The Hertfordshire Way

The 195 mile trail covers a large part of this beautiful, populous and rich county, incidentally one of the smallest counties in England, only 634 square miles. It is a county of rich contrasts. In the north-east there are wide open panoramas over low hills and farm lands as seen in the area around Barkway. Standing on Therfield Heath you can look down on to the flat plains of Cambridgeshire. Then in the south west there are the steep wooded escarpments of the Chilterns. The route visits ancient market towns, the Cathedral City of St Albans and countless picture postcard villages nestling in an intimate landscape of farmland and woods. In 1801 Hertfordshire had a population of about 100,000; now it is well over one million. It has never been a heavily industrialised area but it has seen its own industrial changes from malting and brewing, plaiting of straw for hats, paper making, industries associated with wool such as fulling (cleaning the woven cloth) and silk mills. Today technical industries and service industries dominate the industrial scene. A good introduction to the county, and how it developed from pre-history can be found in "The Hertfordshire Landscape" by Munby (1977) and "Hertfordshire, a Landscape History" by Rowe and Williamson (2013). People have settled the area since prehistoric times. Along the very ancient Icknield Way there is evidence of many waves of people. On Therfield Heath (see Leg 1) there is a long barrow of the Neolithic Age (2500 BC) and round barrows of the Bronze Age (1000 BC). There is evidence of the Beaker People in Hertfordshire. The hill forts of the Iron Age settlers gave way at the height of their power to the might of the Roman invasion. Many Roman roads go through Hertfordshire, e.g. Ermine Street and Watling Street, and our walk crosses the remains of the Roman town of Verulamium (St Albans). In the Dark Ages Hertfordshire was part of the shifting boundary between the English settlers (Angles & Saxons) and the later invaders, the Vikings. It was a long and turbulent time before the country became united. A good novel, which covers this period, is the "Conscience of the King" by Alfred Duggan. In the Medieval period the great abbeys were...