History of Hertfordshire

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Ancient extent of Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire was originally the area assigned to a fortress constructed at Hertford under the rule of Edward the Elder in 913. The name Hertfordshire appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1011.

Most English counties have nicknames for people from that county, such as a Tyke from Yorkshire and a Yellowbelly from Lincolnshire; the traditional nickname for people from Hertfordshire is 'Hertfordshire Hedgehog' or 'Hertfordshire Hayabout'; although hedgehogs are abundant in the county, the nickname is probably a corruption of 'haycock', a haystack, referring to the county's cornfields, which formed the county's principal Medieval export to the food markets of London.

The Domesday Book recorded the county as having nine hundreds. Tring and Danais became one, Dacorum. The other seven were Braughing, Broadwater, Cashio, Edwinstree, Hertford, Hitchin and Odsey.

Hertfordshire is the starting point of the New River: a man made waterway, opened in 1613 to supply London with fresh drinking water.

Hertfordshire's only traditional city, St Albans, is built by the site of Verulamium, the third largest city in Roman Britain. The modern town was named after Saint Alban, the first British Christian martyr. Hertfordshire is also the location of the UK's first two Garden Cities, Welwyn Garden City, and Letchworth which were both founded by Ebenezer Howard.

Map of Hertfordshire (with north to the right) in Gray's Book of Roads, George Carrington Gray (1824).

Hatfield House, in Hatfield, was a former home to Queen Elizabeth I during her youth. It is said that here, while sat under a large oak tree (which although not alive today, can be viewed at the visitor centre within Hatfield Park), she was told she was to become Queen.

In 1965, under the London Government Act 1963, Barnet Urban District and East Barnet Urban District were abolished and their area transferred from Hertfordshire to Greater London to form part of the London Borough of Barnet.^[1]^[2] At the same time the Potters Bar Urban District was directly transferred from Middlesex to Hertfordshire.^[3]

From the 1920s until the late 1980s, the town of Borehamwood was home to one of the major British film studio complexes, including the MGM-British Studios. Many well known films were made here, including 2001: A Space Odyssey and the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies. Television productions are still made at the nearby Elstree Studios, which were taken over by the BBC. All the Harry Potter films were made at Leavesden Film Studios near Watford.

A few minutes after 6am on 11 December 2005, a large explosion and fire occurred at a petroleum fuel depot near Hemel Hempstead, in Buncefield. Forty three people were injured, and considerable damage was caused. Only the timing, on early Sunday morning, meant that nobody was killed. The two day fire was the largest in peacetime Europe, and a pall of smoke darkened London and much of South East England.

[edit] Hertfordshire in Fiction

In the book Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Hertfordshire is the location of Longbourn where the Bennet family lives and of Netherfield Hall where Mr. Bingley stays.