Bayford, a village and a parish in Hertfordshire, on the river Lea, 3 miles SSW of Hertford, which is the nearest railway station. It has a post office under Hertford; money order and telegraph office, Little Berkhampstead. Acreage, 1853; population, 349. The manor belonged, before the Conquest, to Earl Tosti the Dane, and passed afterwards to the Knightons, the Fanshaws, and the Bakers. Bayfordbury, the present seat of the Bakers, contains the portraits of the Kit-Cat Club, brought hither from Barnes-Elms. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of St Albans, and till 1867 was annexed to Essendon ; net value, £180 with residence. The church, a cruciform building in the Early English style, was built in 1870, at the sole cost of William Robert Baker, Esq., of Bayfordbury. In the churchyard is buried William Yarrell, author of the "History of British Birds."
