From 1066 to 1495, Berkhamsted Castle was a favoured residence of royalty and notable historical figures, including King Henry II, Edward, the Black Prince, Thomas Becket and Geoffrey Chaucer.

Local historian Rev John Wolstenholme Cobb identified over 50 different versions of the town's name since the writing of the Domesday Book (such as: "Berkstead", "Berkampsted", "Berkhampstead", "Muche Barkhamstede", "Berkhamsted Magna", "Great Berkhamsteed" and "Berkhamstead".

Four Roman first century AD iron smelting bloomeries at Dellfield (one mile (two kilometres) northwest of the town centre) provide evidence of industrial activity in Berkhamsted.

[39] The nearest known structural evidence of the Anglo-Saxon period are in the south and west walls of St Mary's Northchurch, one mile (two kilometres) to the north-west of modern Berkhamsted.

[50][51] According to the Domesday Book, the lord of Berkhamsted before the Norman conquest was Edmer Ator (also referred to as Eadmer Atule), thegn of Edward the Confessor and King Harold.

[53] The total population was calculated to be either 37 or 88 households; the families included 14 villagers, 15 smallholders, 6 slaves, a priest, a dyke builder (possibly working on the earthworks of the castle) and 52 burgesses.

[64] Through the High and Late Middle Ages the close proximity of the royal castle and court helped fuel Berkhamsted's growth, prosperity and sense of importance.

In 1216, Henry III relieved the men and merchants of the town from all tolls and taxes everywhere in England, and the English Plantagenet possessions in France, Normandy, Aquitaine and Anjou.

[85][88][Notes 8] Trades within medieval Berkhamsted were extensive: early in the 13th century the town had a merchant, two painters, a goldsmith, a forester, two farriers, two tailors, a brewer of mead, a blacksmith, carpenters, wood turners, tool makers, a manufacturer of roofing tiles and wine producers.

[90] A 1290 taxation list mentions a brewer, a lead burner, a carpenter, leather workers, a fuller, a turner, a butcher, a fishmonger, a barber, an archer, a tailor, a cloth-napper, a miller, a cook, a seller of salt and a huntsman.

[14] Born in Berkhamsted, Colonel Daniel Axtell (1622 – 19 October 1660), a Baptist and a grocer's apprentice, played a zealous and prominent part in the English Civil War, both in England and in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.

He participated as a lieutenant colonel in Pride's Purge of the Long Parliament (December 1648), arguably the only military coup d'état in English history, and commanded the Parliamentary Guard at the trial of King Charles I at Westminster Hall in 1649.

The surveyor of Hertfordshire recommended that a new tenant and army officers were needed at Berkhamsted Place "to govern the people much seduced of late by new doctrine preacht unto them by Axtell and his colleagues.

The Inns of Court War Memorial on the Common has the motto Salus Populi Suprema Lex—the welfare of the people is the highest law—and states that the ashes of Colonel Errington were buried nearby.

Shortly after 1918 much of the extensive estate belonging to Berkhamsted Hall, at the east end of the High Street, was sold; many acres west of Swing Gate Lane were developed with council housing.

Berkhamsted is situated 26 miles (42 km) northwest of London within the Chiltern Hills, part of a system of chalk downlands throughout eastern and southern England, believed to have formed between 84 and 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous Period when the area was a chalk-depositing marine environment.

[27][136] In the early Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age, mid to late 8th millennium BC), the local upland was mostly pine woodland and the low area of central Berkhamsted probably a grass-sedge fen.

[137][83] The river powered the watermills (recorded in 1086) and fed the three moats of the large Norman Motte and Bailey castle, that stands close to the centre of the town where a small dry combe joins the Bulbourne valley.

Today, Berkhamsted is an affluent,[143] "pleasant town tucked in a wooded fold in the Chiltern Hills";[144] with a large section of the settlement protected as a conservation area.

Taking the A416 road south from Berkhamsted, along the Chiltern Hills into Buckinghamshire lies the nearby hamlet of Ashley Green and the fellow market towns of Chesham (4.7 miles (8 km) distant) and Amersham.

[178] Local bus routes passing through Berkhamsted town centre provide links to Hemel Hempstead, Luton, Watford and Whipsnade Zoo.

[205] The house occupies the site of the earlier Ashridge Priory, a college of the monastic order of Bonhommes founded in 1283 by Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall, who resided in the castle.

[208] Its activities include open and tailored executive education programmes, MBA, MSc and Diploma qualifications, organisation consulting, applied research and online learning.

In 1648, St Peter's Church was requisitioned during the English Civil War by General Fairfax as a military prison to hold soldiers captured from the siege of Colchester.

The Baptist community in Berkhamsted, dates from 1640 making it one of the oldest nationally; first gathering in secret, they built a large chapel in 1722, and moved to their current place of worship at the junction of Ravens Lane on the High Street in 1864.

[217] The Evangelist (Latter Day Saints) began life has part of the Plymouth Brethren, their Hope Hall opened in 1875, which was rechristened the Kings Road Evangelical Church in 1969.

Maria Edgeworth, a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature who was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe, lived in Berkhamsted as a child in the 18th century.

[227] The Rex frequently has sold-out houses for evening showings, the cinema is a "movie palace with all the original art deco trimmings" (its interior features decorations of sea waves and shells).

[250] The majority of Berkhamsted's eighty-five listed or scheduled historical sites are on in the high street and the medieval core of the town (a significant number of them contain timber frames).

[251][252] In addition to the sites noted in the article above (such as the castle and schools) the following structures and locations are of interest: Berkhamsted is twinned with: The town also has an informal relationship with Barkhamsted, Connecticut, in the United States.