Hertfordshire Presidents' Tankard

Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and one of the home counties. It borders Bedfordshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south and Buckinghamshire to the west. The largest settlement is Watford, and the county town is Hertford.

The county has an area of and had a population of 1,198,800 at the 2021 census. After Watford (131,325), the largest settlements are Hemel Hempstead (95,985), Stevenage (94,470) and the city of St Albans (75,540). For local government purposes Hertfordshire is a non-metropolitan county with ten districts beneath Hertfordshire County Council.

Elevations are higher in the north and west, reaching more than in the Chilterns near Tring. The county centres on the headwaters and upper valleys of the rivers Lea and the Colne; both flow south and each is accompanied by a canal. Hertfordshire's undeveloped land is mainly agricultural and much of the county is covered by the Metropolitan green belt.

Since 1903, Letchworth has served as the prototype garden city while Stevenage became the first town to expand under post-war Britain's New Towns Act 1946 ( 9 & 10 Geo. 6. c. 68). Services have become the largest sector of the county's economy.

History

The county's landmarks span many centuries, ranging from the Six Hills in Stevenage built by local inhabitants during the Roman period, to Leavesden Film Studios. The volume of intact medieval and Tudor buildings surpasses London, in places in well-preserved conservation areas, especially in St Albans, which includes remains of the Roman town of Verulamium.

In 913, Hertfordshire was the area assigned to a fortress constructed at Hertford under the rule of Edward the Elder. Hertford is derived from the Anglo-Saxon ''heort ford,'' meaning deer crossing (of a watercourse). The name Hertfordshire is first recorded in the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' in 1011. Deer feature in many county emblems. Many of the names of the current settlements date back to the Anglo-Saxon period, with many featuring standard placename suffixes attributed to the Anglo-Saxons: "ford", "ton", "den", "bourn", "ley", "stead", "ing", "lett", "wood", and "worth", are represented in this county by Hertford, Royston, Harpenden, Redbourn, Cuffley, Wheathampstead, Tring, Radlett, Borehamwood and Rickmansworth.

There is evidence of human life in Hertfordshire from the Mesolithic period. It was first farmed during the Neolithic period and permanent habitation appeared at the beginning of the Bronze Age. This was followed by tribes settling in the area during the Iron Age.

Following the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, the Catuvellauni tribe accepted peace and adapted to the Roman life; resulting in the development of several new towns, including Verulamium (St Albans) where in the first recorded British martyrdom is traditionally believed to have taken place. Saint Alban, a Romano-British soldier, took the place of a Christian priest and was beheaded on Holywell Hill. His martyr's cross of a yellow saltire on a blue field is reflected in the flag and coat of arms of Hertfordshire as the yellow field to the stag or Hart representing the county. He is the Patron Saint of Hertfordshire.

With the departure of the Roman Legions in the early 5th century, the now-unprotected territory was invaded and colonised by the Anglo-Saxons. By the 6th century, the majority of the modern county was part of the East Saxon kingdom. This relatively short-lived kingdom collapsed in the 9th century, ceding the territory of Hertfordshire to the control of the West Anglians of Mercia. The region finally became an English shire in the 10th century, on the merger of the West Saxon and Mercian kingdoms.

In the midst of the Norse invasions, Hertfordshire was on the front lines of much of the fighting. King Edward the Elder, in his reconquest of Norse-held lands in what was to become England, established a "burh" or fort in Hertford, which was to curb Norse activities in the area. His father, King Alfred the Great, established the River Lea as a boundary between his kingdom and that of the Norse lord Guthrum, with the north and eastern parts of the county being within the Danelaw. There is little evidence however of Norse placenames within this region, and many of the Anglo-Saxon features remained intact to this day. The county however suffered from renewed Norse raids in the late 10th to early 11th centuries, as armies led by Danish kings Swein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great harried the country as part of their attempts to undermine and overthrow English king Athelred the Unready.

