“Berkhamsted Castle… is the geographical key to a small pocket of Chiltern countryside, where the defence of rural values in the face of urban expansion has been fought with unique vigour, obstinacy and success. If any part of Britain merits examination as a landscape laboratory, this is it – the area bounded on the south by the new town of Hemel Hempstead and on the north by the startling chalk dome of Ivinghoe Beacon. An area of winding Saxon lanes, straggling villages, great houses of cathedral proportions, beech trees soaring like redwoods, drunken Tudor farmhouses and those sudden, unexpected aquatint vistas. To find it you must first walk up the long hill road from Berkhamsted Castle to the waste of Berkhamsted Common, a plateau of gorse, bracken, thorn and golf flags. The air is sharp and heavily scented.
The village of Water End, Hertfordshire, with Gaddesden in the background. The fragility of the view is unnerving. Add one building, or chop a tree, and it would burst like a bubble”. (Brian Dunning, Country Life, 11 Aug 1966).
We’re still fighting in “defence of rural values in the face of urban expansion”! Donate here to save Castle Fields.
Berkhamsted Local History & Museum Society 