Hertfordshire - Pubs and Inns with a literary connection

In 1835, during his days as a reporter on the Morning Chronicle, the young Charles Dickens came to Hatfield to cover the story of the great fire at Hatfield House . He stayed at the Salisbury Arms (now gone) and used his experience as background material in his second novel Oliver Twist - for the flight of Bill Sikes from London after the foul murder of his mistress Nancy whom he suspects of being a police informant.
Sikes and his dog travel out through the north of the city and finally arrive in Hatfield at: "nine o'clock at night, when the man, quite tired out, and the dog, limping and lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned down the hill by the church of the quiet village, and plodding along the little street, crept into a small public-house, whose scanty light had guided them to the spot. There was a fire in the tap-room, and some country-labourers were drinking before it."
Although it is not actually named in the novel, this 17th-century coaching inn standing just outside the grounds of Hatfield house was chosen by Dickens as the setting for Sikes refuge. After taking a pint and paying his bill, the house-breaking murderer panics when a local pedlar insists upon trying to remove a blood stain from his hat: "The man got no further, for Sikes with a hideous imprecation overthrew the table, and tearing the hat from him, burst out of the house."
Whilst trying to escape the ghostly thoughts of Nancy, Sikes finds shelter in a field shed but during his torment he hears: "the cry of Fire! mingled with the ringing of an alarm-bell". He rushes towards the sound of the commotion, and becomes heroic in his efforts: "Hither and thither he dived that night: now working at the pumps, and now hurrying through the smoke and flame, but never ceasing to engage himself wherever noise and men were thickest".
Later in his career, Dickens utilized the village again in his Christmas story Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy in which the grand old lady is buried in the churchyard. The Eight Bells is a traditional old local in the village-like part of Hatfield with a good mix of loyal regulars and young folk mainly students. Its partly flag-stoned floor and traditional décor is everything you would expect and the menu and beer won't disappoint either.