KLLH&MS Website

Talks, Walks & News

This print from about 1840, shows the All Saints Church in Church Lane.
Traditional life in the village was then starting to undergo many changes. In contrast to the herdsman, a steam engine and carriages are just visible behind the four trees beyond the village school whose construction was at about the same time as the arrival of the railway.

Kings Langley, a village in Hertfordshire, lays claim to an extraordinary history. From local prehistoric remains to Roman settlement and a thriving Domesday community, through its Royal Palace in the 14th Century to a wealth of transport connections, farming and industry, the village can recount tales matched by few other places in the U.K.

Kings Langley Local History and Museum Society (KLLH&MS) was founded in 1969 the same year as the opening of the village library. The Kings Langley branch of the Workers Educational Association produced the book The History of Kings Langley edited by L. Mumby in 1963 and the formation of this history society developed from that major publication.

KLLH&MS was founded with two specific objectives. The first is collecting documents and artifacts, researching and recording histories (both written and oral), and maintaining archives of events and places in Kings Langley and the immediate surrounding area. The second part is to make this curated material available to the membership and the general public.

This society has built up an impressive collection of documents and photographs currently held in the village library where they are accessible, by appointment, to the public. A database, ‘Modes’ records about 25,000 documents, photos and objects. However, most of our collection of artifacts, along with the significant Ovaltine collection, is stored to museum standards in the Dacorum Heritage store in Berkhamsted. Dacorum Heritage is the registered museum authority for the Dacorum area.

KLLH&MS has always enjoyed a good reputation in the village and has produced a number of booklets as well as arranging a regular programme of presentations and exhibitions. The annual society Newsletter has included many in-depth and shorter articles of local historical interest. Collaboration with independent historians has resulted in the publication of Kings Langley a Hertfordshire Village 1991 by David Spain and Scott Hastie and more recently the acclaimed Palace Lives book by Michael Long. The society has been most fortunate in having the village library as its main base as a weekly meeting place for the archivists. We do have an additional temporary store in the village but we are still looking for suitable larger permanent premises to house our extensive collection of resources and possibly a display area.