EDITORIAL

Welcome to 2026! We’ve had one month already, how time flies!

This edition looks back at our Christmas festivities. It also features an unusual article by local historian, Mike Allen. He imagines a meeting with a young lady who lived two hundred years ago in a house occupied by his family a hundred years later. She describes South Mimms as it was in the early 19^th century before the village was cut in half by the construction of Telford’s main road from London to Holyhead, effectively what we know as St. Albans Road. He plans a further article set a century later, drawing on his own family’s experiences. Also to come next time are further memories of a London cab driver, but we’ll have to wait for that.

As usual there’s some news of the churches, this time St. Giles, and the search for a new Vicar.

Many in South Mimms will have been saddened to hear of the death of Veronica Tinsley. With her dies a fund of anecdotes and stories about the village. She was a regular attendee at Tuesday Teas in the church. Conversation there is poorer without her. Our condolences go to her family.

Wendy Hunt thanks the South Mymms Community Group for their kind donation to the Playgroup which runs on Friday mornings in the Village Hall.