Ballingdon Bottom

Beechwood Park was a mansion, near Markyate, Hertfordshire, England. It now houses Beechwood Park School.

The Hoo is a Grade II* listed country house in Great Gaddesden, Hertfordshire, England. It dates from around 1683. In 1944 it was in use as a maternity home.

The Golden Parsonage is a Grade II* listed country house in Great Gaddesden, Hertfordshire, and is part of the Gaddesden Estate. The house remains in the ownership of the Halsey Family.

Studham is a village and civil parish in the county of Bedfordshire. It has a population of 1,182. The parish bounds to the south of the Buckinghamshire border, and to the east is the Hertfordshire border. The village lies in the wooded south facing dip slope of the Chiltern Hills. The hamlet of Holywell is located to the north of Studham, and forms part of the same civil parish. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it was recorded as Estodham. Studham's church celebrated its millennium in 1997. The ancient parish of Studham straddled the Bedfordshire/Hertfordshire border. It also had a detached part known as Humbershoe which lay to the east of the rest of the parish, which contained the north-western part of the village of Markyate. Humbershoe became a separate civil parish in 1866, and was separated from the ecclesiastical parish of Studham in October 1877 when it was included in the new ecclesiastical parish of St John Markyate Street. In December 1894, under the Local Government Act 1894, the parish of Studham was partitioned into two parts, one on each side of the county border. The Studham (Bedfordshire) parish was included in the Luton Rural District, whilst the Studham (Hertfordshire) parish was included in the Markyate Rural District. The two parishes were re-united as a single parish less than three years later, in September 1897, when the Studham (Hertfordshire) parish was transferred from Hertfordshire to Bedfordshire.The village currently has two pubs, the older of which, The Bell, is considered to have been in existence before the English Civil War. In the early 20th century, work to make safe the old well in the pub garden revealed discarded or hidden civil war weapons. In the early evening of 23 May 1948 an ex-RAF Handley Page Halifax, registered G-AIZO, and operated by Bond Air Services Ltd. carrying a cargo of apricots from Valencia, Spain, crashed at Studham.

Cheverells is a Grade II* listed dower house to the Beechwood Park estate in Hertfordshire, England. It dates from around 1693.

Gaddesden Place, near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, England, was designed by architect James Wyatt and built between 1768 and 1773, and was the home of the Hertfordshire Halsey family. The house is set in an elevated position overlooking the Gade Valley and is said to enjoy one of the finest views in the Home Counties.

Great Gaddesden is a village and civil parish in Dacorum Hundred in Hertfordshire, England. It is located in the Chiltern Hills, north of Hemel Hempstead. The parish borders Flamstead, Hemel Hempstead, Nettleden and Little Gaddesden and also Studham in Bedfordshire. The Church of St. John the Baptist was probably the site of a pre-Christian sanctuary. The church shows features of every period since the 12th century. Part of the chancel with Roman bricks dates back to the early 12th century. The old church was extended by the south aisle in the 13th century and the north aisle in the 14th century, while the west tower was built in the 15th century and the north chapel in the 18th. The medieval convent of St Margaret's stood northwest of the village. For a while the site served as a WW2 Royal Canadian Air Force transit camp and later a boarding school for children with special needs, and it is now a Theravadin Buddhist monastery of Thai Forest Tradition, the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, complete with temple. Gaddesden Place, east of the village, was built from 1768 to 1773 for the Halsey family. It is surrounded by a large park. In 1905 a fire destroyed the interior of the main house. The River Gade takes its name from Gaddesden. Its clear water is used for watercress beds along the river, and at Water End, south of Great Gaddesden, is an old corn mill. The bridge over the river at Water End has a medieval appearance but was built in the 19th century.

Kensworth is a village and civil parish located in the Central Bedfordshire district of Bedfordshire, England. The parish is located on the edge of Dunstable Downs, and includes the hamlets of California and Kensworth Lynch.The parish was originally located in Hertfordshire but was transferred to Bedfordshire in 1897. Today the village contains a primary school, a village hall, 2 churches, 2 shops and 1 pub. Kensworth Chalk Pit is a working quarry and is the biggest employer in the parish. The pit is owned and mined by Cemex, but has also been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest by Natural England.The Church of St Mary is located in the village. Kensworth Parish Council administers some local services and facilities in the parish, including a village recreation ground and a provision of allotments. The council has 9 members who are elected every 4 years.

