Westmill is an English village and

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 authorit ...

in the

East Hertfordshire East Hertfordshire is a local government district in Hertfordshire, England. Its council is based in Hertford, the county town of Hertfordshire. The largest town in the district is Bishop's Stortford, and the other main towns are Ware, Bunti ...

district of Hertfordshire, with an area of 1036 hectares. A population of 264 was recorded in the 2001 National Census. It lies just to the south of Buntingford, beside the

River Rib The River Rib originates near the East Hertfordshire village of Therfield and runs parallel with the A10 through Chipping, Wyddial, Buntingford, Westmill, Braughing, Puckeridge and Standon, before dividing the villages of Thundridge and ...

Communications

The

Prime Meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrary meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. Together, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian in a 360°-system) form a great ...

passes to the east of Westmill, as does the Roman road

Ermine Street Ermine Street is a major Roman road in England that ran from London ('' Londinium'') to Lincoln (''Lindum Colonia'') and York (''Eboracum''). The Old English name was ''Earninga Strǣt'' (1012), named after a tribe called the ''Earningas' ...

, which ran from London to Lincoln and York.British History Online. Westmill
Retrieved 29 July 2014.
/ref> Its route is followed here by the A10 trunk road. There is a skeleton bus service to Buntingford. West Mill railway station on the Great Eastern Railway's Buntingford Branch Line from St Margarets to Buntingford opened on 3 July 1863. Passenger traffic thrived until the mid-1950s and the rise of car ownership. The line and station closed to passengers on 16 November 1964. The station buildings had been demolished by 1968.

Historic buildings

The large medieval parish church, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin and restored in the 19th century, shows signs of a Saxon origin. It is one of a large number of historic buildings in the village. One, a thatched cottage named

Button Snap Button Snap is a 17th-century cottage in northeast Hertfordshire, that has been associated with the writer Charles Lamb. It is on a rural gravel road west of the village of Westmill. It has been listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for ...

at Cherry Green, was owned by the writer

Charles Lamb Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his '' Essays of Elia'' and for the children's book '' Tales from Shakespeare'', co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764� ...

from 1812 to 1815. It was through the widow of his godfather, Francis Fielde (died 1809) that Lamb, as he put it, "came into possession of the only landed property which I could ever call my own." The church is part of a joint benefice of

Aspenden Aspenden is a village and civil parish in the East Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It is just to the south of Buntingford. The Prime Meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrary meridian (a line of longitude) in a geograph ...

and Buntingford. The commons were enclosed in 1819. The former 16th century watermill is now a private house.

Facilities

The village has a pub/restaurant, the ''Sword Inn Hand'', and a village hall, where a children's nursery is held.

Notable residents

*The antiquary Nathanael Salmon (1675–1742) was a curate in the village for several years, but refused to take the oath of allegiance to Queen Anne in 1702 and later practised as a doctor in St Ives. His ''History of Hertfordshire'' appeared in 1728. *Westmill was the 1833 birthplace of the child diarist

Emily Pepys Emily Pepys (9 August 1833 – 12 September 1877) was an English child diarist, whose account of six months of her life provides a vivid insight into a wealthy bishop's family. She was a collateral descendant of the diarist Samuel Pepys. Biogra ...

, whose father Henry Pepys, later

bishop of Sodor and Man The Bishop of Sodor and Man is the Ordinary of the Diocese of Sodor and Man (Manx Gaelic: ''Sodor as Mannin'') in the Province of York in the Church of England. The diocese only covers the Isle of Man. The Cathedral Church of St German where t ...

, then bishop of Worcester, was the rector from 1827 to 1840. He donated a stained-glass window in memory of four of his children, who died in childhood. This can be seen behind the altar. *The murder of a small girl by her nine-year-old brother, Billy Game, at Westmill in 1848 became the subject of a ballad.Murder at Westmill (1848)
Retrieved 29 July 2014.
/ref>

References

18 'Hertfordshire History: the Westmill Murder' on YouTube.

External links