Hertford Heath is a village of hidden treasures and colourful characters and stories. Embracing the ‘liberty’ of Little Amwell as well as Haileybury College, the present village has a Green which once contained ponds where local women did their laundry, a splendid collection of pubs and modern housing, cheek by jowl with ancient woodland through which runs a section of the Roman road, Ermine Street. This book’s title, Beating about the Bush, refers to the Hertfordshire term, “bushes”, meaning sparsely wooded heathland. Pam Kimpton knows the village well – her mother’s family has lived there for five generations. She has taken part herself in most village activities and delights in recalling the fêtes, festivals, fairs and other celebrations of her time and times before. She has also listened to the stories of young and old, retrieved their photos and memories, and pieced the whole together in a rich patchwork of village life. There are more than a hundred black and white photos, and four pages of photos in colour.
I found this book to be both interesting and informative, with plenty of material for the social as well as family historian. It's a shame in a way that she did not start her research just a few years earlier when many of the older residents were still alive, but as an observation of a period in time when so much upheaval was experienced by the village it does a good job. My two main criticisms were: (a) Many of the pictures were not reproduced to a very high standard (possibly the originals were poor copies). This made the task of looking for ancestors or known relatives almost impossible (even through a magnifying glass).(b) The book should have been sub-titled "The Bob Akers Appreciation Society Handbook" as I think I spotted reference to him in most chapters-not counting photographs!Anyway it's on my bookshelf as an historical resource.
Michael Furlong
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