Maple Cross is thought to be a contraction of Maypole Cross and the village was once a place where maypole dancing took place. The nearby village of Mill End is on record as having complained to the lord of the manor about the noise of the dancing in 1588. The village stands on the western edge of the River Colne flood plain with the river a third of a mile to the east. The village has no churches, historically it lacked the population to support one and its residents were part of the parish of St Thomas’s West Hyde a mile to the south.

Until the Second World War, Maple Cross consisted of an inn, a blacksmith’s shop and a few cottages. After WW2 it was intentionally developed as a dormitory for workers in the nearby towns and at the new sewage treatment plant by the river. Today there are around 800 postwar council houses with some of these have been sold into private ownership.

The ancient route known as Old Shire Lane runs in a north south direction at the summit of the rising high ground half a mile to the west. It is at least of Saxon age as it designated the boundary between the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia. Today it forms the boundary between the counties of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Parts of it take the form of a hollow way from centuries of use embedding the path into the earth.


Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence