Flamstead is an ancient community with a documented history going back nearly a thousand years. The first record of the village is from 1006 when it is mentioned in a Charter granted by King Ethelred to the Abbot of St Albans. Eighty years later, the Domesday Book records Flamstead as being held by Ralph de Todeni having been granted to his father, Roger, for services rendered to William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. The de Todeni family were Lords of the Manor for 244 years. In 1298, Robert, the last of the line, was granted permission to hold a market in Flamstead every Thursday and a fair for five days annually at the Feast of St Leonard, which suggests that at that time it was a place of some importance.
Other important buildings in the parish include the mansion at Beechwood. Today it is a preparatory school, but the first recorded building on the site was the little nunnery of St Giles-in-the-Wood, founded about 1120 and dissolved by Henry VIII in 1537. Also of interest are the Almshouses opposite the Three Blackbirds, which are dated 1669 and the Three Blackbirds pub itself, the western wing of which is sixteenth century.
“A New History of Flamstead” was published in 1999 by the Flamstead Society, for those interested.