Chipperfield

Prehistoric activity in the area is testified by the presence of two tumuli on the common. Besides being burial mounds these may have designated the boundary of lands worked by Bronze Age communities in the Gade and Chess valleys. For centuries Chipperfield was an outlying settlement of Kings Langley consisting only of scattered houses. The first documentary evidence of the name is found in 1316, when Edward II bequeathed 'the Manor House of Langley the closes adjoining together with the vesture of Chepervillewode for Fewel and other Necessaries' to the Dominican Black Friars. By the 1830s Chipperfield was large enough to warrant the building of both Anglican and Baptist churches and became…

Perhaps the most significant feature is the common, comprising 47.5 ha (117 acres) of secondary growth woodland to the south of the village. The common is criss-crossed by way-marked paths and contains eight veteran Spanish sweet chestnut trees (Castanea sativa), one having a girth of about 21 feet. They are estimated to date back to the 1600s and believed to be descended from specimens brought from Spain in the Middle Ages. Tradition has it they were planted "for the delight of Isabel of Castile". Isabel of Castile (1355–1392) was the first Duchess of York, the wife of Edmund Langley who lived in the nearby Royal Palace of Kings Langley. The common has several ponds, notably the Apostles…