Chorleywood Memorial Hall, Common Road, Chorleywood, Rickmansworth, WD3 5LN

SPACE: Common Room - enter at the separate entrance to the LEFT of the memorial hall.

Location:  Chorleywood Memorial Hall, Common Road, Chorleywood, Rickmansworth, WD3 5LN

SPACE: Common Room - enter at the separate entrance to the LEFT of the memorial hall.

Getting here:

• By car / parking: We are located next to Chorleywood Common.  Plentiful parking is available in the Common, unrestricted after 3pm.  The town centre (with coffee shops) is a minute's drive away.
• By tube: We are conveniently located 6 minutes walk from Chorleywood station on the Metropolitan Line (Amersham or Chesham branches).  By tube, it is 7 minutes from Rickmansworth station or Chalfont & Latimer station, 10 minutes from Amersham station, 12 minutes from Northwood station (London), and 16 minutes from Chesham station or Pinner station (London).
• By bus: Bus 336 (from Watford/North Bushey) stops directly outside the hall (1 min walk)

Coming by tube?  Take the Metropolitan Line to Chorleywood Station, 10 minutes from Amersham, 12 minutes from Northwood (Northwest London), and 16 minutes from Chesham or Pinner (Northwest London).

Some fun facts about the Location & Area

Chorleywood Memorial Hall is a brick-built structure built in 1922 on the same plans as the village hall in Bovingdon.  It was expanded and refurbished in 2015, at which time the Common Room, was added.

Chorleywood is a beautiful village a few miles northwest of Rickmansworth at the river Chess that was constituted in 1845 when it had 208 houses and a population of 939 (compare today at 11,000 residents). 

It is part of the Three Rivers district in south-west Hertfordshire (the three rivers being the Rivers Chess, Gade, and Colne). 

In 2004, Chorleywood was named as the 'happiest place to live in the UK' out of 32,482 communities surveyed by the Oxford Research Centre.

Settlement in this happy place dates back to the Paleolithic era when plentiful flint supply assisted tool development by early humans.  The Romans built a village complete with a mill and brewery.  The name Chorleywood derives from 'ceorla' meaning peasants and 'leah' meaning a clearing or wood.  By 1278 it was known as Churl's Wood, Norman for 'Peasant's Wood'.  In Anglo-Saxon England, Chorleywood was situated on the dividing line between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex (now Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire). 

Chorleywood appears to have a long history of creative entrepreneurism:  In 1663, after the passage of the Turnpike Act, Chorleywood residents leveraged the strategic position of the village to charge civilians to use the east-west road from Hatfield to Reading.  In the 1960s, the British Baking Industries Research Association in Chorleywood improved upon the American bread-making process, resulting in the Chorleywood bread process, which is now used in over 80% of commercial bread production throughout the UK!

There is also a fascinating connection to America.  William Penn (a Quaker) lived and married in Chorleywood, and then founded the Pennsylvania Colony in the USA with settlers from Chorleywood, Rickmansworth, and nearby towns in southern Buckinghamshire.

Further reading: Source