Chipperfield

The rural parish includes the hamlet of Tower Hill.

• Country — England • Type — Village • Official Name — Chipperfield and the war memorial • Population — 1,753 • Population Ref — (2011 Census) • Shire District — Dacorum • Shire County — Hertfordshire • Region — East of England • Constituency Westminster — South West Hertfordshire • Post Town — KINGS LANGLEY • Postcode District — WD4 • Postcode Area — WD • Dial Code — 01923 • Os Grid Reference — TL043016

Prehistoric activity in the area is testified by the presence of two tumuli on the common. Besides being burial mounds these may have designated the boundary of lands worked by Bronze Age communities in the Gade and Chess valleys. For centuries Chipperfield was an outlying settlement of Kings Langley consisting only of scattered houses. The first documentary evidence of the name is found in 1316, when Edward II bequeathed 'the Manor House of Langley the closes adjoining together with the vesture of Chepervillewode for Fewel and other Necessaries' to the Dominican Black Friars. The name is probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon ceapere meaning a trader together with feld meaning field. This suggests that there was some form of market or trading of goods here in early times. The Manor House, on the east side of the common, is a late medieval hall house but was extensively rebuilt by Thomas Gulston, before 1591. It is a Grade II* listed building. By the 1830s Chipperfield was large enough to warrant the building of both Anglican and Baptist churches and became a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1848. For a number of years the Lords of the Manor were the Blackwell family who were benefactors to the village. Two of the family's sons were killed during World War One. Second Lieutenant Charles Blackwell (4th battalion, Royal Fusiliers) was wounded at the Second Battle of Ypres and died in France in July 1915. Lieutenant William Gordon Blackwell (8th battalion, Royal Fusiliers), the younger of the two brothers, was killed in action during the Battle of the Somme on 5 October 1916. As a memorial the Blackwell family gave the village the village club, which remained a club until recently. It has now been renamed Blackwells and is both a bar and cafe open to the public next to the common. The names of 38 local men who died in World War One are inscribed on the War Memorial on the village green and repeated on a memorial plaque inside the church. An additional name appears on a war grave in the churchyard. There are also the names of 10 men who died in World War Two. In 1936 Chipperfield Common was gifted to the local authority to be maintained in consultation with the people of Chipperfield. Since the end of World War II the village has dramatically expanded with housing estates built during the 1940s and an extensive council estate to the east of Croft Lane built in the 1960s. In 1963 Chipperfield was split off from Kings Langley and Chipperfield Parish Council was created. In 1959 the actor and comedian Peter Sellers purchased the Manor House on the east side of the common. He lived there until 1962 attracting many famous stars and film moguls to visit him in the village. The former U.S. President Jimmy Carter traced his family roots to a John Carter of Jeffery's Farm, situated to the south east of the village.