It didn’t get the best new town architecture, but you can find fragments of the old landscape threaded through
What’s going for it? I bought my first album in WHSmith in Hemel Hempstead. Kings Of The Wild Frontier, by Adam and the Ants, since you ask. On cassette. Like Mr Ant, Hemel was the future once. In 1980, it was in full new-town mode. To get there, Dad had to negotiate the dual carriageways, ring roads and the infamous Magic Roundabout, past the Kodak HQ, the fabulous Dacorum sports centre where I learned to doggy paddle, and perfectly manicured water meadow municipal gardens. I loved Hemel. Especially as it was two towns in one. To the north of the new town was the old town: higgledy high street, antique shops, Norman church and bow-fronted cottages. Now Hemel is three towns in one, the old town and the new town having in turn been gobbled up by the future. Hemel’s new new town is mostly composed of executive homes, Cineworld and the brassy Marlowes shopping mall. The Kodak site has become a luxury apartment complex. And doggy paddling is outgunned by “extreme sports” centres and an indoor ski centre. The future has better coffee. But, call me middle aged, I kind of preferred the past.
The case against If you don’t like the postwar feel, with the 1980s grafted on, it won’t be for you. Though you can get your heritage kicks in the fragments of the old landscape threaded through the new.
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