[2] Paleolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements show the site of Baldock has been continuously occupied since prehistoric times.

[4] At the beginning of the Iron Age there was a hillfort at Arbury Banks, 5 km to the northeast of Baldock, that dominated the area.

In the Late Iron Age (c. 100 BC), the local power base shifted from the hillfort to the vicinity of Baldock.

The Baldock area is also host to the highest quantity of finds of ancient coins in Hertfordshire after the Verulamium region.

[5] It was laid out by the Knights Templar on land in the manor of Weston in the hundred of Broadwater,[6] granted by the earl of Pembroke, Gilbert de Clare, before his death in 1148.

[3][9] While Damascus was the farthest location of Templar military activity during the Crusades, they would have been aware of the significance of Baghdad,[10] which was widely regarded as the most prosperous market in the world.

[12] Walter William Skeat writes in The Place-names of Hertfordshire (1904): All that remains is to discover the reason for this curious name; nor is it difficult.

of Herts., ii, 267, we find that Baldock was built by the Knights Templars before the reign of Henry III; he cites from Monast.

Templi Salomonis … manerio, in qua terra ipsi construxerunt quendam Burgum qui dicitur Baudac."

He adds that the grant of the land was made to them by Gilbert, Earl of Pembroke, in the time of Stephen; and he refers the name to "Bagdet or Baldach, near Babylon, whence they were ejected by the Saracens.

[citation needed] The High Street is very wide, a typical feature of medieval market places where more than one row of buildings used to stand.

Earlier Iron Age remains have also been uncovered in the same general location, which may be the earliest town ever to develop in Britain.

From 1808 to 1814, Baldock hosted a station in the shutter telegraph chain that connected the Admiralty in London to its naval ships in the port of Great Yarmouth.

[citation needed] A history of Baldock's Middle Ages (ISBN 0-905858-97-2) was compiled by Vivian Crellin, a former headmaster of The Knights Templar School, while local archaeologists Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and Gilbert Burleigh published Ancient Baldock: the story of an Iron Age and Roman town in 2007.

Baldock's position at the crossing of two important thoroughfares, the Great North Road and the Icknield Way has made it a stopping point for a number of illustrious visitors, including Charles I, who passed through Baldock en route for London after his arrest in 1648[17] and supposedly Dick Turpin.

This facility closed in the late 1970s and some projects and staff were transferred to RSRE (Royal Signals & Radar Establishment) near Pershore.

[19] The building was then bought by the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Company from Halifax, later becoming the Kayser Bondor ladies stocking factory (which temporarily produced parachutes in World War II).

The site was redeveloped to become a Tesco supermarket in the late 1980s, but the Art Deco facade of the former factory was retained and incorporated into the new building.

That year it made the first successful radiotelephone call to the USA, to the RCA radio station at Rocky Point, New York.

In World War II, Baldock was one of the Allied radio stations that intercepted Kriegsmarine signals and forwarded them to Bletchley Park to be deciphered.

The festival consists of three weeks of events throughout the town and local area, such as museum displays, wine tasting, whiskey tasting, beer festivals, brewery tours, cricket match, comedy sketches, family quiz night, mystery tour, open gardens, history talks, and several music events, some of which feature local bands.

[26] The 2012 festival resulted in a dispute between the organisers of the festival and the Performing Rights Society [27] Daniel Defoe, in his book A tour through the whole island of Great Britain, passed through Baldock and commented: "Here is that famous Lane call'd Baldock Lane, famous for being so unpassable, that the Coaches and Travellers were oblig'd to break out of the Way even by Force, which the People of the Country not able to prevent, at length placed Gates, and laid their lands open, setting Men at the Gates to take a voluntary Toll, which Travellers always chose to pay, rather than plunge into Sloughs and Holes, which no Horse could wade through."

Baldock is one of the waypoints on Warren's long drive up the Great North Road, which brings about the occasion for the novel's plot, the rescue of the shipbuilding town of 'Sharples' (Blyth), in Ruined City by Nevil Shute.

The town is the nearest centre to the fictional pub owned and run by the main character "Maurice Allington".

The author Monica Dickens, who lived in nearby Hinxworth for four years after World War II, refers to her regular visits to Baldock and to The George and Dragon public house in particular, in her 1978 autobiography An Open Book.

[32] In August 1872 sanitary districts were established, with public health and local government responsibilities being given to the boards of guardians of the poor law unions for all areas which did not have urban authorities.

Less than three months later, on 1 November 1872, a public meeting was held in Baldock where the town's ratepayers voted to establish a local board to govern the town, allowing it to become its own urban sanitary district, independent of the Hitchin Rural Sanitary District.

[38][39] The Local Board generally met at the Rose and Crown public house at 8 Whitehorse Street in Baldock.

This was the main issue at the council election in April 1896, with candidates presenting themselves as either supporters or opponents of the town hall scheme.

There is a Sunday league football team Templars FC The 110 mile Icknield Way Path from Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire to Knettishall Heath in Suffolk passes through the town.