"Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was years old, packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, "




HAMMERCLOTH
Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Definition: \Ham"mer*cloth`\ (?; 115), n. [Prob. fr. D. hemel
heaven, canopy, tester (akin to G. himmel, and perh. also to
E. heaven) + E. cloth; or perh. a corruption of hamper
cloth.]
The cloth which covers a coach box.

So now we know where heaven on earth is… ;)

The name is referred to in the Domesday Book as "Hamelamesede", but in later centuries it became Hamelhamsted. Hemel probably came from "Haemele" which was the name of the district in the eighth century…

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemel+Hempstead#Origin_of_the_Name