NORTHCHURCH, or Berkhampstead St. Mary, forms one long street with Great Berkhampstead, but is a separate village, 1 mile W. from Berkhampstead Station, L.&N.W.R. The cruciform church is Dec.; it stands in a small graveyard close to the high road to Tring. The most curious memorial is the brass near the porch to Peter the Wild Boy, who was found wild in a forest in Hanover in 1725 and brought to England at the desire of Queen Caroline. He lived at a farm at Broadway (_q.v._) and died in 1785. There is also a curious sentence about this church in Chauncy: "Henry Axtil, a rich Man starved himself, and was buried here April 12, 1625, 1 Car. I." The church was entirely restored in 1883, when the present N. aisle was added. _Northfield_, a small hamlet, is a little S. from Ivinghoe (Bucks). NORTON, near the tiny river Ivel and the Roman Icknield Way, is 1 mile W. from Baldock. The large building on the hill-top close by is the Three Counties Asylum. The manor belonged to the Abbot of St. Albans at the time of the Conquest; and in the year 1260 Roger de Norton, who took his name from this village, became the twenty-fourth abbot of that monastery. The church, E.E., is of great antiquity, some parts of it having been little altered; it is of flint, and stands at the N.E. end of the village. It contains two or three old memorials, but none of historic interest. A pretty walk from the church leads through Norton Bury and beside the Ivel to Radwell Mill. _Norton Green_, between Knebworth Park and Stevenage, is 1/2 mile W. from the Great North Road. It is a small hamlet. _Nup End_ (11/2 mile W. from Knebworth Station, G.N.R.) is almost one with Knebworth Green. Codicote church is 1 mile S.W. _Nuthampstead_ (about 5 miles N.E. from Buntingford Station, G.E.R.) is a large hamlet on the Essex border. The parish churches of Barkway (W.), Anstey (S.W.), and Meesdon (S.E.) may all be reached within a short walk. OFFLEY or OFFLEY ST. LEGER (3 miles S.W. from Hitchin) is a village at the meeting of the ways from Hitchin, Temple Dinsley, and Lilley. It owes its name to Offa, King of the Mercians, who had a palace here, as we learn from his life by Matthew Paris, and its adjunct to the St. Legiers, who became Lords of the Manor soon after the Conquest. Miss Hester Salusbury, who became Mrs. Thrale, and afterwards Mrs. Piozzi, used as a child to visit at _Offley Place_, in the park close to the church. The old mansion was built by Sir Richard Spencer in 1600, and in part rebuilt early last century, when its style was changed from Jacobean to a form of Gothic.