Qualla: Ampthill https://qualla.com/ampthill en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/x/ampthill-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Ampthill https://qualla.com/ampthill Ampthill: Introduction https://qualla.com/ampthill/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The town's name is, almost embarrassingly, Anglo-Saxon for "anthill" - or perhaps "ant-infested hill," depending on which etymologist you believe. The original settlement, Æmethyll, sat on a sandstone rise that even today gives Ampthill its slightly elevated character above the surrounding Bedfordshire farmland. From the high ground at Ampthill Great Park you can see all the way to the Chiltern Hills on a clear day. A weekly market has been held in the town since 1219, when Henry III granted the charter; the market celebrated its eight-hundredth anniversary in 2019. The population at the 2021 census was 8,825 - small enough for everyone to know roughly everyone, large enough to support a high street with independent shops, several pubs, a Waitrose, and a Rugby Football Union Championship club that punches dramatically above its weight.

Read more: Ampthill on Qualla

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/x/ampthill-wp/gcpx-ampthill-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ampthill: Catherine of Aragon's Last Court https://qualla.com/ampthill/ Photo credit Richard Kelly, CC BY 4.0. The single largest historical fact about Ampthill is no longer visible. Ampthill Castle, built in the early fifteenth century by Sir John Cornwall (later Lord Fanhope) from the ransoms he had collected as a captain at Agincourt, became one of Henry VIII's favourite hunting lodges...

Read more: Ampthill on Qualla

Image: Richard Kelly | CC BY 4.0

]]> Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/x/ampthill-wp/gcpx-ampthill-catherine-of-aragons-last-court.mp3 0:06 2 full Ampthill: Capability, Holland, and Alameda https://qualla.com/ampthill/ Photo credit Cameraman, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ampthill Great Park - the deer park around the lost castle - was redesigned in the mid-eighteenth century by Lancelot "Capability" Brown, the most influential English landscape architect of the period. He took the formal seventeenth-century park and softened it into Brown's signa...

Read more: Ampthill on Qualla

Image: Cameraman | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/x/ampthill-wp/gcpx-ampthill-capability-holland-and-alameda.mp3 0:06 3 full Ampthill: Treasure, Avengers, and the New Amsterdam Governor https://qualla.com/ampthill/ Photo credit Cameraman, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ampthill turns up in unexpected places. Richard Nicolls, born in Ampthill in 1624, was the English officer who in 1664 accepted the surrender of the Dutch town of New Amsterdam on behalf of the Duke of York; the city was renamed New York after the Duke, and Nicolls became its fir...

Read more: Ampthill on Qualla

Image: Cameraman | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/x/ampthill-wp/gcpx-ampthill-treasure-avengers-and-the-new-amsterdam-governor.mp3 0:06 4 full