian types, artisans, well-to-do families, satirical authors and semi-retired gentle folk. The one bed roomed apartments make ideal bachelor pads whilst the three bedroom cottages are popular as second homes and holiday lets. With sweeping panoramic views over the allotments and spectacular sunsets, the quiet lanes are a paragon of peace and solitude where the only sound to be heard is the cooing of the famous Dovedale doves and the gentle buzzing of mopeds as the locals get about Italian style. An idyllic oasis only two minutes away from the hustle and bustle of the High Street with its street sellers, pimps and minicab drivers, but with the convenience of having dope dealers quite literally on your own doorstep. Quiet during the daytime, at night Dovedale comes to life with locals gathering outside in the communal gardens to share Peri Peri chicken and smoke the legendary ‘Dovedale carrots’, a heady mixture of tobacco and cannabis. Impromptu street parties are often held down by the allotment gates, most recently to celebrate Dovedale winning Britain in Bloom for the fifth year running. Mad Ken often keeps the residents entertained by playing Brown Girl In The Ring repeatedly at full volume with his patio doors open at three in the morning. With the nightly security patrols by the 1st Harefield Venture Scouts the estate is a crime free haven in a dangerous world. Neighbourhood Watch meetings are held in the nearby best pub in the village, the Harefield Inn, which is only a stones throw away, although being peaceful people, no Dovedaleite has tested this theory yet. 

Moving onto the High Street and the heart of the village. Here is the hub, the pulse, the place to be where Harefieldians gather to eat and drink in such establishments as the Kings Arms, the Harefield Inn, Ali Babas Cafe and the Bombay Garden Curry House. The arts and crafts on sale here and the collectors items available in Acorn Antiques and The Jays attract punters from as far away as Ruislip Manor. The Library often exhibits world famous works of art such as Michaelangelos David and the Elgin Marbles. When Edvard Munch’s The Scream was stolen it turned up at the Friday night auction in the Church Hall but an honest citizen bought it and returned it, wanting it to be reunited with its legal owner but not wanting the thief to be out of pocket. 

The village green, or common as you will, is Harefield’s pride and joy, scene of the Mayday festivities, the village fete, Remembrance Sunday Service and of course the fair. There is the annual Boxing Day ice skating, impromptu twenty five a side football matches, the feeding of the ducks and the occasional Road Safety Display by the Metropolitan Police for members of the Tufty Club. Here the villagers assemble at these events, celebrate as one, put aside their differences and all agree on one thing. They thank the Lord they don’t come from Denham. 

Dedicated to the memory of Paddy Doran and the Big Fella, two of Harefield’s finest. God bless.