ched; a
chair which he gave is still shown in the vestry. It may here be
mentioned that George Whitefield and George Fox are both known to have
visited Hitchin during their missionary wanderings. A little farther W.
is Mount Pleasant, thought to be the birthplace of George Chapman, the
translator of Homer. That he finished his translation in this
neighbourhood is matter of knowledge; but what is told of his family
connections with Hitchin is little more than conjecture.

Between the town and the station, G.N.R., stands a modern church of red
brick, dressed with Bath stone, E. Dec. in style. There are good oak
stalls and a sedile in the chancel.

Hitchin was noted during the sixteenth century for its trade in wood and
malt. There were at one time tan-yards beside the Hiz, and the
buckle-makers of Bucklersbury gave that street its name. The
malting-yards occupied much of the ground on both sides of Bancroft. The
making of lavender water in the town is referred to in the Introduction.

HOCKERIL is now the E. suburb of Bishop's Stortford, the bridge over the
Stort, near the Old Black Lion, connecting it with the town. It has a
modern Gothic church. The E. extremity of Hockeril is almost on the
border line between Hertfordshire and Essex.

HODDESDON (11/2 mile N. from Broxbourne Station, G.E.R.) is an ancient
market town, lying on high ground among beautifully diversified
surroundings. It is known, at least by name, to all readers of _The
Complete Angler_; but the old Thatched House, to which Izaak Walton
often resorted, has long been a thing of the past. The Bull Inn still
remains where it stood in the time of Prior, whose allusion to it in his
_Down Hall_ is invariably quoted in local handbooks:

"Into an old inn did this equipage roll,
At a town they call Hod'sdon, the sign of the Bull,
Near a nymph with an urn that divides the highway,
And into a puddle throws mother of tea".

The stone figure to which Prior refers is no longer to be seen. At the
S. end of the High Street, on the right when entering the town from
Broxbourne, stands _Rawdon House_, an embattled Jacobean mansion of red
brick, built by Sir Marmaduke Rawdon in 1622. It was restored in 1877,
and the stucco with which it was formerly coated was removed. A tower,
with cupola roof, is at the rear of the house, which is now a convent
for Augustinian nuns.

The Church of St. Catherine, close to the site of the old Thatched
House, but W