My home setting is a short stroll from the River Lea. The River Lea is a very important part of our village history. It’s how Wheathampstead came to be.
After the ice age, the first human immigrants decided to settle here. They travelled from the north of the continent, then down through the river.
On finding this very valley, they began to inhabit the land that was dense with rich pasture and woodland.
There have been many historically significant archaeological finds from the Stone Age, Iron Age, and Bronze Age in the valley. There are rich links to the Catuvellauni tribe, which fiercely protected this area from Julius Caesar’s Roman rule until conquest.

Every time I or a child unearth a piece of flint from the earth in the garden, it’s a wonderful reminder of how Palaeolithic civilizations once existed and thrived here. I delight in how resourceful nature can be in sustaining our existence, if only we learn to navigate and understand her like our ancestors did before us.

What history lives in the nature you access in your community?

Dominique x