A new century dawned, the century in which the last chapters of Shephall's history were to be written; a thousand years of village life coming to an end. But fifty eventful years were still to come, four kings to ascend the throne of Britain and two world wars to be fought.

        Kelly's Directory of 1898 gives a fair picture of the village, and the entry varied little over the next forty years:

'Shephall is a parish and village, three miles south-east from Stevenage and two north from Knebworth station on the main line of the Great Northern railway, eight north-west from Hertford and seven south-east from Hitchin, in the Northern division of the county, Cashio hundred, Stevenage petty sessional division, Hitchin union and county court district and in the rural deanery of Welwyn and archdeaconry and diocese of St. Albans .... the church of St. Mary the Virgin is a building of flint in the Early English style.... the churchyard is approached from the village on the western side by a picturesque lychgate .... Lieut. Col. Alfred Heathcote RE who is lord of the manor and the principal landowner resides at Shephalbury, a handsome mansion of red brick standing in the centre of a well-wooded park of 50 acres. The soil is clay, subsoil chalk. The chief crops are wheat, barley, turnips and potatoes. The area is 1,155 acres, rateable value ₤1,137; the population in 1891 was 206.'

        For the first ten years of the century village life went on at its usual pace. The Heathcote family saw that their employees were fed and clothed. It was the custom for every home to receive the ingredients of a Christmas dinner. The Heathcote ladies visited the sick with nourishing soups and new mothers had help with their layettes. I have heard of a lady who remembered her joy at the gift of a scarlet flannel petticoat every Christmas time. The cricket club, which had played its home matches elsewhere in the village for several years, returned to its 'original' ground in the Bury park in 1908.

        At the annual parish meeting that year Colonel Heathcote paid tribute to Mr. Thomas Axtell, who had served for 53 years as assistant overseer, but was now prevented from being re-elected by the infirmities of age - he was then in his 89th year! Five years later the Rector had to appoint a new parish clerk and verger, as Mr. George Paternoster had resigned after nearly forty years' service.

        A disastrous fire occurred in 1909, when nearly all the farm buildings were destroyed at Broom Barn farm, in the far corner of the parish along the Hertford road. A farmworker and several animals perished. The farmer, awakened by the noise from his terrified animals, had to cycle to his nearest neighbour, from whence another cyclist was dispatched to the Fire Brigade at Stevenage. As it took an hour and a half for the firemen to arrive it is obvious why little could be done. There was not much water; and if the wind had not changed, even the farmhouse could not have been saved.

        A fire at Shephall Rectory the year before was much less serious, and was got under control before the Fire Brigade arrived; but it was not without drama, as the local paper reported:

'At 7.48 just as High Street Stevenage was full of worshippers leaving the various churches and chapels the fire bell was rung and the report spread that a fire was in progress at Shephall Rectory. The firemen promptly started with their engine, followed immediately by Inspector Storey and other police officers. A good number of Stevenage residents also went.

The Revd. Canon Davenport Warner was preaching at the time in the parish church close by when someone startled the congregation by shouting "Fire!" The service was stayed, and Colonel Heathcote, Mr. Seager and a host of male worshippers proceeded to the Rectory.'

The fire had been caused by a paraffin oil lamp being upset.

        That year another member of the Wigram family had been laid to rest in the churchyard; Major General Godfrey Wigram, son of Sir James Wigram who is also buried there. His coffin was brought by train from London to Knebworth; thence to Shephall in a hearse escorted by a sergeant major and six sergeants of the Coldstream Guards in full uniform. The local paper reported:

'The scene as the surpliced choristers slowly wended their way to the south porch of the church followed by the mourners and scarlet-garbed soldiers was an exceedingly impressive one.'

