Hitchin Nub News aims to support our community, promoting shops, businesses, charities, clubs and sports groups.

We profile some of these businesses and organisations regularly in a feature called 'Up Close in Hitchin' while also encouraging opinion pieces from our readers and trusted contributors, including the brilliant Sparky.

So, read on for Sparky's weekly Nub News column which is also a wonderful tribute to a much-missed family friend of his.

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Before we get stuck into this week's tasty serving- which will include the usual locally-sourced ingredients of chalk, trees and hills but with added ghosts and rabbits - I must first take a diversion into the world of place name etymology. Oh, and legs.

Some may have noticed that the suffixes 'hoe' and 'hoo' occasionally pop up in place names in our area, and further afield, too.

Examples include Knocking Hoe near Pegsdon; Cainhoe Castle near Clophill; Ivinghoe Beacon near Tring; Lilley Hoo and Hoo Bit near Telegraph Hill and of course in today's subject, Sharpenhoe Clappers.

'Hoe' in this context derives from the Old English word 'hÅh', meaning 'heel'.

And to understand what on earth this has to do with our local hills you'll either have to lie face down on the floor; ask someone else to do it for you- or slightly less excitingly- just use your imagination.

Whilst in this position the lower part of your leg will rise gently to the summit of your heel, while the underside of your foot reaches the same high point much more quickly and steeply.

The similarity of this profile with the outline of a classic chalk escarpment- with its steep 'scarp' slope and gentler 'dip' slope- was noticed by our ancestors and where it occurs 'hoe' or one of its variants were sometimes weaved into the place name.

And in the case of today's subject, the 'Sharp' prefix means exactly what you think it does.

Sharpenhoe Clappers is a prominent outlier of that lengthy and beautiful chalk escarpment whose scarp slope base is followed in part by the B655 road as it snakes and dips from Deacon Hill in the east all the way to Sundon in the west, via Hexton and Barton Springs.

Our hill rises steeply 60 metres (200 feet) above the surrounding plain and for you geology fans, it is comprised of a type of chalk known as Melbourne Rock, topped with clay-like glacial drift.

A deservedly popular beauty spot, the Clappers were bequeathed to the National Trust by W.A. Robertson in 1937 in memory of his two brothers who were killed in the Great War.

His will specified that his bequest was to be used to purchase land that could act as appropriate and permanent memorials to his siblings and all other victims of the conflict.

In total nine parcels of land were bought, including the Clappers and another nearby in the downs near Whipsnade, now known as Robertson's Corner.

The listed memorial at Sharpenhoe, erected in 1939, has a sombre dedication to his lost brothers and is a perfect place for quiet reflection and contemplation, as are the cathedral-like woods. The site was chosen wisely.

And near to the obelisk is evidence of an even earlier history- the remains of iron age earthworks that once protected the ancient inhabitants of this hilltop in a so-called 'promontory' fort.

The Clappers

The Clappers provided an ideal site for such a settlement as the constructors only had to build a ditch and a rampart at one end of this impressive natural spur of land to effectively defend it.

The modern footpath to and from the NT car park now passes easily through the remnants of these defences but when first built the ditch would have been significantly deeper and the higher earth rampart would have been topped with a sharpened wooden palisade.

At approximately 3000 years old, this site is the most westerly of a small chain of four local hillforts that follows the ridge of higher land all the way from the 'East Anglian Heights' near Ashwell.

And I must admit to being inordinately excited when I first realised that you can clearly see the distinctive shape of Sharpenhoe Clappers on the horizon when looking south west from Arbury Banks, the most easterly of these four forts on top of a hill near Ashwell, nearly 20 miles away.

It is also visible from near the fort at Wilbury Hill in Letchworth. I imagine that our ancient forebears would have also enjoyed and maybe employed this same view.

Back here in the present it is easy to imagine that the majestic beech trees that contribute so much to the Clappers beauty have always been there.

But reports suggest that these were only planted in the mid-1800s and this date would certainly tie-in with the trees' current size. But what was there before them? More woodland? Scrub? Grassland? Even further back we now know that there was a settlement but what else has happened on this plateau?

The Clappers' distinctive and gorgeous name derives from the French 'clapier'- a rabbit hutch- and our Norman invaders, like the Romans before them, certainly brought domestic rabbits with them in large numbers for the pot and for their fur.

And despite the French word for 'hutch' being used it is much more likely that the numerous bunnies being bred here were kept in substantial purpose-built earth mounds and enclosures.

It's great that this previous usage lives-on through the name.

So that's the rodents, but what of the haunting?

This legend derives from the apparent ghostly presence of an iron age warrior chief known as Cassivellaunus.

It was he - the leader of the Catevallauni, our dominant local tribe - who led the local resistance against the invading Roman army of 43AD.

He was finally betrayed and killed during a battle at yet another of our local forts - Ravensburgh Castle in nearby Hexton- in 54AD.

Unlike the other three forts we have mentioned- those at Arbury Banks, Wilbury Hill and Sharpenhoe Clappers- the site of Ravensburgh, the most impressive and most historically important of the forts, is now firmly on private land.

It is clearly marked on OS maps, however, and a footpath runs within 500 metres of the densely wooded valley hillside that conceals it.

It's a beautiful walk and can also be very atmospheric, perhaps exacerbated by the site's national importance.

And talking of atmosphere, if you have ever been to Sharpenhoe Clappers you will certainly have seen the spirit of Cassivellaunus, unless you visited on a rare day of totally blue skies, for he apparently manifests himself in the clouds that regularly wreath the hill.

None of that low-end ghostly rattling of chains, white sheets or whooing for him, just occasional and fleeting glimpses of his defiant face within the swirling mist and vapor. Which is just as it should be for such a defiant legend, I think.

A visit to the Clappers may well have to wait for many of us but this wonderful icon will still be there in the future: a true 'sunlit upland' for us to look forward to at the end of these dark times.

It is a place that can inspire quiet reflection and contemplation, as well as occasional noisier outbursts, such as 'look at that view' as you regard the nearby Sundon Hills and all the time being watched by the Chieftain high above.

How wonderful.

(In memory of Don Smith 1935-2005)