|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Image:Ltspkr.pngHertfordshire (pronounced ['hɑːt.fʊd.shə] or ['hɑː..fʊd.shə], abbreviated as "Herts") is an inland county in England and is one of the Home Counties.
GeographyHertfordshire is located to the north of Greater London, and much of the county is part of the London commuter belt. The county has a wide range of transport links, with the M1, M10, A1(M), the M25 and other motorways passing through it. To the east of Hertfordshire is Essex, to the west is Buckinghamshire and to the north are Bedfordshire, Luton and Cambridgeshire.
HistoryMain article: History of Hertfordshire. Hertfordshire was originally the area assigned to a fortress constructed at Hertford under the rule of Edward the Elder in 913. The name Hertfordshire appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1011. Most English counties have nicknames for people from that county, such as a Tyke from Yorkshire and a Yellowbelly from Lincolnshire; the traditional nickname for people from Hertfordshire is 'Hertfordshire Hedgehog' or 'Hertfordshire Hayabout'; although hedgehogs are abundant in the county, the nickname is probably a corruption of 'haycock', a haystack, referring to the county's cornfields, which formed the county's principal Medieval export to the food markets of London.
Hertfordshire is the starting point of the New River: a man made waterway, opened in 1613 to supply London with fresh drinking water. Hertfordshire's only traditional city, St Albans, is built by the site of Verulamium, the third largest city in Roman Britain. The modern town was named after Saint Alban, the first Christian martyr. Hertfordshire is also the location of the UK's first two Garden Cities, Welwyn Garden City, and Letchworth which were both founded by Ebenezer Howard. Hatfield House, in Hatfield, was a former home to Queen Elizabeth I during her youth. It is said that here, while sat under a large oak tree (which although not alive today, can be viewed at the visitor centre within Hatfield Park), she was told she was to become Queen. In 1965, under the London Government Act 1963, Barnet Urban District and East Barnet Urban District were abolished and their area transferred from Hertfordshire to Greater London to form part of the London Borough of Barnet. [1] [2] At the same time the Potters Bar Urban District was directly transferred from Middlesex to Hertfordshire. [3] From the 1920s until the late 1980s, the town of Borehamwood was home to one of the major British film studio complexes, including the MGM-British Studios. Many well known films were made here, including 2001: A Space Odyssey and the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies. Television productions are still made at the nearby Elstree Studios, which were taken over by the BBC. The Order Of The Phoenix, the 5th Harry Potter movie, was filmed in Hertfordshire. A few minutes after 6am on 11 December 2005, a large explosion and fire occurred at a petroleum fuel depot near Hemel Hempstead, in Buncefield. Forty three people were injured, and considerable damage was caused. Only the timing, on early Sunday morning, meant that nobody was killed. The two day fire was the largest in peacetime Europe, and a pall of smoke darkened London and much of South East England. In the book Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Hertfordshire is the location of Longbourn where the Bennet family lives and of Netherfield Hall where Mr. Bingley stays. In 2012, the Hertfordshire town of Broxbourne will host the canoe and kayak slalom events of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. At the end of 2006, a 14-year-old boy from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire sailed into the record books for setting the youngest age a person has sailed single handedly across the Atlantic Ocean. The journey took 3 weeks. [1] EconomyThis is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Hertfordshire at current basic prices published (pp.240-253) by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.
GeologyMain article: Geology of Hertfordshire. The rocks of Hertfordshire belong to the great shallow syncline known as the London basin. The beds dip in a south-easterly direction towards the syncline's lowest point roughly under the River Thames. The most important formations are the Cretaceous Chalk, which is exposed as the high ground in the north and west of the county and the younger Palaeocene, Reading Beds and Eocene, London Clay which occupy the remaining southern part. The eastern half of the county was covered by glaciers during the Ice Age and has a superficial layer of glacial boulder clays. Urban areasThese are the main towns in Hertfordshire. For a complete list of settlements see list of places in Hertfordshire.
See also
References
|
Sites |
Searched sites for "Hertfordshire" |
|
No sites found. |
Sorry, no matching site records were found. |
Want your site listed here?
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
