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 Little Star" which combines the melody of an 18th-century French tune "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" with a 19th-century English poem by Jane Taylor entitled "The Star" used as lyrics. Early folk song collectors also often collected (what are now known as) nursery rhymes, including in Scotland Sir Walter Scott and in Germany Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim in "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (1806–1808). The first, and possibly the most important academic collection to focus in this area was James Orchard Halliwell's "The Nursery Rhymes of England" (1842) and "Popular Rhymes and Tales" in 1849, in which he divided rhymes into