Bell Bar is a

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

located in

North Mymms North Mymms is a civil parish in the English county of Hertfordshire. At the 2011 Census the civil parish had a population of 8,921. The village itself is an enclosure. North Mymms Park and Brookmans Park enclose large areas of the parish. Even t ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

, England. It is in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

. Thought to be named after the ancient Bell Inn which stood nearby, Bell Bar (often spelt as "Bell Barr" on old maps, such as that of

Emanuel Bowen Emanuel Bowen (1694 – 8 May 1767) was a Welsh map engraver, who achieved the unique distinction of becoming Royal Mapmaker to both to King George II of Great Britain and Louis XV of France. Bowen was highly regarded by his contemporaries for pr ...

, c. 1720) was a cluster of dwellings around this

coaching inn The coaching inn (also coaching house or staging inn) was a vital part of Europe's inland transport infrastructure until the development of the railway, providing a resting point ( layover) for people and horses. The inn served the needs of tra ...

on the

Great North Road (United Kingdom) The Great North Road was the main highway between England and Scotland from medieval times until the 20th century. It became a coaching route used by mail coaches travelling between London, York and Edinburgh. The modern A1 mainly parallels th ...

which used to pass through Bell Bar along what is now called Bell Lane. However, in 1851 the route of this road (now the

A1000 road A1, A-1, A01 or A.1. may refer to: Education * A1, the Basic Language Certificate of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages * Language A1, the former name for "Language A: literature", one of the IB Group 1 subjects * A1, a ...

) was altered to avoid the steep hill to the south of the hamlet and to avoid cutting through the grounds of Hatfield House. The hoped-for return on the considerable investment in these works never materialised, as within a few years the opening of the Great Northern Railway put an end to toll-paying long-distance traffic. It was this diversion that explains the apparent discrepancy in

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

' account of Bill Sykes, on the run from London after murdering Nancy, who Dickens describes coming down the hill from the London road and finding the welcome sight of the Eight Bells Inn in Hatfield. Nowadays the Eight Bells is on a quiet cul-de-sac. These days Bell Bar has a petrol station, a few garden centres (notably the Dutch Nursery, established by immigrants Hans and Anna Henn in 1957, which moved to its present site in 1963 after a

cucumber Cucumber (''Cucumis sativus'') is a widely-cultivated Vine#Horticultural climbing plants, creeping vine plant in the Cucurbitaceae family that bears usually cylindrical Fruit, fruits, which are used as culinary vegetables.

nursery had been ruined during the previous severe winter), a pub, a restaurant and other public facilities. A public footpath across fields and a narrow country road lead to the village of

Welham Green Welham Green is a village in the parish of North Mymms, Hertfordshire, England. It is situated a mile to the west of the A1 road (Great Britain), Great North Road coaching route that used to run through the neighbouring hamlet of Bell Bar from ...

, situated about a mile away on the

East Coast Main Line The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...

References

Hamlets in Hertfordshire Welwyn Hatfield {{Hertfordshire-geo-stub