This collection of fifteen well-illustrated essays derives from two local history conferences held at Madingley Hall, Cambridge. A substantial introduction by the editors leads into four overviews by well-known urban historians. These are followed by eight local studies of Hertfordshire towns, covering Hertford and Ware, Ashwell, Royston, Hitchin, Berkhamsted, Barnet, Watford and St Albans. The volume is completed by two thematic studies on the impact, respectively, of the dissolution of the monasteries and of industrial development. As a whole, the collection represents a very useful collaboration between academic and local historians, with sufficient methodological explanation to assist the volume's more general readership.

In the first overview essay, Tom Williamson investigates urban origins, demonstrating the importance of pre-conquest political and administrative frameworks, and of early communications and route junctions, for the places that later emerged as urban centres. Landscape evidence suggests that some towns commonly identified as later creations also originated as pre-conquest ‘central places’. Mark Bailey's study of the county's medieval towns and markets presents a model analysis of their rank size, population and occupational structure. Hertfordshire boasted both the highest county density of urban population and the highest rate of urban expansion. As the south and east of the country became relatively wealthier than the rest of the country after 1300, so Hertfordshire benefited from proximity to London and national road networks focused on the capital. This impressive essay has much to say about informal trade, transportation, victualling and urban competition, as well as commenting on the role of lordship in urban foundation and growth, a factor so frequently downplayed in rural studies.

Terry Slater's analysis of roads, commons and boundaries provides a morphological examination of urban settlements within the county's wider topographical and administrative context. It was a relief to find a map of Hertfordshire showing the county's urban centres and major roads – it could have usefully come earlier in the volume. Slater's essay identifies some towns arranged along major thoroughfares and sometimes on the border of multiple parishes, again suggestive of early antecedents. In a final overview Nigel Goose charts the fortunes of urban life in early modern Hertfordshire, starting with the problem of identifying smaller towns within larger administrative units (such as parishes). His essay extends Bailey's discussion of the towns’ population size and rank order, utilizing lay subsidy and hearth tax returns, parish registers and the 1801 census.

The individual town studies all contain useful information. Clive Partridge's study of Hertford and Ware, the only directly archaeological contribution to the collection, highlights the degree to which knowledge could be forwarded if more archaeology was available for other Hertfordshire towns. Several of the essays highlight the difficulties of disentangling the smaller urban centres from the Domesday record, restricting any definitive statement about their early development. While some of the essays are restricted to the Middle Ages others cover longer time periods, notably David Dean's examination of St Albans stretching from 800 to 1820.

The final two essays represent early forays into fields deserving of further research. Nicholas Doggett's paper has the laudable aim of assessing whether the dissolution of the monasteries had a positive or negative effect on urban life. While it includes much on change to the physical fabric of the towns, only limited attention is paid to household sizes, market influence or estate wealth of either the monasteries or succeeding high-status secular households. Tony Crosby's study of the role of manufacturing industry in Hertfordshire's small market towns provides succinct accounts of milling, tanning, malting, brewing and other activities. Malting was the major activity with wider significance, through its supply of London's brewing industry. Capital invested by the maltsters and brewers improved communications on which their trade depended through Hertfordshire's turnpike roads and the canalization of the Lea and Stort.

The book does not provide a comprehensive view of Hertfordshire's towns and some urban communities receive less attention than others, notably Hertford itself. Nonetheless, its wide range of approaches, places and themes provides a very considerable body of work on the evolution of the local urban landscape. Hertfordshire remained throughout the most highly urbanized of English counties. Within its boundaries there was an overall pattern of stability, in both communities deemed worthy of urban status and of their relative positions within the urban hierarchy. However, the county's major town, St Albans, failed to maintain its relative position in the national urban hierarchy, the close presence of London probably providing a limiting competitive presence. Hertfordshire never claimed a town of national or even regional significance: it was always a ‘county of small towns’.