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 Harpenden
is situated on a dip-slope of the Chiltern Hills. The original village
lies between two river valleys running in a northwest to southeast
direction. The westerly valley of the River Ver has been used since
Roman times as the route of Watling Street between St Albans and
Dunstable; the eastern valley contains the River Lea, which rises
north of Luton and flows through Hertfordshire and then to the River
Thames.
Harpenden is first recorded in an eleventh century deed in which
Edward the Confessor granted an estate to Westminster Abbey, consisting
of the area around Hwaethamstede (now Wheathampstead) and Herpedene.
This district was first settled by the Belgae who arrived in the
first century BC, spreading inland and clearing dense prehistoric
forests to make small farm clearings, which became the ‘Ends’
and ‘Greens’ which are so numerous locally.
The Belgae were followed by the Romans, who left traces of their
occupation in both river valleys and at Rothamsted. Then came the
Anglo-Saxons; they were threatened by the Danes until an agreement
of 886 made the River Lea the agreed boundary between them, Saxons
to the west, Danes to the east.
For many years the village saw little change. Agriculture was the
main occupation of its inhabitants, the area being especially suited
to growing wheat. The resulting abundance of good strong straw encouraged
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the growth of the straw
plait industry, in which most of the women and young children took
part. The straw-hat trade was centred on Luton and Dunstable; people
from all the villages round about sold their plait to the hat manufacturers,
considerably supplementing small agricultural wages.
Situated as it is between Watling Street to the west and the Great
North Road to the east, the road through Harpenden was never one
of the country’s main highways. Consequently the village grew
slowly. When railways were being developed all over the country
there was little reason for one through Harpenden. The people of
Luton were campaigning for a railway so a branch line was opened
from there in 1860 passing through Harpenden at Batford to join
the main Great Northern line at Hatfield. Eight years later the
Midland Railway opened its mainline extension from Bedford to London.
Many of the workers on the railway were billeted in the small village
of Harpenden, which, with its neighbouring hamlets of Hatching Green
and Batford and its cluster of farm workers’ cottages in the
‘B owling
Alley’ to the south, was deemed to justify a station of its
own as the line was completed. This direct link with the capital,
together with the sale in 1882 of an estate of over a thousand acres
of land for building, really started the village’s development.
The first estate to be built was that adjacent to Milton Road. Houses
were built in a variety of styles as other estates were developed
over the years, eventually linking the hamlets of Batford, Southdown
and Kinsbourne Green to the pleasant town we know today.
The growth of Harpenden by 1889 justified its elected representative
to claim the status of an Urban District Council. Local Government
re-organisation in 1974 saw Harpenden become part of the City and
District of St Albans and the successor parish council took the
title of Harpenden Town Council in 1989 leading to the inauguration
of the first Town Mayor.
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