William Bradbery

[3] "Mr. Bradbery now having left Northfleet last year (1820), began to plant, at a considerable personal expense, beds of the cress, at West Hyde, near Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire.

By the mid-19th century, William Bradbery was sending cress to many cities throughout the country, being, Manchester, Liverpool, York, London, Oxford even up to Edinburgh.

So in 1927, after over a century of cress production, the watercress beds were sold off to another local grower, thus ending the Bradbery dynasty in West Hyde.

[citation needed] In 1960, the Three Rivers District Council, marked the achievements of William and his family, by naming one of the roads in nearby Maple Cross "Bradbery".

This was also done in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, less than four miles (6 km) away, where they named a street "Bradbery Gardens", where William's eldest son Richard, also ran a watercress farm, to complement the one in West Hyde.