Colonel Heathcote died at the end of 1912. His army career as a Royal Engineer had included several years in India. Afterwards he found that there was much for a retired officer to do, as an obituary shows:

'....the late Colonel was beloved in his own rural parish of Shephall and highly esteemed throughout the whole neighbourhood. He was a school manager in the parish, rector's warden and as a layman took great interest in church matters. He was also a commissioner of taxes for Stevenage, president of Stevenage Choral Society, vice-president of Stevenage Unionist Association, chairman of the local Tariff Reform League, vice-president of the Stevenage Popular Lecture Society and a JP for the County. He also represented the division as County Councillor and was a member of the Hitchin Board of Guardians and the Hitchin Rural District Council.'

'....the Colonel's body was brought up the gravel pathway and under the beautiful avenue of trees until the lychgate was reached, where it was met by the surpliced choir .... the approach to the church was lined by Stevenage and Shephall Boy Scouts'.

The four light west window was put in the church to his memory.

        After Colonel Heathcote's death the family found the house too big for them and during the First World War it was let to a Colonel Woods. In the twenties the Bury had new tenants, Mr. David and Dame Maud Bevan, who had a grown up family; they were followed in the thirties by Lt. Col. and Mrs. Morgan-Grenville-Gavin with a younger family. During this twenty years the house was very much a family home with much entertaining, both families having high society and court connections. The Heathcotes were absentee landlords, the heir living in Kenya for most of his life. Some of the cottages on the green belonging to the family were sold in the early thirties to the resident tenants, and in 1938 the Bury and its lands were sold; the house and park were acquired by Mr. William Moss, who later sold them to the Development Corporation. During the Second World War the house was used as a convalescent home by Polish officers and their families, and they continued to use it as a school for some time after the war.

        When Colonel Woods was resident at Shephall Bury during the First World War he took a great interest in the village school; the school log book records his monthly visits. One Trafalgar Day he talked to the children about the Navy, then took them all back to the Bury for tea. Empire Day, St. George's Day and the King's Birthday were all celebrated, Canon Warner on one such occasion telling the children of a voyage to Australia by way of Canada. He was well qualified to tell of such travels; he had been educated in Melbourne, and after matriculating at Cambridge he had returned to Australia where he worked for forty years. He then served in England for quite a few years before retiring from Shephall in 1916; later he returned to Australia. Another record in the Shephall school log book tells of the time when Jack Cornwell's day was observed; he was the boy VC who stayed at his post during the Battle of Jutland.

        The school handwork lessons at this time were devoted to Red Cross work. In a very short time the children produced 61 writing cases, 91 toilet bags and 6 raffia bags. They also undertook the covering of splints, and later on made children's clothes and knitted hats, bonnets and gloves. There were good blackberry hedges around because in October 1917 the children picked 153 lbs. for which the school was paid; and because labour was so short with so many men away they helped to harvest the potatoes. The number of pupils at the school was diminishing, only thirty attending by the end of the war. In 1924 the school was re-organised, the older children going on to Aston or Knebworth. Shortly after this the school had a new headmistress, Mrs. Tresidder, who was to have a great influence on the village and its way of life for the next twenty years. 1939 brought child evacuees from Stoke Newington and for a while the school classrooms were full again; but gradually the Londoners returned to their homes. There was little time left when Mrs. Tresidder resigned in 1946. Within a couple of years the school was closed, its few remaining pupils transferred to Aston. The old building survived for a decade as the village hall, giving a home to Guides and Scouts in the early days of the New Town, but it was impracticable to modernise and was eventually demolished.

        The Revd. Alexander Macrae came as Rector in 1916. He was to be the last, a much loved clergyman. After he retired in 1928, Shephall was in an ecclesiastical vacuum, with visiting preachers and layreaders taking services. Later it was joined to Aston and shared its rector, a strange but fitting return to its beginnings, because you remember it had begun as a daughter church of Aston. The rectory was sold, and was used for a time as a shooting lodge by a syndicate which had acquired the rights over the Shephall woods and farmlands. The church existed on a financial shoestring, only kept at all viable by the ₤5 note regularly deposited in the collection plate by the tenant of the Bury. The congregation was small but faithful; loving custodians for an unknown future.