Imagine a gently sloping grassy field strewn with cowpats, weeds and broken branches, on the left side of what is now the Shenley Hill end of Williams Way. An old lodge house stands on today’s junction of the two roads, and half a mile away along the stately drive lies the Newberries mansion and its outhouses.
All around are fields and trees, acres of them, stretching down a long steep slope to the London Midland Railway below, which arrows its way through the Radlett valley. Dotted here and there are the big houses whose owners daily commute to London on the steam trains. In between are much smaller dwellings rented by farming folk who make up the bulk of the population – about 360 souls in all.