Little Berkhamsted

Essendon is a village and civil parish in Hertfordshire 6 miles (10 km), south-west of Hertford. The village is on the B158 road 330 feet (100 m) above sea level and has a view of the Lea Valley to the north. Although on an ancient site, St Mary's parish church dates mainly from the 17th and 18th centuries and was restored in 1883. The west tower dates from the 15th century and has eight bells, the oldest cast in 1681. The church contains an unusual Wedgwood ceramic font dated 1780 and several brasses and monuments. In 1916 the east end of the church was damaged by a bomb dropped by the German Navy Zeppelin L-16; two sisters were killed. There is a village pub named The Rose and Crown. Historic houses in the parish include Camfield Place which was the home of the novelist Barbara Cartland and visited by Beatrix Potter. Nearby is Holwell Court, a Grade II listed building, built in about 1900 for Sir Ernest George; it is now converted to private apartments. Essendon Place was the seat of the Barons Dimsdale of Russia; Thomas Dimsdale was an expert on the treatment of smallpox by inoculation and in 1768 he was invited to Russia to inoculate Catherine the Great. For his services there he was made a baron of the Russian Empire.Bedwell Park is another manor house near to the village and is also the site of Essendon Country Club golf club. Bedwell End was the home of Deneys Reitz, High Commissioner for the Union of South Africa, until his death on 19 October 1944. At the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Boer War he joined the Boer forces at the age of seventeen and accompanied General J. C. Smuts on his famous raid in the Cape Colony, of which Reitz wrote in his autobiography, Commando. In World War I, as a lieutenant-colonel, he commanded the 1st Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front in France. In the early morning of 3 September 1916 during World War I, several houses were destroyed and the church damaged, when Schütte-Lanz SL 11, a German airship returning from a bombing raid on London, jettisoned its remaining bombs. Two sisters, Frances (26), a Post Office telephonist, and Eleanor (12) Bamford, daughters of the village blacksmith, were killed. A plaque commemorating the event is on the wall of the church, where their funeral was also held. The airship was shot down shortly afterwards, while still over Hertfordshire, by Lieutenant Leefe Robinson, killing the entire crew. Robinson received the Victoria Cross for his action.Essendon, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, is named after the village. Richard Green (1808-1878), whose father Isaac Green was either owner or tenant of Essendon watermill on the River Lea, arrived in Victoria in the 1850s and gave the name to the district.

Woolmers Park is a Grade II* listed building in Hertfordshire, England. It was the residence of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne in the 1920s. It was acquired by Arthur Lucas in 1949, and the Hertfordshire Polo Club was established within the grounds.

Newgate Street is a village near Cuffley, in Hatfield civil parish, in the Hertsmere district of Hertfordshire, England. It is approximately six miles south-west of Hertford and has a population of 400. At the 2011 Census the population was included in the town of Hatfield. The village has an Anglican church, a school (Ponsbourne St Mary's), a restaurant (The Gables), two pubs (The Crown and The Coach and Horses) and a hotel (Ponsbourne Park Hotel). There is also a small town hall and two outdoor tennis courts. Originally in the Manor of Tolmers, the present Tolmers Park House dates from 1761. Since World War I it has been used as a military hospital, a girls' boarding school, a geriatric hospital and has now been converted to luxury apartments. Part of the estate became Tolmers Scout Camp in 1940. The house lies just to the South-West of the village.

