Bourne End rail crash

Sparrows Herne Turnpike Road from London to Aylesbury was an 18th-century English toll road passing through Watford and Hemel Hempstead. The route was approximately that of the original A41 road; the Edgware Road, through Watford, Kings Langley, Apsley, the Boxmoor area of Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Northchurch, Cow Roast and Tring. Much of this part is now numbered the A4251 road. It linked in with other turnpikes to the north forming a route to Birmingham. The turnpike trust was set up in 1762 by around 300 landed gentry to look after about 26 miles of road between Sparrows Herne near Bushey and Walton near Aylesbury. It was the turnpike's depot at Sparrows Herne which gave the road its name. The frequent use of the route by heavy carts carrying grain to London made it notorious for its rutted and pitted state even after being made into a turnpike. The turnpike survived the coming of the railways until 1872, when it passed to the route's various parishes and highway boards to maintain and the tolls were removed.

Bourne End is a village in Hertfordshire, England. It is situated on the ancient Roman Akeman Street between Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead, on the former A41 London-Liverpool Trunk Route, on the Grand Union Canal that runs between London and Birmingham and at the confluence of the Chiltern chalk stream, the Bourne Gutter and the River Bulbourne. It is in the Dacorum Ward of Bovingdon, Flaunden and Chipperfield.

Little Heath is a partly wooded area with scattered housing, just south of the village of Potten End, Hertfordshire, England. It represents the top of the Chiltern Hill plateau and has distinctive geological beds that remain while they have been eroded elsewhere. The exposed structure of ancient coastal deposition known as Little Heath Pit has been classified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) because of its unique geology.The land is a detached part of the Ashridge estate and owned by the National Trust. The woods are dotted with many deep pits called dells which are the remains of gravel extraction during World War 1 for production of sandbags. There are up-market detached residences and a tea room with a small plant nursery.Two World War II anti tank bollards lie at the bend in Bullbeggers Lane on the south-western side of the wood.

Little Heath Pit is a 0.3-hectare (0.74-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest at Little Heath near Potten End in Hertfordshire. It is part of the Ashridge Estate, owned by the National Trust, and the local planning authority is Dacorum Borough Council. It is listed in the Geological Conservation Review.The lowest layer is gravel dating to the beginning of the Pleistocene 2.6 million years ago. At this time the North Sea covered much of south-east England and the site was in an inter-tidal area, but since then the Chiltern Hills have risen 170 metres. Above this gravel layer is sand, and then another layer of gravel laid down some 20,000 years ago. This was the height of the last ice age, when the site was cold tundra like western Siberia today. According to Natural England the site is "controversial" as the new excavation shows gravel of possible marine origin rather than glacial till as previously believed.The size of the site is unclear. In April 2012 the Planning Inspectorate gave consent for the erection of fencing round the site to allow re-excavation of the site while protecting it against badger damage and protecting the public against accidentally falling into the deep pit. The size was given as 360 square metres (0.036 hectares). The excavation and erection of the fence were carried out shortly afterwards. However, the Natural England (NE) citation gives the area as 0.3 hectares and the NE map shows a larger area of 1.2 hectares.There is access to the site from Bullbeggars Lane. The surrounding area is wooded and covered in deep pits called locally 'dells''. These are the remains of working to extract the gravel during World War One to make sandbags of use at the front.

Westbrook Hay School is a culturally significant great house located in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England, that has housed the independent Westbrook Hay Prep School since 1963.

The Westbrook Hay Hill Climb was an annual motorsports event near Hemel Hempstead in England, where drivers competed on an uphill course. The Herts County Automobile & Aero Club held the first Westbrook Hay speed hillclimb in 1953, and organised all events there until the course closed in 1962. Between 1959 and 1962 the track hosted four rounds of the British Hill Climb Championship. A 1953 edition of Motor Sport describes the course as "situated in the Westbrook Hay estate near Hemel Hempstead on the main Hemel to Berkhamsted road (A41). The timed length will be 500 yards and the road surface is tarmac. From the start on a gradient of 1 in 3 the road takes a fast left-hand sweep to come to a right-angled bend also to the left. From there the road sweeps to the right to the finishing line. The overall gradient is 1 in 11."The course started just to the south of the A41 (today near the junction with the A4251), between Hemel Hempstead and Bourne End and climbed 650 yards up the main drive to Westbrook Hay House, today occupied by Westbrook Hay School.

Danais (Latinised as Dacorum) Hundred was a judicial and taxation subdivision (a hundred) of Hertfordshire, in the west of the county, that existed from the 10th to the 19th century. It gave its name to the local government district of Dacorum. Danais was Latinised to Dacorum in 1196. The name Danais means the Hundred of the Danes and refers to its incorporation into the Danelaw for a period in the tenth century.The territory of the hundred is interwoven with that of Cashio, which suggests that Cashio was carved out of Danais in the early eleventh century in order to provide a single jurisdiction for the Abbot of St Albans.The parishes in Danais at the time of Domesday were: Abbots Langley (partial) Aldenham Barworth Bushey Caddington Flamstead Great Gaddesden (partial) Kensworth Redbourn (partial) Shenley Wheathampstead Windbridge (partial)In the 16th century, Dacorum absorbed the hundred of Tring, and afterwards the hundred also included the following parishes: Aldbury Great Berkhampsted Little Gaddesden Hemel Hempstead King's Langley Puttenham Redbourn (remainder) Shenley Wigginton Great Gaddesden (remainder)

The Borough of Dacorum is a local government district in Hertfordshire, England that includes the towns of Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Tring and Kings Langley. The district, which was formed in 1974, had a population of 137,799 in 2001. Its name was taken from the old hundred of Dacorum which covered approximately the same area. It is the westernmost of Hertfordshire's districts, being bordered to the west by the Chiltern and Aylesbury Vale districts of Buckinghamshire.

South West Hertfordshire is a constituency in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament, represented since 2019 by Gagan Mohindra, a Conservative.

The Box Moor Trust is a charitable trust responsible for the management of nearly 500 acres of land within the parishes of Hemel Hempstead and Bovingdon, in Hertfordshire, England. The Trust was officially founded in 1594 in order to ensure that the land in the Boxmoor area remained free for residents to use and enjoy. As a result, almost all of the land that comprises the Box Moor Trust estate is open access, with just over a quarter being common land.

Nettleden with Potten End is a civil parish in Hertfordshire, England, covering the villages of Potten End and Nettleden and the surrounding rural area. The parish of Nettleden with Potten End was created on 1 April 1937 from the former parish of Nettleden and parts of the parishes of Great Berkhampstead Rural and Northchurch. The village of Potten End had previously straddled Great Berkhampstead Rural and Northchurch parishes. From its creation, the parish of Nettleden with Potten End was included in the Berkhamsted Rural District until that district was abolished in 1974 to become part of Dacorum.Nettleden with Potten End parish council generally meets at the Church Room in Potten End, the larger of the two villages.

Potten End is a village in west Hertfordshire, England. It is located in the Chiltern Hills, two miles (3.2 km) east-north-east of Berkhamsted, three miles (4.8 km) north west of Hemel Hempstead and two miles south east of the National Trust estate of Ashridge. Nearby villages include Nettleden, Great Gaddesden and the hamlet of Frithsden. The village is part of the parish of Nettleden with Potten End within the borough of Dacorum.