Boxmoor

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Boxmoor is a small suburb of Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, England.

The area of meadow land known as Boxmoor was purchased in secret by a collection of Hemel Hempstead townspeople in 1581 because they feared it would be enclosed and they would be denied grazing rights. The trust, a legal entity they formed in 1594, has survived over 400 years up to the present day. It once gave "Pasture Tickets " to its members to allow them to graze a specified number of livestock on its land. Today, the moor is managed by the same entity, The Box Moor Trust and is used primarily for leisure, recreation and wildlife conservation. The summer grazing of rare breed cattle and sheep continues, however and the "Boxmoor ponies" are a local attraction. ^[1]

On 11 March 1802, highwayman Robert Snooks was hanged at the scene of his crime on Boxmoor for the robbery and murder of a postboy. Snooks was the last man to be executed in England for highway robbery. His gravestone can still be seen in a corner of the meadow land from which the parish takes its name.

Sections of the Boxmoor trust land have been compulsorily purchased by a succession of transport schemes since the eighteenth century. This is because it is located in the valley of the River Bulbourne which is one of the few easy crossing places in the Chiltern Hills for travellers from London to the English Midlands. Corridors of land have been sold first of all to the Grand Junction Canal in 1795, then to the London and Birmingham Railway in 1837, and finally for the A41 trunk road improvement in the 1990s. Additional land to replace this has been purchased by the Trust so that it now extends up on to the chalk hills to the west.

The location was developed into a suburb in the nineteenth century when the London and Birmingham Railway was forced, by local landed interests, to build its main line and station to the west of Hemel Hempstead. Boxmoor offered fast commuting to London combined with a small country town life, attractive to wealthier commuters.

The area was subsumed into the expanded Hemel Hempstead new town during the 1950s and 1960s but retains a local character. The station was then renamed from Boxmoor to Hemel Hempstead.

The area has little industry and limited commerce but its mostly Victorian family houses are in demand for those who work elsewhere in Hemel Hempstead and especially commuters who use the rail station to reach London in around 30–40 minutes.

The remains of a Roman villa have been discovered under the station car park.