Amaravati is a Theravada Buddhist monastery at the eastern end of the Chiltern Hills in South East England. Established in 1984 by Ajahn Sumedho as an extension of Chithurst Buddhist Monastery, the monastery has its roots in the Thai Forest Tradition. It takes inspiration from the teachings of the community's founder, the late Ajahn Chah. Its chief priorities are the training and support of a resident monastic community, and the facilitation for monastic and lay people alike of the practice of the Buddha's teachings. It is not to be confused with the ancient Amaravati Stupa in India.

Church of St Mary is a Grade I listed church in Studham, Bedfordshire, England. It became a listed building on 3 February 1967.

St Margaret's Convent was a convent of the Benedictine order near Great Gaddesden in Hertfordshire, England. Founded in 1160, it was abolished as a consequence of King Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s. It was also known as The Priory of Ivinghoe, St. Margaret's, in the Wood and Muresley Priory.It was founded by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester. Some accounts point to an earlier foundation by Thomas Becket before 1129. It therefore predated the nearby Ashridge Priory. In 1280 King Edward I gave lands in Surrey to the convent, but it was always known for its poverty.Names of some of the prioresses survive, from Isoda, elected in 1250, to Margaret Hardwick, in place at the time of closure under the first Act of Suppression of 1535, when the convent had five nuns, and an annual income of £18 8s 9d. It was sold to Sir John Dauncey in 1538, along with the Manor of Muresley. It changed hands over the centuries, finally passing to the Earls of Bridgewater and Lord Brownlow in 1823.The buildings are described as being of Totternhoe stone with mullioned windows, square mouldings and trefoil-headed stained glass windows. The structure survived as a manor house until at least 1802, but had been almost completely demolished by 1862.Several place names persist from the convent, including St Margaret's Lane and Farm; and the district north-west of Great Gaddesden is still known as St Margaret's. The modern Buddhist monastery of Thai Forest Tradition, Amaravati Buddhist Monastery is situated only a quarter of a mile from the site.

Markyate Rural District was a short-lived rural district in Hertfordshire, England from 1894 to 1897, on the borders with Bedfordshire. The district was created under the Local Government Act 1894 from the parts of the Luton Rural Sanitary District which were within Hertfordshire. The rest of the Luton Rural Sanitary District became the Luton Rural District. Prior to the 1894 Act the parishes of Caddington and Studham had both straddled the county boundary, and they were each split into separate parishes for the parts in each county, with the Caddington (Hertfordshire) and Studham (Hertfordshire) parishes being included in the Markyate Rural District.The Markyate Rural District was not a single contiguous area, but two separate blocks of land. The western part comprised the parish of Studham (Hertfordshire) and a detached part of Whipsnade parish. The eastern part comprised the parishes of Caddington (Hertfordshire) and Kensworth. The population of these areas in 1891 had been 1,808. Although the district took its name from the village of Markyate, only the north-eastern part of the village was actually in the Markyate Rural District, with the southern part being in Flamstead parish in the Hemel Hempstead Rural District and the north-western part of Markyate being in the parishes of Humbershoe and Houghton Regis in the Luton Rural District. This gave rise to confusion, with one candidate's nomination at the election in December 1894 being invalid for assuming that Humbershoe was in the Markyate district, when it was in the Luton district.All the councillors on the Markyate Rural District Council were also guardians on the Luton Board of Guardians, and the Markyate Rural District Council was administered from the workhouse in Luton rather than any premises within the district itself. The first meeting of the Markyate Rural District Council was held on 7 January 1895 at the board room of the Luton Union Workhouse. Frederick William Partridge, a Liberal, was appointed the chairman of the council. He would serve as chairman for the whole of the council's existence.The Markyate Rural District was effectively created as a temporary measure to comply with the Local Government Act 1894 pending an anticipated rationalisation of boundaries in the area. Proposals had been put forward under the Local Government (Boundaries) Act 1887, but had not been implemented at the time. Discussions on what changes might be acceptable continued after the Markyate Rural District was created. An inquiry was held in February 1896 into a proposal to transfer most of the Markyate Rural District into the Luton Rural District in Bedfordshire, with the exception of the detached part of Whipsnade, which would be added to Flamstead, and the part of Caddington (Hertfordshire) that was within the ecclesiastical parish of St John Markyate, which would become part of a new civil parish of Markyate in the Hemel Hempstead Rural District in Hertfordshire. This was the same proposal as had been put forward under the 1887 act. There were objections from Kensworth, which wanted to stay in Hertfordshire, and from Hertfordshire County Council, which felt that it was losing too much rateable value in the proposed transfers. There was general agreement that the village of Markyate should be brought into a single parish, but disagreement as to whether that parish should be placed in Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire. Eventually the scheme as originally proposed was accepted, with the necessary order being presented to Parliament in May 1897. The changes took effect on 30 September 1897.