14 Sep 2024: Four Flavours of East Herts

This was a circular flagship walk from Hartham Common, between Bengeo and Hertford, N to Woodhall Park, SE to Thundridge, S to Ware, SW to Hartham Common.

The general consensus of the group was that the route and the absolutely perfect walking weather underlined the flagship features of this route.

The usual stats:

Event led by Martin T.
Attendance: 15 people.
Distance: 12.1 miles (19.5 km).
Altitude per GPS: low 295ft (89.9m), high 492ft (150m), climb 423ft (128.9m), descent 429ft (130.8m).
Time: start 11:17, end 17:04 (sunset 20:34), lunch 33 minutes, other breaks 30 minutes.
Speed: moving arithmetic average 2.56mph (4.1kph).
Terrain: roadside, pavement, park path, field edge, track, woodland track on highway, footpath and bridleway.
Weather: ideal for walking, sunny with light cloud, temperature range between 15°C and 17°C, south-westerly wind 3mph (4.9kph).
Number of sewage works: 1.
Number of churches: 2½.
Number of golf courses: 1.

A flagship walk is one that best exemplifies a walking group’s area. This particular walk takes four such prime examples of land use and conservation in East Hertfordshire. These are the four flavours of this walk:

urban (or townland), two main varieties:
- old Hertford, far from the town centre and really very quiet, almost village-like;
- new Ware;
wetlands, two varieties:
- two routes on flood plains, first alongside the River Beane and second in King’s Meads nature reserve alongside the River Lea Navigation;
- towpath alongside the River Lea Navigation;
parkland, two varieties:
- the old established rural parks Woodhall Park, Sacombe Park and Hanbury Park; and, later
- the set-aside of civic amenity of Hartham Common, more recently converted to a sports & leisure park.
- Woodhall Park and Hartham Common are substantially water meadows and/or flood plains.
farmland: a series of fields from Sacombe Park to Wadesmill, on this occasion being a combination of meadow (set-aside) and recently-harvested crops, one field of which showed the shoots of a some sort of winter crop.

Points of interest:

The River Beane is a chalk stream. It rises at near Sandon (NE of Stevenage), flows southbound to Hertford and joins the River Lea at Hartham Common. The majority of our route along the Beane was in the Waterford Marsh, as far north as the village of Waterford (map), followed by a small transect of Waterford Common’s woodland. Today, the water level was reasonably high, although substantially below its much older high points. Along part of the eastern edge of the marshland is the railway from London Liverpool Street to Cambridge, resulting in an elegant mix of nature and transportation.
Woodhall Park, a grade II* listed park, dates back to 16th century with today’s landscaping dating from 18th century. Relevant to our route, The Avenue was laid out in 1720, connecting the former house (now the former stable block of the 1770s), commissioned by the then owner Thomas Rumbold. Ambiguity surrounds the names of the landscapers – because the story gets mixed up with the gardens near the Woodhall House near Watton-at-Stone – but it might have been William Griffin, whose apprentice was Joseph Paxton (noted for Crystal Palace). The Dane End Tributary flows eastbound into this part of the park, alongside The Avenue, joining the River Beane. At some point since the landscaping, there must have been significant flooding, given flood marks on tree barks a few feet above our heads and given a wide plain of meadow where perhaps one might have expected trees. Woodhall Park is part of the much-larger Woodhall Estate.
On our route, the A602 Ware Road, running – racing! – between Hertford and Stevenage offered us one of the newest roads in Hertfordshire at the time. We used the short surviving abandoned section of the A602 and the new cycle path which replaced it, before crossing the A602. A YouTuber, @AutoShenigans, has featured this abandoned road in a dedicated video of 4 minutes.
From the Sacombe farmland, in the middle distance, the distinctive water tower of Tonwell (a grade II listed building) was visible, arising from the land like some giant vase. Edmund C. Percey of Scherrer and Hicks designed it in 1960s, built in 1964. Reportedly, it no longer serves as a water tower.
Our route through Thundridge took the original alignment of Ermine Street. Ermine Street was a Roman Road running from Londinium (from Bishopsgate, London) to Lindum Colonia (Lincoln), via Tottenham, Enfield and Royston, broadly today’s A10. In Thundridge, Ermine Street was once the A10, the A10(T) and is now an unnumbered C-road following the extension of the A10 dual-carriageway by-pass of Thundridge in 2004.
The route from Ware Cemetery, via Wengeo Lane, took us on a elevated ridge that peered southbound over the wide valley of the River Lea basin. The river flows eastbound at this point, before its later final southbound descent into the River Thames at London, partly as the Lee Navigation into Limehouse Basin (map) and partly as the River Lea into Bow Creek, to enter the River Thames opposite the Millenium Dome/O2 Arena (map). Our route met the River Lea Navigation at the towpath next to GlaxoSmithkline’s big factory in Ware. The viaduct of the A10 by-pass was built in the 1970s (possibly 1976?). The sound of traffic driving on the A10 at ~70mph was a noticeable roar of white noise, which echoed off the sides of the Glaxo factory. Every time a car drove over the expansion joint at the northern end of the viaduct, a loud double-click ricocheted across the Lea Valley, and bouncing off the factory’s walls, resulting in a quadruple-click. At towpath level, the underside of the viaduct demonstrated the brutal simplicity of road bridge design and, of course, lots of opportunity for the local wildlife to decorate it with graffiti.
The penultimate part of the route entered King’s Mead meadows, a nature reserve run by the Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trust. Today, the meadows hosted a small herd of cows.

Sewage works:

Wadesmill (Thundridge) sewage pumping station, WADEP1ZZ (not a treatment works, so not mapped by South West Environment).

Churches:

St Mary’s Church, Stapleford (grade II* listed building).
St Mary’s Church, Thundridge (grade II listed building). The church was open today for the church charity event Hike ‘N Bike, so a few of us took the opportunity to see inside the church. There are lots of monuments to the Hanbury family.
- but not the remains of St Mary’s & All Saint’s “old” church, the ruins of which are a scheduled monument, described in terrifying detail here. The old church was replaced in 1853, with demolition of the old church starting the following year. In Dec2022, local legacy media linked the story of deaths in Cold Christmas to the old church.
a former cemetry chapel, resembling a church with a spire, build 1854, with a porters’ lodge, subsequently converted to a residence. Noted on ordance survey maps series 1937-61.
- the new cemetery is to the north of Watton Road B1001.

Golf Courses:

Hanbury Manor Marriot Hotel & Country Club golf course. (Glencore Golf Holiday Specialists, Marriot Golf).

Six members joined the optional pub stop at the Millstream, Hertford, a McMullens pub, and four stayed longer to chow down two chicken burgers and two beef burgers. Yum.

For more pictures, see https://bit.ly/GOCHerts202409More.