ABSTRACT
Caldecote lies on the north Hertfordshire chalk-lands close to the border with Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. The county of Hertford forms a part of the geological region of London and the Thames Valley, which includes Essex, Middlesex, Buckinghamshire with parts of Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, and Kent. The chief physical feature of the region is the chalk escarpment which stretches out in a northeasterly direction from near Calne in Wiltshire to Royston in Hertfordshire. The clunch-and-flint built church of St Mary Magdalene stands in the centre of a small rectangular churchyard, to the north of the manor house. By the time of the Domesday Survey a road probably already branched from Ashwell Street on a northwesterly direction, passing to the north-east of the church and the rectory site to a 'T' junction. One branch ran to the north-east, along the foot of Ashwell Hill, while the south-western branch passed to the north-west of the rectory site, into the fields.
