Woodcock Hill Village Green
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Woodcock Hill Village Green or Woodcock Hill Open Space is an area of grass and woodland in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire in England. It was designated a Village Green in 2008 to prevent development of the site.
Woodcock Hill was first recorded as land donated by Offa, king of Mercia in the late eighth century, to St Albans Abbey. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 the leading courtier Sir Anthony Denny acquired the land from King Henry VIII. In 1588 it was the location of one of the chain of beacons used to warn of the approach of the Spanish Armada, and during the Napoleonic Wars it was one of the Admiralty's chain of telegraph stations, sending messages to Hampstead Heath to the south and St Albans to the north. In the 1860s two railway tunnels were built at Woodcock Hill, and clay from the tunnels was used to make brick for local houses.[1]