Qualla: Hemel Hempstead

Hemel Hempstead: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doc Searls, CC BY-SA 2.0. Just before dawn on 11 December 2005, a fuel-air vapor cloud at the Buncefield oil depot found an ignition source and the morning came early to Hemel Hempstead. The blast registered 2.4 on the Richter scale. People felt the shockwave in Belgium. Residents 125 miles away heard the explosion roll across the countryside like distant artillery. Forty-three people were injured. By some combination of timing, geography, and luck, none died. That morning is woven now into the fabric of a town whose history runs back through Norman parish churches and Saxon land grants to a Romano-Celtic temple unearthed under the modern industrial estate.

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Image: Doc Searls | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hemel Hempstead: The Town the Domesday Book Knew

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Mark.murphy, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hemel Hempstead appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Hamelhamstede, a vill of perhaps a hundred souls in a chalk valley where the rivers Gade and Bulbourne meet. The name itself is layered like the chalk beneath the soil. The -stead means simply place, a clearing, a stopping p...

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Image: User:Mark.murphy | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hemel Hempstead: Paper Mills and Royal Charters

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christine Lloyd-Staples, CC BY-SA 2.0. Henry VIII granted Hemel a royal charter in 1539, the same year he broke up the monastery at Ashridge that had held the manor for nearly three centuries. Henry and Anne Boleyn are said to have lodged here. The Industrial Revolution found the town well-positioned, sitting on the m...

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Image: Christine Lloyd-Staples | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hemel Hempstead: A City in a Park

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Brown, CC BY-SA 2.0. After the war, the planners came. Hemel Hempstead was designated a New Town in February 1947, one of the first to absorb families displaced by the London Blitz. The architect Geoffrey Jellicoe drew up plans for what he called "not a city in a garden, but a city in a park." Locals...

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Image: Chris Brown | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hemel Hempstead: The Magic Roundabout

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TJMortimer, CC BY-SA 4.0. Drive into central Hemel and you will eventually meet what locals call the Magic Roundabout, officially the Plough Roundabout. Six roads converge on a single circle. Around the central island, six smaller mini-roundabouts let traffic flow in both directions, a circulating system ...

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Image: TJMortimer | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hemel Hempstead: 11 December 2005

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ashley George Old Uploaded by Tomintoul at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Buncefield oil storage terminal sat on the edge of the Maylands industrial estate, a forest of tanks holding millions of litres of petrol, diesel, and aviation fuel piped from the refineries on the Thames. Just after six in the morning on Sunday 11 December 2005, a tank overf...

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Image: Ashley George Old Uploaded by Tomintoul at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hemel Hempstead: Old Town, Living Town

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Traveler100, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk up the High Street in the Old Town and the New Town drops away. Tudor-framed buildings lean over the pavement. The Old Bell has timber dating to 1615 and stands where even older inns served travellers on the road north. Piccotts End, just outside town, holds a cottage where ...

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Image: Traveler100 | CC BY-SA 3.0