Heordshire | Page 8

county of equal size; the large flocks of hen chaffinches that
haunt the farmyards in winter being quite a notable feature. The
goldfinch, it is to be feared, is rapidly becoming scarcer; as are also the
jay, the woodcock and other birds much more numerous a few years
back. Fieldfares and redwings visit the county in great numbers from
the N. during the winter; one morning in the winter of 1886 the writer
saw many thousands of fieldfares pass over St. Albans from the
direction of Luton. The redwing, being largely insectivorous, is often
picked up dead in the fields when the frost is unusually severe and food
proportionally difficult to obtain.
The presence of many woods and small streams attracts a good
proportion of the smaller English migrants; the nightingale and the
cuckoo are heard almost throughout the county. Moorhens, coots and
dabchicks are abundant; the reed-sparrow is heard only in a few
districts. Titmice, great, blue and long-tailed, are well distributed.
V. POPULATION
Comparatively little peculiar to the county is known of the early
inhabitants of Hertfordshire. They seem from the earliest times to have
been scattered over the county in many small groups, rather than to
have concentrated at a few centres. Singularly enough, this almost
uniform dispersion of population is still largely maintained, for, unlike
so many other counties, Hertfordshire has not within its borders a
single large town. The larger among them, i.e., Watford, St. Albans,
Hitchin, Hertford and Bishop's Stortford, are not collectively equal in
population to even such towns as Bolton, Halifax or Croydon. Another
feature to be noted is that, owing to the county's proximity to London,
it is now the home of persons of many nations and tongues, and only in
the smaller villages between the railroads are there left any traits of
local character or peculiarities of idiom. It is hardly necessary to say
that this conglomeration of peoples is common to all the home counties,
though mostly so, as I venture to think, in Hertfordshire and Surrey.
The Essex peasant is still strongly differentiated from his neighbours.
Grose, writing towards the end of the eighteenth century, stated that the
population of Hertfordshire was 95,000. They must have been well

dispersed, for he tells us that the county contained at that period 949
villages; by the word "village," however, he seems to mean any
separate community, including small hamlets. Some interesting figures
are to be found in Tymms's Compendium of the History of the Home
Circuit. He states that in 1821 the county contained 129,714 inhabitants,
comprising 26,170 families and living in 23,687 houses. Of these
families no fewer than 13,485 were engaged in agriculture. From the
same source I quote the following figures relating to the year 1821:--
Houses. Inhabitants. Hemel Hempstead 1,012 5,193 Watford 940 4,713
Hitchin 915 4,486 St. Albans 735 4,472 Cheshunt 847 4,376 Hertford
656 4,265
In 1881 the population of the county was 203,069; in 1891 it had
increased by about one-eleventh to 220,162; in 1921 it was 333,236.
In the days of William I. the whole of the possessions and estates of
Hertfordshire belonged to the King and forty-four persons who shared
his favour, amongst whom may be mentioned the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Bishops of London, Winchester, Chester, Bayeux and
Liseux, and the Abbots of Westminster, Ely, St. Albans, Charteris and
Ramsey.
To go as far back as the Heptarchy, we find the land mostly owned by
Mercians, East Saxons and by the Kings of Kent, and thus there
gradually sprang up that "Middle English" population which for so long
formed a large proportion of the inhabitants of Hertfordshire,
Middlesex and Essex. How thoroughly such persons separated into
small communities and settled down in every part of the county may be
ascertained by the many "buries" found at a little distance from the
town or village--Redbourn-bury, Ardeley-bury, Bayford-bury,
Langley-bury, Harpenden-bury, etc.
VI. COMMUNICATIONS
1. Roads.--Hertfordshire, as one of the home-counties, is crossed by
many fine roads from the N.E., E. and N.W., as they gradually
converge towards their common goal--London. Among them may be

mentioned the Old North Road, from Royston through Buntingford and
Ware to Waltham Cross; the Great North Road from Baldock through
Stevenage, Welwyn and Hatfield to Barnet; and the Dunstable Road
through Market Street, Redbourn and St. Albans, which meets the
last-mentioned road at Barnet.[1] We may contrast these roads at the
present day with the rough paths infested with robbers existing in the
days when the country between Barnet and St. Albans was little better
than a continuous, tangled forest; or even with the same roads in the
days when Evelyn and Pepys frequently rode along them--and found
them exceedingly bad. The cyclist wishing to ride northwards through
Hertfordshire has comparatively stiff hills to mount at Elstree, High
Barnet,