Hatfield, originally Bishop's Hatfield, is a town in the Welwyn Hatfield district of Hertfordshire, in the south of England.
It is known as the town where the first production-line jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet was built, and as the site of a tragic rail crash on 17 October 2000.
Although the accident had a low death toll in comparison to other railway incidents in British history, Hatfield's historical significance has become much greater, since it demonstrated many of the flaws present in the structure of the privatised railway and ultimately triggered its partial renationalisation.