It is situated on the ancient Roman Akeman Street between Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead, on the former A41 London-Liverpool Trunk Route,[1] on the Grand Union Canal [2] that runs between London and Birmingham and at the confluence of the Chiltern chalk stream, the Bourne Gutter and the River Bulbourne.

[6] The Hemel Hempstead Gazette has also run stories on the Gutter flowing in early 1982 as Argentinian Forces invaded the Falkland Islands, in early October 1987 days before the Great Storm of 1987 that devastated woodlands throughout southern England, and in 2003 as British troops joined the International invasion of Iraq.

Bourne End was the scene of the rail disaster on the West Coast Main Line on 30 September 1945 when an express train was derailed with many fatalities.

[8] In the 1850s the rector Cannon Sir John Hobart Culme Seymour decided to found a chapel of ease for St Mary's Northchurch.

The architect George Gilbert Scott was commissioned to design the new church and construction was funded by Thomas Halsey of The Hall, Berkhamsted.