Between the town and the station, G.N.R., stands a modern church of red brick, dressed with Bath stone, E. Dec. in style.  There are good oak stalls and a sedile in the chancel.

Hitchin was noted during the sixteenth century for its trade in wood and malt.  There were at one time tan-yards beside the Hiz, and the buckle-makers of Bucklersbury gave that street its name.  The malting-yards occupied much of the ground on both sides of Bancroft.  The making of lavender water in the town is referred to in the Introduction.

HOCKERIL is now the E. suburb of Bishop’s Stortford, the bridge over the Stort, near the Old Black Lion, connecting it with the town.  It has a modern Gothic church.  The E. extremity of Hockeril is almost on the border line between Hertfordshire and Essex.

HODDESDON (11/2 mile N. from Broxbourne Station, G.E.R.) is an ancient market town, lying on high ground among beautifully diversified surroundings.  It is known, at least by name, to all readers of The Complete Angler; but the old Thatched House, to which Izaak Walton often resorted, has long been a thing of the past.  The Bull Inn still remains where it stood in the time of Prior, whose allusion to it in his Down Hall is invariably quoted in local handbooks: 

    “Into an old inn did this equipage roll,
      At a town they call Hod’sdon, the sign of the Bull,
    Near a nymph with an urn that divides the highway,
      And into a puddle throws mother of tea”.

The stone figure to which Prior refers is no longer to be seen.  At the S. end of the High Street, on the right when entering the town from Broxbourne, stands Rawdon House, an embattled Jacobean mansion of red brick, built by Sir Marmaduke Rawdon in 1622.  It was restored in 1877, and the stucco with which it was formerly coated was removed.  A tower, with cupola roof, is at the rear of the house, which is now a convent for Augustinian nuns.

The Church of St. Catherine, close to the site of the old Thatched House, but W. from the opposite side of the High Street, dates from 1732; the tower was added in 1888.  It is a large building of red-brick, in mixed styles, with small windows of stained glass in the chancel.  It is not interesting.

Hollesmore End (2 miles W. from Redbourn Station, M.R.) is a small hamlet.

HOLWELL is a village and parish transferred from Bedfordshire to Hertfordshire in 1897.  It is about 11/2 mile N.E. from Pirton (q.v.); the nearest station is Henlow, M.R., 2 miles N. The Church of St. Peter, very much restored, was originally Perp.  There is a xii century holy water basin, and a very curious old brass to Robert Wodehouse, a priest (1515), with figures of two wodehowses (wild forest men) and of a chalice and paten.

Hook’s Cross (2 miles E. from Knebworth Station, G.N.R.) is a hamlet on the main road from Hertford to Stevenage. Frogmore Hall stands in a small park 1/2 mile E.; it is a large modern mansion of red brick and stone facings.  The grounds are very picturesque, and are divided by the river Beane.