Hertfordshire is one of the affluent ‘home counties’ where Londoners commute, if they wish to live outside the city. The home of hot cross buns (and Parliament years ago, when MPs had to move to escape the Plague), this pretty area is home to lots of woods and meadows.
This is Miss Marple country (although on a map, St Mary Mead would be in Berkshire). All pretty villages with church spires and public ponds. Never give mouldy/stale/crusty bread to wildfowl (or garden birds) nor buttered leftovers as fat smears on feathers, affecting waterproofing/insulation.
The city of St Albans is named after a real saint, who swapped clothes with a priest fleeing persecution, then was executed in a case of mistaken identity (his head rolled down a hill, and a well sprang up at the exact point where he landed). As a side note, read Legends of Improbable Saints by Richard Coles (the keyboard player from The Commodores who became a vicar). Read of St Edith of Wilton (who beat up the Devil), St Eutychius of Phrygia (who fell asleep and dropped from a window ledge while listening to a sermon of Apostle Paul – only to be raised from the dead) and 180 more astonishing stories.
If you’re a fan of the brilliant comedy series Porridge, you may like to know that the main gate of Slade Prison (supposed to be in Cumberland or Cumbria as we now know it) was actually filmed at The Gate House in St Albans (originally a town jail in Victorian times but being used as a council depot when the series was filmed). Although most of the rest of the series was filmed at Elstree Studios, the exterior scenes were filmed at London psychiatric hospitals.
