Hitchin


Hitchin,

city (1991 pop. 33,480), Hertfordshire, SE England. Hitchin was the site of a monastery in OffaOffa
, d. 796, king of Mercia (757–96). He succeeded Æthelbald to the throne, but it was some years before he attained the power of his predecessor. Gradually he asserted his overlordship in Kent and then Sussex, and by 774 his charters styled him rex Anglorum
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's time and appears in the Domesday BookDomesday Book
, record of a general census of England made (1085–86) by order of William I (William the Conqueror). The survey ascertained the economic resources of most of the country for purposes of more accurate taxation.
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 as a royal manor named Hiz. Corn and cattle are traded at a biweekly market. Industries include building contracting, engineering, tanning, parchment making, medicinal distilling, and rose growing. Henry Bessemer, the inventor, and George ChapmanChapman, George,
1559?–1634, English dramatist, translator, and poet. He is as famous for his plays as for his poetic translations of Homer's Iliad (1612) and Odyssey (1614–15).
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 were born in Hitchin.