Long Marston Area Guide
With its wonderful collection of period houses and many modern interpretations, Long Marston has a particularly distinctive streetscape and is blessed with beautiful surrounding countryside. There are miles of scenic footpaths waiting to be discovered including the Grand Union Canal towpath and Tring Reservoirs nature reserve, or you could jump in the car to nearby Tring, Berkhamsted or Aylesbury for a cultural, retail or caffeine fix.
About Long Marston
Sheep graze in fields behind hedgerows that run alongside the approach roads to Long Marston and provide a charming and rural backdrop of country living, reinforced within the village by the majestic All Saint’s Church and traditional Queen’s Head pub and restaurant.Catching up over coffee, the weekly shop, retail therapy or a cultural fix are all easy to come by in the neighbouring towns. Closest is lovely Tring, just 3.5 miles away, with coffee shops, restaurants, butchers and ironmongers, M&S Food Hall and Tesco. Equally lovely and larger Berkhamsted is just eight miles away and goes one further than Tring with an eclectic collection of independent boutiques and a Waitrose. Both towns have weekly street markets; Tring has the Pendley Court Theatre and Berkhamsted the gorgeous Rex Cinema.
If you want to go big, the modern shopping centres and large department stores of Aylesbury (15-20 mins by car), Hemel Hempstead and Milton Keynes (both around 30 mins) are accompanied by multiplex cinemas, sports and leisure clubs and, at Aylesbury, a recently completed £42m theatre. Alternatively, reward yourself with five-star pampering at the world-renowned Champneys Health Spa can approximately six miles to the south.
There are a good range of leisure and recreational options in the area, not least of which Long Marston Cricket Club, one of the most respected village cricket clubs in the Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire region with many junior teams and three senior teams. Next to the cricket ground is the ‘small but very sociable’ Long Marston Tennis club. Also nearby is the National Trust’s 5,000 acre Ashridge Estate and golf courses at Ashridge, Berkhamsted and The Grove.
The area has excellent local schooling, including Long Marston C-of-E primary school and Tring Comprehensive School. For those who prefer the independent sector, Tring Park School for the Performing Arts and Berkhamsted School both have superb reputations.
Cheddington and Tring stations, only 2.5 and 5 miles away respectively, have regular direct trains to London Euston taking 35-40 minutes. Wendover station, around six miles away, connects direct to Marylebone in around 50 minutes. The A41, less than four miles away, provides dual carriageway access direct to the M25 (junction 20), while Hemel Hempstead provides access to the M1 (junction 8). London Heathrow (34 miles) and Luton (18 miles) airports are also remarkably accessible.
History
Long Marston’s name derives from the word Mershton (literally, Marsh Farm), by which the village was known in 1287. By the mid 1700s this had evolved into Long Marcon.A place in history is assured as the scene of England’s last witch-hunt. Ruth Osborn was famously captured and drowned here - and thus presumably declared innocent, just moments after the horse had bolted.
Formerly part of nearby Tring, Long Marston’s ecclesiastical parish was joined with the neighbouring hamlet of Wilstone in 1894 to form the new civil parish of Tring Rural, separating the village from the larger market town.
We Recommend
- Explore the beautiful local countryside and Tring Reservoirs
- Enjoy real ales and village life at the Queens Head
- Hop on a train from nearby Cheddington station, and head into London
- Discover or develop your sporting prowess at the tennis and/or cricket club