The hills and valleys of this busy corner of Herts have been home to people for some 10,000 years, and
the Romans chose Elstree Hill as a
major tile-manufacturing centre. Not
long after the Normans came, there was a flourishing settlement at Elstree Hill.
Until recently, medieval Elstree had survived largely intact, but post-war reconstruction brought considerable mutilation. Happily, a few fine latemedieval buildings escaped the developer's insensitive eye.
Boreham Wood's origins are mistier, but technology brought massive change and development with the coming of the railway in 1868, and again, when cinema created Britain's Hollywood in this pleasant parish.
Idlestre
and
Borham
were much influenced by the great Abbey of St Albans, and indeed by Alban's martyrdom and the Roman muncipium of Verulamium, so that the area's past is inextricably entwined with the great and the good of times ancient and later.
Here are the people behind that past - Edward de Kendale, Adam Scippe, Thomas Newchapman and Agnes, his wife; Sir Anthony Denny and Rev Canon Eales; George Byng and Wortley-Montagu; murderers Thurtell and Hunt; Macready the great actor;
Burton the great explorer and the photographer Wellington; and of course, the legendary giants of British cinema - men like Rank, Danziger, Balcon and Blattner.
The Book of Elstree
&
Boreham
Wood brings them all to life, recapturing the history of these two places, in a fluent and considered narrative and very many fascinating pictures.