Bayford is a village and civil parish in the East Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 435, increasing to 466 at the 2011 Census. The village is about three miles south of Hertford, and is served by Bayford railway station. Bayford has won 'best kept village' awards in previous years. Bayford has a primary school: Bayford (C of E) VC Primary School. The Parish Church of St Mary stands about a quarter of a mile north of the village; the present building dates from 1870. It was rebuilt close to the site of the old church, which was first mentioned in 1222. A 15th-century font and some 16th- and 17th-century monuments to the Knighton family have been preserved. The ornithologist William Yarrell, admired by his contemporaries for his precise scientific work, is buried in the churchyard. Every two years the village holds a Gardens Open Day in which many of the houses open up their gardens to the public. The manor of Bayford was purchased in 1757 by Mam Molly Crone (1705–1770), who built the mansion of Bayfordbury in 1758. She died at Bath, whilst taking the cure, and is commemorated in the Abbey. The mansion was extended by infilling between the service blocks, to house the Kit-Cat Club portraits, which Baker inherited from Jacob Tonson. In 1941 Bayfordbury was leased to Dr Barnardo's Homes for young boys aged 9 to 14 years of age. In 1945 the John Innes Institute moved to Bayfordbury and built glass houses, the research block and the houses at Broad Green Wood for their staff. The estate was later acquired by Hertfordshire County Council and occupied by Hatfield Polytechnic (later the University of Hertfordshire). They built Bayfordbury Observatory which is regarded as one of the finest teaching observatories in the country and used the research block for chemical and biological research. The mansion and stables have now been converted into residences. The research block is still used by the University and the grounds as a Regional Science Learning Centre and Environmental Science field study centre.

St John's Church, Letty Green, is a deconsecrated Gothic Revival church in Letty Green, Hertfordshire, England. The building was designed by George Fowler Jones. It was given a heritage listing (Grade II) in the 1960s. It went on the market in 2001 with planning permission for conversion to residential use. It has since been converted.

Letty Green is a village in the parish of Hertingfordbury, Hertfordshire, England. St John’s Church, Letty Green, the deconsecrated former parish church, is a grade II listed building, and Woolmer's Park country house is grade II* listed and was the source for the name of Woolmers Estate in Tasmania.

Tolmers Park is a manor house in Newgate Street Village near Hatfield in Hertfordshire, England.

Cole Green railway station was a station at Cole Green, Hertfordshire, England, on the Hertford and Welwyn Junction Railway. It was a passenger station from 1858 until 18 June 1951, also serving the hamlet of Letty Green.It is now a picnic spot on the Cole Green Way footpath and cycle trail.The station was used in the film The Lady with a Lamp (1951). Florence Nightingale arrives at the station near her home. The train is hauled by the early steam locomotive Lion, with three four-wheeler passenger coaches, two of them named Experience and Huskisson.

Northaw Great Wood is a 223.6-hectare (553-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) near Cuffley in Hertfordshire, England. It covers Northaw Great Wood Country Park, which is managed by Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council, Well Wood, Justice Hill and Grimes Bottom. Part of the site is managed by Hertfordshire County Council as a schools' park. The country park is also a local nature reserve.The wood was part of a large area of common land in the parish of Northaw which was used for grazing livestock and source of wood fuel. Closure of the canopy has led to the disappearance of open woodland birds such as nightingales and tree pipits, but the management plan for the wood aims to restore biodiversity. The site has one of the county's most extensive areas of ancient hornbeam woodland, with other trees including oak and silver birch. Glades, streams and springs add to the biodiversity.There is access from the Ridgeway in Cuffley and facilities include a car park and toilets.

Bayford railway station serves the villages of Bayford and Brickendon in Hertfordshire, England. The station is on the Hertford Loop Line, 16 miles 56 chains (16.70 miles, 26.88 km) down the line from London King's Cross.

Cole Green is a hamlet in Hertfordshire, England. It is 1 mile (1.6 km) south-east of Welwyn Garden City just off the A414. It is in the Hertingfordbury Ward of East Herts District Council. Residents of note include Sky Sports boxing commentator Nick Halling. It formerly had a railway station on the Hertford and Welwyn Junction Railway.

Bayfordbury Observatory is the University of Hertfordshire's astronomical and atmospheric physics remote sensing observatory, and one of the largest teaching observatories in the UK. It is located in the relatively dark countryside of Bayfordbury, Hertfordshire, 6 miles from the main university campus in Hatfield. The first telescope was built in 1969, and since then has been used as a teaching observatory for undergraduate students, staff and student research as well as for public outreach activities.