Aldenham and the Colne

Aldenham is on Church Lane, a loop off the busy B462. This loop also serves the Aldenham Golf and Country Club and the University of Hertfordshire’s Watford Campus (based around Wall Hall, formerly Aldenham Abbey), so all is not totally peaceful. However, the walk itself is in remarkably tranquil countryside, despite the proximity of the M1, the M25 and Watford.

Medieval monuments

Aldenham parish church of St John the Baptist is worth looking at for its excellent monuments, as well as its unusually wide north aisle and off-centre chancel. Interesting monuments include two effigies of ladies on tomb chests in the 13th-century Lady Chapel. They are the wife and daughter-in-law of Sir William Crowmer, twice Lord Mayor of London and knighted in 1416. Perhaps the best monument (found in the northeast chapel) is of John Coghill and his wife who both died in 1714. They are reclining on a tomb chest, looking remarkably casual and lifelike, apparently in conversation – she is raised on one elbow.

Changing rooms

In 1803 George Woodford Thelluson enlarged the original house known as Wall Hall and took landscaping advice from Humphrey Repton. He then ‘went Gothic’ and by 1812 the house was draped in a plethora of battlements, turrets and arched windows. To complete the fashionable and romantic medieval image he renamed the house Aldenham Abbey. By World War II the property was in the hands of Hertfordshire Country Council and it became home to Joseph Kennedy, the US ambassador during the war years. It later became a teacher training college attached to Hatfield Polytechnic and then the University of Hertfordshire’s Watford Campus. This all changed in 2004 when it was transformed by developers into a hamlet of new homes with the Gothic mansion as its centrepiece.

Lights, camera, action!

Opposite the church on Aldenham’s village green is a quaint crescent of houses built in the style of Letchworth Garden City. This picturesque village scene, not far from Elstree Studios, has been featured in films, television commercials and a Coldplay music video. It was also a location for the 1960s film Village of the Damned, while Wall Hall was featured in the 1957 film No Time for Tears starring Anna Neagle and The Vampire Lovers with actor George Cole.

From Aldenham’s parish church head along the right edge of the green, passing to the right of its crescent of cottages. Go past a modern house, The Chequers, on to the bridleway path, which for a while runs parallel to the access drive to Wall Hall, the former university. Continue along the bridleway with the golf course on your left and go left at a waymarker post and through a three-bar fence opening. Follow the path within a belt of scrub and trees, crossing many golf course tracks, until you reach a steel, one-bar gate.

Turn left on to a lane. In a few paces turn right over a low step-through stile and descend through a copse to the valley floor. At the access road to Wall Hall Pumping Station go to the right of its gates, on to a bridleway. Keep ahead at a path crossing now with woodland to your right. On the left, across the River Colne, you get views of Munden House amid its cedar trees. Beyond the woods that hide Wall Hall, follow the bridleway to River Lodge.

Ignore the track to the right and pass River Lodge, bearing right to continue on the bridleway and cross a step-over stile beside a gate. Beyond some electricity pylons the bridleway bears right. The river also bears right and you climb to pass a pumping station, with a good hedge now on the left.

At a junction turn right, signposted Public Bridleway 72, by the entrance to Netherwild Farm. The lane winds uphill to the 17th-century Hill Farm. Join a tarmac access road beside the farmhouse and pass farm buildings, bearing left to follow a track beside paddocks. After the farm cottages turn right at a junction and go uphill along a track which later descends to pass a sewage treatment works.

Immediately past the main entrance gates go right, on to a bridleway. The path bears left and becomes a metalled lane beyond a modern hay barn. Descend through the farmyard of Blackbirds Farm, following waymarkers. Keep left alongside some weatherboarded barns and carry straight on along a track, descending to the valley floor.

Turn left, going to the right of a hedge, and walk along the grassy margin of an arable field, beside the hedge. Go to a kissing gate and then keep along the left-hand side of the field towards Aldenham church. Continue ahead in the next field, keeping to the left edge and pass a gate in the corner, before joining a track. Turn right at the road and the path leads back to the churchyard and village green where the walk began.