Brookmans Park its transmitter station at Bell Bar. The war years resulted in many being evacuated to Brookmans Park from London, but the surrounding area was also hit. Brookmans School was built as the village grew. Local legend has it that Miss Muffet was Patience Moffat, daughter of entomologist Dr. Thomas Moffat (possibly Moffett or Moufet), who lived in the area from 1553 to 1604 on a farm. He had invited a poet over for Christmas. During his stay he overheard Miss Moffat tell her father of how she was eating her curds and whey when a spider came down from the
Nursery rhyme towards entertainment, but there is evidence for many rhymes existing before this, including "To market, to market" and "Cock a doodle doo", which date from at least the late 16th century. The first English collections, "Tommy Thumb's Song Book" and a sequel, "Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book", are both thought to have been published by Mary Cooper in London before 1744, with such songs becoming known as 'Tommy Thumb's songs'. John Newbery's stepson, Thomas Carnan, was the first to use the term Mother Goose for nursery rhymes when he published a compilation of English rhymes, "Mother Goose's Melody, or, Sonnets