Berkhamsted

Berkhamsted ( BUR-kəm-sted) is a market town in Hertfordshire, England. Located in the Bulbourne Valley, it is 26 miles (42 km) north-west of London and had a population of 21,245 at the 2021 census. The town is a civil parish within the borough of Dacorum, which is based in the neighbouring large new town of Hemel Hempstead. Berkhamsted, along with the adjoining village of Northchurch, is surrounded by countryside and the Chiltern Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Berkhamsted was first mentioned in 970 AD and was recorded as a burbium (ancient borough) in the Domesday Book in 1086. A (now ruined) motte-and-bailey Norman castle was built shortly after the Norman Conquest and remained a royal possession and residence for four centuries. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the town was a wool trading centre, with a busy local market. The oldest-known extant jettied timber-framed building in Great Britain, built between 1277 and 1297, survives as a shop on the town's high street. The town's literary connections include the 17th-century hymnist and poet William Cowper, the 18th-century writer Maria Edgeworth and the 20th-century novelist Graham Greene. Arts institutions in the town include The Rex (a well regarded independent cinema) and the British Film Institute's National Archive at King's Hill, which is one of the world's largest film and television archives. Schools in the town include Berkhamsted School, a co-educational boarding independent school (founded in 1541 by John Incent, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral); Ashlyns School, a state school, whose history began as the Foundling Hospital established in London by Thomas Coram in 1742; and Ashridge Executive Education, a business school offering degree courses, which occupies the Grade I listed neo-Gothic Ashridge House.