Qualla: Hertfordshire https://qualla.com/hertfordshire en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Hertfordshire https://qualla.com/hertfordshire Hertfordshire: Introduction https://qualla.com/hertfordshire/ The deer come first. The county takes its name from a Saxon ford on the river Lea where the hart crossed the water, and the animal still appears on its arms, its emblems, the names of its pubs, even the Hertfordshire-born flag of yellow on blue that is technically the patron saint Alban's martyr cross. From this small inland county, twenty-five miles north of London at its closest point, comes a remarkable amount of British history packed into 634 square miles: a Roman city under St Albans, the first English martyrdom on Holywell Hill, the original drafts of Magna Carta at the Abbey, Tudor royal residences at Hatfield, the first garden city at Letchworth, the first post-war New Town at Stevenage, and the wedding-cake studios where Star Wars and Harry Potter were filmed.

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/hertfordshire-wp/gcpz-hertfordshire-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Hertfordshire: Verulamium and Saint Alban https://qualla.com/hertfordshire/ Before there was a county there was a Roman town. Verulamium, on the gentle hill overlooking the river Ver near modern St Albans, was the third-largest city of Roman Britain. Sometime in the third century, perhaps around AD 250, a Romano-British soldier named Alban gave shelter t...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/hertfordshire-wp/gcpz-hertfordshire-verulamium-and-saint-alban.mp3 0:06 2 full Hertfordshire: Royal Houses and Roses https://qualla.com/hertfordshire/ Hertfordshire was close enough to London for the medieval and Tudor courts to use it as a hunting ground, a refuge, and a stage. Hatfield House, built by Robert Cecil in 1611 on the foundations of the old royal palace where Elizabeth I had grown up, still stands behind its red-br...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/hertfordshire-wp/gcpz-hertfordshire-royal-houses-and-roses.mp3 0:06 3 full Hertfordshire: The First Garden City https://qualla.com/hertfordshire/ In 1898 a social reformer named Ebenezer Howard published a slim book called To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. He argued that overcrowded industrial cities and depopulated countryside were two halves of the same problem, and that the answer was a new kind of settlement t...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/hertfordshire-wp/gcpz-hertfordshire-the-first-garden-city.mp3 0:06 4 full Hertfordshire: Stevenage and the New Town Era https://qualla.com/hertfordshire/ When the Attlee government passed the New Towns Act in 1946 to relieve the bomb-damaged housing crisis of London, Stevenage was the first town designated under it. Locals were not pleased. Lewis Silkin, the minister responsible, arrived at Stevenage railway station to find the pl...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/hertfordshire-wp/gcpz-hertfordshire-stevenage-and-the-new-town-era.mp3 0:06 5 full Hertfordshire: Borehamwood, Elstree, Leavesden https://qualla.com/hertfordshire/ From the 1920s onwards Hertfordshire became, quietly, one of the world's great film-making counties. The studios at Borehamwood, often called Elstree because of the village nearby, made the first three Star Wars films, the Indiana Jones films, and the original Kubrick run of film...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/hertfordshire-wp/gcpz-hertfordshire-borehamwood-elstree-leavesden.mp3 0:06 6 full Hertfordshire: Watford in the South, Royston in the North https://qualla.com/hertfordshire/ Modern Hertfordshire is a county of contrasts. Watford in the south-west, with its Premier-League-bouncing football club and its medieval shopping street under a vast modern intu mall, feels almost like an outer borough of London. Sixty miles to the northeast, Royston is a small ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/z/hertfordshire-wp/gcpz-hertfordshire-watford-in-the-south-royston-in-the-north.mp3 0:06 7 full