Norman invasion onwards

A century later, William of Normandy received the surrender of some senior English Lords and Clergy at Berkhamsted, before entering London unopposed and being crowned at Westminster. Hertfordshire was used for some of the new Norman castles at Bishop's Stortford, and at King's Langley, a staging post between London and the royal residence of Berkhamsted.

The Domesday Book recorded the county as having nine hundreds. Tring and Danais became oneDacorumfrom Danis Corum or Danish rule harking back to a Viking not Saxon past. The other seven were Braughing, Stevenage, Cashio, Buntingford, Hertford, Hitchin and Odsey.

In the later Plantagenet period, St. Albans Abbey was an initial drafting place of what was to become Magna Carta. And in the later Wars of the Roses, St. Albans was the scene of two major battles between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists.

In Tudor times, Hatfield House was often frequented by Queen Elizabeth I. Stuart King James I used the locale for hunting and facilitated the construction of a waterway, the New River, supplying drinking water to London.

As London grew, Hertfordshire became conveniently close to the English capital; much of the area was owned by the nobility and aristocracy, this patronage helped to boost the local economy. However, the greatest boost to Hertfordshire came during the Industrial Revolution, after which the population rose dramatically. In 1903, Letchworth became the world's first garden city and Stevenage became the first town to redevelop under the New Towns Act 1946 ( 9 & 10 Geo. 6. c. 68).

The first shooting-down of a zeppelin over Great Britain during WW1 happened in Cuffley.

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 the first three ''Star Wars'' movies ( IV, V, & VI). The studios generally used the name of Elstree. American director Stanley Kubrick not only used to shoot in those studios but also lived in the area until his death. ''Big Brother UK'' and ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' have been filmed there. ''EastEnders'' is filmed at Elstree. Hertfordshire has seen development at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden; the ''Harry Potter'' series was filmed here and the 1995 James Bond film ''GoldenEye''.

On 17 October 2000, the Hatfield rail crash killed four people with over 70 injured. The crash exposed the shortcomings of Railtrack, and resulted in speed restrictions and major track replacement. On 10 May 2002, seven people died in the fourth of the Potters Bar rail accidents; the train was travelling at high speed when it derailed and flipped into the air when one of the carriages slid along the platform where it came to rest.

In early December 2005, there were explosions at the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal at Buncefield on the edge of Hemel Hempstead.

Geography

Hertfordshire is located in the south-eastern part of England and is the county immediately north of London. It is officially part of the East of England region, a mainly statistical unit. To the east is Essex, to the west is Buckinghamshire and to the north are Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. A significant minority of the population across all districts commute to Central London.

The county's boundaries were roughly fixed by the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 which eliminated exclaves; amended when, in 1965 under the London Government Act 1963, East Barnet Urban District and Barnet Urban District were abolished, their area was transferred to form part of the present-day London Borough of Barnet and the Potters Bar Urban District of Middlesex was transferred to Hertfordshire.

The highest point in the county is at ( AOD) on the Ridgeway long distance national path, on the border of Hastoe near Tring with Drayton Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire.

At the 2011 census, among the county's ten districts, East Hertfordshire had the lowest population density (290 people per km²) and Watford the highest (4210 per km²). Compared with neighbouring Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire lacks large towns or cities on the scale of Luton or Milton Keynes, whose populations exceed 200,000, but its overall population (1.2 million in 2021) is greater than those of the two aforementioned counties.

The River Lea near Harpenden runs through Wheathampstead, Welwyn Garden City, Hertford, Ware, and Broxbourne before reaching Cheshunt and ultimately the River Thames. The far west of the county is the most hilly, with the Chiltern Hills surrounding Tring, Berkhamsted and the Ashridge estate. This Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty runs from near Hitchin in the north to Berkshire and Oxfordshire.

Many of the county's major settlements are in the central, northern and southern areas, such as Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Kings Langley, Rickmansworth, St. Albans, Harpenden, Redbourn, Radlett, Borehamwood, Potters Bar

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