Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire (pronounced "Hartfordshire" and abbreviated as "Herts") is an inland
county in the
United Kingdom and part of the
East of England Government Office region. It is one of the
Home Counties.
Hertfordshire is located to the north of
Greater London, and much of the county is part of the
London commuter belt. The county has a wide range of transport links, with the
M1,
M10,
A1(M), the
M25 and other motorways passing through it. To the east of Hertfordshire is
Essex, to the west is
Buckinghamshire and to the north are
Bedfordshire,
Luton and
Cambridgeshire.
The highest point in the county is 803 feet (245 m) above sea level, a quarter mile (400 m) from the village of
Hastoe near
Tring. The county motto, is
"Trust and fear not". As part of a 2002 marketing campaign, the plant conservation charity Plantlife chose the
Pasqueflower as Hertfordshire's
county flower.
Main article: History 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.
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. The Order Of The Phoenix, the 5th Harry Potter movie, was filmed in Hertfordshire.
On the morning of
11 December 2005, a
large explosion and fire occurred at a
petroleum fuel depot near
Hemel Hempstead, in
Buncefield. Forty three people were injured, luckily nobody was killed, but considerable damage was caused. The two day fire was the largest in peacetime Europe, and a pall of smoke darkened London and much of South East England.
In
2012, the Hertfordshire town of
Broxbourne will host the canoe and kayak slalom events of the
2012 Summer Olympic Games.
This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Hertfordshire at current basic prices
published (pp.240-253) by
Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.
| Agriculture | Industry | Services |
|---|
| 1995 | 11,742 | 96 | 3,292 | 8,354 |
| 2000 | 18,370 | 77 | 4,138 | 14,155 |
| 2003 | 20,937 | 82 | 4,348 | 16,507 |
includes hunting and forestry
includes energy and construction
includes financial intermediation services indirectly measured
Components may not sum to totals due to rounding
Main article: Geology of Hertfordshire.
The rocks of Hertfordshire belong to the great shallow
syncline known as the
London basin. The beds dip in a south-easterly direction towards the syncline's lowest point roughly under the
River Thames. The most important formations are the
Cretaceous Chalk, which is exposed as the high ground in the north and west of the county and the younger
Palaeocene,
Reading Beds and
Eocene,
London Clay which occupy the remaining southern part. The eastern half of the county was covered by glaciers during the
Ice Age and has a superficial layer of glacial
boulder clays.
These are the
main towns in Hertfordshire. For a complete list of settlements see
list of places in Hertfordshire.
*
Baldock*
Berkhamsted*
Bishop's Stortford*
Borehamwood*
Broxbourne*
Cheshunt*
Chorleywood*
Harpenden*
Hatfield*
Hemel Hempstead*
Hertford*
Hitchin*
Hoddesdon*
Letchworth Garden City*
Potters Bar*
Radlett*
Rickmansworth*
Royston*
Sawbridgeworth*
Stevenage*
St Albans*
Tring*
Waltham Cross*
Ware*
Watford *
Welwyn Garden CitySee main article: Places of Interest in Hertfordshire. For guidelines see Talk: Places of Interest in Hertfordshire*
For places in Hertfordshire*
Hertfordshire County Council website*
Population of Hertfordshire Settlements - from census 2001
*
Ask Watson - Hertford - Events in and around the town of Hertford
*
Hertfordshire, by Herbert W Tompkins, 1922, from
Project Gutenberg*
Hertbeat FM- Local Radio Station
