ALBURY (31/2 miles E. of Braughing Station) is a village near the river Ash.  The church, dedicated to St. Mary, dates from the fourteenth century; it was recently restored.  There was an earlier structure so far back as the days of Stephen, in whose reign Robert de Sigillo gave the profits of the church at Eldeberei to Geoffery, first Treasurer of St. Paul’s Church, London.  An interesting will, dated 4th November, 1589, records that Marmaduke Bickerdy, Vicar of Aldebury, gave an acre of land in the neighbourhood to provide a sum for distribution among the poor on every Good Friday.  In the chancel the mutilated effigies of a man and woman are said to represent Sir Walter de la Lee and his wife.  Sir Walter sat in nine Parliaments in the interests of the county—­at Westminster, Northampton and Cambridge, and was Sheriff of Herts and Essex.  He died during the reign of Richard II. Albury Hall, close by, is a fine old mansion, where the “Religeous, Just and Charitable” Sir Edward Atkins, Knight, and Baron of the Exchequer, died in 1669.  The village is usually a quiet spot, with little business, but it is pleasantly situated; the proximity of the river and some scattered cottages and farms enhance its attractiveness.

Albury End is a small hamlet about 1 mile S.W. of Albury.

[Illustration:  THE PARISH CHURCH, ALDBURY]

ALDBURY (11/2 mile E. from Tring Station) is a village on the Buckinghamshire border, nestled in a beautiful valley close to Ashridge Park (q.v.).  It is the “Clinton Magna” of Bessie Costrell, and the author of that story, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, lived at Stocks, a few minutes’ walk from the village.  On the Tring side Aldbury is sheltered by swelling fields and to the E. beech woods cover the hillside, which is topped by the “Aldbury Monument,” a granite column about 100 feet high erected to the memory of Francis, third Duke of Bridgewater, whose labours and enterprise for the extension of canals earned for him the well-known title “the father of inland navigation”.  As a village of the Old English type Aldbury has perhaps no equal in the county.  In the centre is the green and pond, under the shadow of an enormous elm; close by stand the stocks and whipping-post, recently in excellent preservation.  The Church of St. John the Baptist is E.E.; it was restored in 1867.  Visitors should notice the old sundial on a pedestal in the churchyard, and the Verney Chapel, which is separated from the nave by a screen of stone, and contains a monument to Sir Robert Whittingham, who was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury.  The church also contains memorials of the Hides and Harcourts, families who left several charities to the poor of the parish.  In the days of Edward the Confessor the manor of Aldeberie[g] was held by one Alwin, the king’s thane.  The ascent of the wooded slope towards the Bridgewater monument takes the visitor through one of the most beautiful districts in the county, and a noble prospect stretches before him as he looks back through the beeches towards the village in the valley beneath.