The Devil’s Handfuls: A Tale of the Six Hills

Before the maps were drawn and the Great North Road carved its way through Hertfordshire’s wild heart, the land around Stevenage whispered of things older than memory. Whomerly Wood stood at its centre like a wound in the earth, a place untouched by time and untouched by man, where shadows grew thick and silence wore the weight of a curse. The folk who lived in the nearby villages knew better than to wander near, for the hills and hollows around Stevenage were more than mere earth — they were the scars of a night when the Devil himself walked the woods, flinging the soil skyward in rage, shaping the land with his spite. To the unknowing eye, the Six Hills are just sleeping mounds, but the old ones remember the truth, and the land remembers too.