Tring grew up where the Roman Akeman Street crossed the ancient Icknield Way. A sizeable village by the time of Domesday Book, it had become a bustling market town with a Charter by 1315. Apart from a large silk mill, employing 600 in the 1830s, it had developed cottage industries, like pillow-lace and straw plaiting whereby it was spared the wholesale Victorian improvements that demolished the older fabric of so many other towns and retains much of its old-world charm.

Though the canal and the railway, both engineering feats, arrived in the early 19th century, they did not impair the beauty of the area - evidenced by the purchase of Tring Park by the Rothschilds in 1872, where Christopher Wren had designed the mansion for Henry Guy who is said to have entertained his friends Charles II and Nell Gwynn there. As well as royal connections, Tring was the home of George Washington's ancestors. But this book is not only about the rich, royal or famous; it is mainly concerned with the ordinary people who created the town of today.

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