The Way Into The Countryside

Liz Hamilton takes a journey from Bourne End to Chipperfield and explores the history of the Hertfordshire Way

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I FIRST DISCOVERED Chipperfield and its surrounding area when I walked the complete circuit of the Hertfordshire Way in 2012. The King’s England volume for Hertfordshire, edited by Arthur Mee and published just before the Second World War, describes the countryside around Chipperfield as ‘a wide and lovely stretch of Hertfordshire’ and ‘one of the best bits of country within easy reach of London’. Close to the western edge of Hertfordshire, between the valleys of the rivers Gade and Chess, much of this area is more than 400 feet above sea level. The soils here are poor and until the last century it was sparsely populated with extensive tracts of woodland and grazed common land. In the first half of the 20th century, as more people owned cars, and electricity was supplied to rural areas for the first time, housing began to spread into this area. The sprawl was brought under control after the Second World War by planning legislation, including the Green Belt. Although the M25 now slices through its eastern end, this tract of countryside remains largely rural – a landscape of woods and fields, crossed by narrow lanes, where walking is a pleasure.