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
Jack and Jill (nursery rhyme) on their shoulders the cask called Saegr and the pole called Simul. Around 1835, John Bellenden Ker suggested that Jack and Jill were two priests; this was enlarged by Katherine Elwes in 1930 to indicate that Jack represented Cardinal Wolsey (c.1471–1530) and Jill was Bishop Tarbes, who negotiated the marriage of Mary Tudor to the French king in 1514. It has also been suggested that the rhyme records the attempt by King Charles I to reform the taxes on liquid measures. He was blocked by Parliament, so subsequently ordered that the volume of a Jack (1/8 pint) be reduced, but