Sarratt dates back to around AD 700 and is a small parish of only 1,540 acres on the Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire border, with a population of around 2,600. Because of it beautiful, traditionally 'English' surroundings, Sarratt is often used for filming; 'Four Weddings & A Funeral', 'Murder Most Foul' and 'The Woman In Black' were all filmed here.

Another interesting claim to fame is that when John Le Carre started to write his Cold War espionage thrillers in the 60's he invented a fictional spy training school, the Nursery, and set it in Sarratt! He chose Sarratt because it was a beautiful, very English backwater of brick and flint houses, tidy lawns, pretty village green, traditional pubs, 12th-century church, water meadows and a stream called the Chess. In novel after novel, Le Carre's spies - Smiley, Alleline, Guillam, Lacon - refer repeatedly to their early days in the Nursery, a brick mansion with barred windows, surprisingly decent furniture, a swimming pool, trees stricken with Dutch elm disease, and a Nissen hut at the bottom of the garden. And it was here, in 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' that the traitor Bill Haydon, wearing striped pyjamas and an overcoat, was found late at night sitting on a bench by the moonlit cricket pitch with his eyes open and his neck expertly broken. He had told a guard that he was going out to examine the state of the wicket.

Le Carre discovered Sarratt in 1949 when he was 18 and working briefly nearby as a sales assistant flogging towels and carpets in Clements draper's shop in Watford High Street, 'the Harrods of Hertfordshire'. He chose Sarratt for the Nursery, he says, because it seemed a 'secret haven, a forgotten piece of real England just around the corner from subtopia... at the edge of the real world but safe from it'. He saw it as the heart 'of an English mystery of which I was some kind of undefined inheritor' and because 'in the world of George Smiley and his people, after all, there is no place more dangerous than home'.

Today, the villagers of Sarratt are trying to raise funds to repair the church roof and enlarge the village hall, and uniquely they have had the splendid idea of doing so by publishing an illustrated collection of four short stories that are centred on the fictional spy school in Sarratt, 'Sarratt & The Draper of Watford', with the stories being centred on the fictional spy school in Sarratt. Two registered charities, 'The Friends of Holy Cross Church' and 'The Sarratt Village Hall Trust', will share the proceeds equally. To help maintain the beauty of Sarratt, you can help raise funds by buying the book at

Chess Valley Walk

Enjoy a 10 mile walk through the Chilterns following the River Chess from Chesham to Rickmansworth. Click for more details on the Chess Valley Walk. And don't forget to pop into The Boot along the way...!

Milton's Cottage

Milton's Cottage is the only extant home of John Milton, the great English poet and parliamentarian, in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire. It was in this grade 1 listed XVIth century cottage, described by Thomas Ellwood as "that pretty box in St. Giles, Chalfont", that Milton completed Paradise Lost, and the idea of Paradise Regained was put to him. The four ground floor museum rooms contain important editions of Milton's poetry, together with many prose writings that were published during his lifetime and shortly after. Hear of the extraordinary career of this blind genius vividly described, in his refuge from the plague where he wrote some of the finest poetry and feel the ambience of the setting. The thoughts of John Milton and the diverse nature of his published works are the evidence that demonstrates why he is one of the greatest Englishmen. Milton's Cottage is just under 8 miles from The Boot. For more information, visit the website at

Chenies Manor House & Gardens

Located about 3 miles from The Boot, this historic and enchanting Tudor Manor House is set in the charming estate village of Chenies in Buckinghamshire overlooking the Chess valley. Visit the website at

Content checked 26th May 2008