It is located 24 miles (39 km) north-west of London; nearby towns and cities include Watford, St Albans and Berkhamsted.

[4] In Old English, -stead or -stede simply meant "place" (reflected in German Stadt and Dutch stede or stad, meaning "city" or "town"), such as the site of a building or pasture, as in clearing in the woods.

[9] The first recorded mention of the town is the grant of land at Hamaele by Offa, King of Essex, to the Saxon Bishop of London in 705 CE.

[10] After the Norman conquest, Robert, Count of Mortain, the elder half-brother of William the Conqueror, was granted lands associated with Berkhamsted Castle which included Hemel Hempstead.

In 1290, King John's grandson, the Earl of Cornwall, gave the manor to the religious order of the Bonhommes when he endowed the monastery at Ashridge.

In the same year, the town was granted a royal charter by Henry VIII to become a bailiwick with the right to hold a Thursday market and a fair on Corpus Christi Day.

[13] In 1953, a collection of unusually fine medieval wall paintings dating from between 1470 and 1500 were discovered in a cottage in Piccotts End, a village on the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead.

[19] In 1793, construction began on the Grand Junction Canal, a major project to provide a freight waterway between the Midlands and the Port of London.

The line's construction had been delayed for several years by vigorous lobbying by a number of powerful local landowners, including Sir Astley Cooper of Gadebridge House, who were all keen to protect their estates from invasion by the "iron horse".

This was alongside a green area called the Water Gardens, designed by Jellicoe, formed by ponding back the River Gade.

The nearby United States Air Force base of Bovingdon, which had served as the town's 'de facto' airport, reverted to RAF use at this time, continuing as an active military airfield until 1971.

[34] Hemel Hempstead grew up in a shallow chalkland valley at the confluence of the rivers Gade and Bulbourne, 27 miles (43 km) northwest of central London.

Possibly the best view of Hemel Hempstead in its physical setting is from the top of Roughdown Common, a chalk hill to the south of the town, at TL 049 055.

A nearby athletics track, opened in 1996, is managed by the sports group Sportspace, with a small adjacent children's play park.

[40] The most recent facility, which opened in July 2011, is an extreme sports centre called the XC, which contains a skate park, caving, climbing walls, high ropes, a café and counselling rooms for young people.

In 2005, the Riverside development, designed by Bernard Engle Architects, was opened, effectively extending the main shopping precinct towards the Plough Roundabout.

Isle of Man-based residential developer Dandara redeveloped the old Kodak headquarters into a block of flats, with a new footbridge to the Riverside shopping precinct.

From 1967 to 1983, it was home to one of the most remarkable newspaper experiments of recent times, when the Thomson Organisation launched the Hemel Hempstead Evening Post-Echo.

The dual operation was conceived by Lord Thomson of Fleet to take on the Northcliffe and Beaverbrook domination of the London evening paper market and tap into what he saw as a major source of consumer advertising.

Nicknamed The Tudors, they play at Vauxhall Road in the Adeyfield area of the town; this was the site of the former sports club for the employees of Brocks Fireworks.

Gadebridge Park also has an outdoor skatepark that was designed and supplied by local extreme sports fanatics ‘Hemel Skates’ after earning £65,000 through fundraising.

Jarman Park had a ten pin bowling alley, ice skating, and a swimming pool with slides until they closed at the end of 2013.

[62] Hemel Hempstead Municipal Borough was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, becoming part of the district of Dacorum (named after the ancient hundred which covered a similar area) on 1 April 1974.

[64] The new town centre is laid out alongside landscaped gardens and water features formed from the River Gade known as the Watergardens designed by G. A. Jellicoe.

For many years, the lower end of Marlowes featured a distinctive office building built as a bridge-like structure straddling the main road.

The Dacorum Heritage Trust, a local history advocacy group, has proposals to convert the 18th-century house at The Bury into a museum and art gallery to display a collection of archaeological and historical artefacts from the surrounding area.

[65][66] The new town centre contains several sculptures by notable artists from the 1950s, including a 1955 stone mural by sculptor Alfred Gerrard entitled Stages in the Development of Man.

The mosaic tiled map of the Hemel Hempstead district was designed by the artist Rowland Emett and is located on the side of the tiered car park in the Marlowes.

[69][70] A series of 33-feet-high blue steel arches, called the Phoenix Gateway, is located on the roundabout closest to the Hemel Hempstead junction of the M1 motorway.

[92][93] The Forum, Hemel Hempstead's new council, library and voluntary services hub built on the former Pavilion site opened its doors to the public on Monday 16 January 2013.