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III.—The Origins and Forms of Hertfordshire Towns and Villages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

William Page
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Extract

The study of Topography from the point of view of types and positions of settlements has hitherto received little attention in this country, although it often throws light upon difficult historical problems. Professor Maitland has summed up our knowledge of this subject in his characteristically brilliant and suggestive manner. He has pointed out that we are learning from the ordnance map, ‘that marvellous palimpsest’, that ‘in all probability we must keep at least two types before our minds. On the one hand there is what we might call the true village or the nucleated village. In the purest form of this type there is one and only one cluster of houses. It is a fairly large cluster; it stands in the midst of its fields, of its territory. On the other hand we may easily find a country in which there are few villages of this character. The houses which lie within the boundary of the parish are scattered about in small clusters; here two or three, there three or four.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 69 , 1920 , pp. 47 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1920

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References

page 47 note 1 Domesday Bk., and Beyond, p. 15. Mr. J. H. Round has approached the subject of the settlement of the South and East Saxons by a different method, namely that of place-names, in an article in The Commune of London, pp. 1–27.

page 49 note 1 V. C. H. Herts., iii, 211–17.Google Scholar

page 50 note 1 Gesta Abbatum Mon. Sancti Albani (Rolls Ser.), i, 22.Google Scholar

page 52 note 1 Skeat, , The Place-names of Hertfordshire, p. 59.Google Scholar

page 53 note 1 Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 186–7 ii, 78.Google Scholar

page 53 note 2 Domesday Book, fol. 132; V. C. H. Herts., i, 300.Google Scholar

page 58 note 1 The peasants in the west of Hertfordshire are said by Mr. Mackinder to be of Celtic type (Britain and the British Seas, 190, 191). It is possible some of the Celtic population may have survived in the forest district there. A small church was founded by the Romano-British Christians outside Verulamium where St. Albans Abbey now stands, and early writers imply that it had a continuous existence. This possibly served a small body of inhabitants and thus the Celtic names of Verulamium and the River Ver were perhaps retained (V. C. H. Herts., iv, 283, 286, 387).

page 58 note 2 Proceedings, xviii, 110Google Scholar; V. C. H. Herts., i, 253, 256.Google Scholar

page 58 note 3 It is clear that the River Lea and not the Ermine Street on its west side was the Saxon line of communication southward of Ware, for the Roman road was at an early period abandoned and superseded, as it still is, by the road connecting Cheshunt, Amwell and Ware, on which, at the date of the Domesday Survey, were the important trading towns of Cheshunt and Hoddesdon.

page 59 note 1 We have lately had two important works treating of town planning from the historical point of view. Professor Haverfield has dealt with ancient town planning, and Professor Tout with medieval town planning, particularly those of the thirteenth-century bastide type which came to us from France. In Hertfordshire no such towns exist; we have only villages and small market towns which, for the most part, grew out of them.

page 59 note 2 Britain and the British Seas, p. 329.Google Scholar

page 59 note 3 Gesta Abbatum Mon. Sandi Albani, i, 122.Google Scholar

page 60 note 1 Gesta Abbatum Mon. Sancti Albani, i, p. 22.Google Scholar

page 60 note 2 Ibid. 39.

page 60 note 3 V. C. H. Herts., ii, 149, 150, 194.Google Scholar

page 60 note 4 This is clearly shown by the Domesday map of the county in V. C. H. Herts., i, 300–1.Google Scholar

page 60 note 5 Skeat, , The Place-names of Hertfordshire, pp. 60, 64.Google Scholar

page 60 note 6 V. C. H. Herts., ii, 285.Google Scholar Pendley in Tring, a town containing many tradesmen, tailors, shoemakers, card-makers and others, was destroyed and laid to pasture.

page 60 note 7 Stat. 31 Eliz. cap. 7.