Other spellings include Rykemarwurthe (1119–46), Richemaresworthe (1180), Rykemerewrthe (1248), Richemereworthe (1259), Rikesmareswrth (1287), Rikmansworth (1382), Rikmeresworth (1396)[2] and Rykemerysworth (1418).

Rickmansworth was one of five manors with which the great Abbey of St Albans had been endowed when founded in 793 by King Offa of Mercia.

Local tithes supported the abbey, which provided clergy to serve the people until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.

The wider area, including Croxley Green, Moor Park, Batchworth, Mill End, West Hyde and Chorleywood, formed the original parish of Rickmansworth.

St Mary's Church serves the parish concentrated in the town and extending to Batchworth and parts of Moor Park.

The three rivers, the Colne, Chess and Gade, provided water for the watercress trade and power for corn milling, silk weaving, paper making and brewing, all long gone.

It was leased to the abbot and convent of St Albans by Ralph Bukberd for a term of years ending in 1539.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many of the principal inhabitants were described as "clothiers", from which it may be inferred that the manufacture of cloth was at one time carried on in the parish, but this industry has long since ceased.

It records the agreement made between the canal company, John Dickinson the miller at Batchworth Mill, and R. Williams of Moor Park the landowner.

A further Parliamentary authorisation was obtained a year later to construct an extension from Rickmansworth to connect with the Great Western Railway's Uxbridge branch, but this was never realised.

The line was worked from the outset by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), which paid the WRR 50% of the gross earnings.

Rickmansworth grew dramatically during the Victorian era and in the 1920s and 1930s as part of Metro-land, due to the extension of Metropolitan Railway, and became a commuter town.

Rickmansworth station is served by passenger services on two lines: Local bus services are operated primarily by Arriva Shires & Essex; key routes include:[13] Junctions 17 and 18 of the M25 motorway are within Rickmansworth's boundaries, giving access to Heathrow Airport and the national motorway network.

This is caused by the local geography, notably the railway embankment which prevents the natural drainage of cold air from a specific part of the valley.

No successor parish was created for Rickmansworth in 1974 and so it became an unparished area, governed directly by Three Rivers District Council.

[33] The civil parish of Batchworth was created on 1 April 2017 covering the two Three Rivers district wards of Rickmansworth Town, and Moor Park and Eastbury.

The Batchworth and Croxley Green parishes do not cover the whole of the former Rickmansworth Urban District, with two areas remaining unparished: one around Maple Cross and Mill End, and another near Loudwater.

Its auditorium can be transformed from a raked theatre to a flat floor for performances in the round, dancing, cabaret, weddings, indoor markets and craft fairs.

The Rickmansworth Players (affiliated to NODA) is a well-established amateur dramatics society that performs musicals and plays on a regular basis.

Inspired by the reference to Rickmansworth on the first page of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: "And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place.

Its boundaries are the River Colne to the north, the Grand Union Canal to the east and south and Stocker's Lake nature reserve to the west.

In July 2009, it received a Green Flag Award for parks and open spaces which meet high standards.