Professor Quatermass in Hemel Hempstead

Last night I watched Quatermass 2 on Talking Pictures TV – it's currently on the stations catch-up service TPTV Encore.

In the clip above you can see Professor Quatermass sweeping into the remote settlement of Winnerton Flats. In reality, it's the new town of Hemel Hempstead under construction.

The road we see him driving down is Galley Hill, the houses where he stops of ask directions are in Someries Road and the community centre is on Boxted Road. See Reelstreets for some now and then photographs.

This is of particular interest to me as I lived in Boxted Road as a small boy from 1964 to 1969. Everything was completed by then and I don't remember anything as temporary-looking as the community centre.

Not far from these film locations in Hemel Hempstead you will find a Quartermass Road and Quartermass Close. A misspelled tribute to the film? No, they have a darker origin.

Here's a report from the Derby Daily Telegraph for 17 July 1896:

A Girl Outraged and Murdered at Hemel Hempstead 

At six o'clock on Thursday night the dead body of a young girl named Quatermass was found by the side of lonely lane near Hemel Hempstead, Herts. There was every evidence that the child had been brutally outraged and murdered. 

A blow, apparently with a heavy, sharp-edged instrument, had been inflicted the back of her head. There was large pool of blood in the lane, and the body had been carried some 50 yards and hidden behind the hedge. 

The child had been Fields End Farm, Boxted, and was on her way home when attacked. No arrest has been made.

Note the name used in this early report: Quatermass. The girl's first names were Katharine Mabel or Katie.

It seems the family used or was called both Quatermass and Quartermass, but later reports, such as that from the inquest on the child where such things were presumably checked, used the latter form. And if "outraged" meant sexually assaulted in newspaper reports of the day, then the later consensus is that she was not attacked in this way.

There is a Fields End Farm nearby – indeed, I used to play there in the Sixties – but most reports, and the story was reported across the country, say that Katie had called at Boxted Farm because she was murdered.

No one was ever convicted of the killing. The shepherd who found her body was charged, but the case was thrown out early on as the evidence was deemed to weak to form the basis of a conviction.

I don't suppose Hammer Films knew this story when they sent Professor Quatermass to Hemel Hempstead, so it stands as a remarkable coincidence.