Places
Kimpton is a moderately sized parish of about 1500 ha (3700 acres) in the south-west of North Hertfordshire. It is a mostly agricultural area with about 70 ha (170 acres) of woodland. The main settlement area – Kimpton village – lies east of the centre of the parish area, while Peters Green (and the former Perry Green, which now forms part of it) is to the west and Blackmore End is to the south. There are smaller hamlets at Ansell’s End and Porter’s End.
Kimpton as shown on Dury and Andrews’s map, published in 1766
The parish is bisected by a Y-shaped valley with its foot to the east and a fork at the west end of the village: one branch trends to the north-west along Whiteway Bottom, the other south-west along Kimpton Bottom. The valley shows the former course of a lost river, known as the Kym, Kyme or Kime, now culverted under the High Street. It joined the River Mimram at Kimpton Mill.
Placenames
Kimpton is first recorded as Kamintone in Domesday Book, which is usually explained as *Cyman tūn, ‘the enclosed farm of Cyma’. The river-name expert Eilert Ekwall was in no doubt that Kym or Kyme is a back-formation from the village name (in other words, it was never an independent river-name). Although Cyma is a genuine Old English personal name, there is river-name Kyme in Lincolnshire, which Ekwall derived from Old English *cymbe, ‘a hollow’. If the river-name came first – which is what we usually find – could Kimpton be the tūn on the River Kym? The next possibility is that because many river-names belong to an older stratum of place naming than Old English village names, *cymbe may be Brittonic (a Celtic dialect). Brittonic *Cumbi̯a (‘valley-river’) would develop into Old English *cymbe, and we should bear this possibility in mind. The Mimram also has a Brittonic name, as do most other local rivers.
The name of the Mimram is one of the few local names recorded before Domesday Book was compiled in 1086. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle described the building of a burh (a fortified town) at Hertford in 913, betweox memeran and beneficcan and lygean (one manuscript spells memeran as maran and another gives mæran), ‘between the Mimram and the Beane and the Lea’. All three rivers have names that are meaningless in Old English and have Brittonic origins. Mimram seems to contain Brittonic *mimo-, ‘speaking, murmuring, mumbling’, and *aramo-, ‘gentle, calm, quiet’. The original *Mimaramā would mean the ‘murmuring gentle river’. Speakers of Old English found words with three repeated consonants challenging to say and changed the third ‑m– to –n by a process known as dissimilation.
local rivers.
Kimpton as shown on Google Earth, with the High Street running along the valley of the lost River Kyme
The manor of Hookenhanger or Hockinghanger is first mentioned in 1235×6, and the name means Hocca’s hangra, ‘Hocca’s wood on a steep hillside’. It was one of the three principal manors of medieval Kimpton, the others being Parkbury and Leggatts, both first mentioned in 1303. Parkbury was connected with Park Farm, the site of a deer park first recorded in 1366, while Leggatts was held by a family of that name.
Other places in the parish include Bibbs Hall, which was Bibeswrthia in the late twelfth century. The name means Bibba’s worð, ‘Bibba’s hedged farm’. Bibbesworth was the name of one of the lesser manors of the medieval parish. It was held of the manor of Pirton, an excellent example of how manors were all about ownership, not geography, as Pirton is not even nearby. Little Bibbesworth was another manor held of Pirton and granted to the Priory of St Mary’s at Hertford. The Priory’s holdings were valued at £2 13s 8d in the Inquisition of Pope Nicholas, carried out in 1291.
Two ‘reputed manors’ are known in the parish. A ‘reputed manor’ was one where the demesne lands (those belonging to the lord of the manor) were separated from services (such as the requirement for the lord’s tenants to work his fields); in feudal law, this is also called seigniory in gross. The first of these to be mentioned, although not as a manor, was Plummers, the home of Thomas de Plumere (‘of the plum-tree pool’) in 1272. The first mention of it as a manor is in 1596. The second is Leigh or Lye, mentioned in 1518; the name is found today as Lye Wood, the home of Thomas de la Leye (‘of the clearing’) in 1314.
Rye End is not recorded before 1728, but the name is Middle English atter ee, ‘at the water’, wrongly understood later to be att ree. Blackmore End was the home of Kateryna de Blakemere (‘of the black pool’) in 1296. Peters Green and Perry Green are not mentioned before they appear on Dury and Andrews’s map of Hertfordshire, published in 1766. They show as developed hamlets that had existed for some time. Their origins are currently a mystery.
Domesday Book
The earliest record of the village is in Domesday Book, as already mentioned. The commissioners who compiled it were keen to find out how the owners had been in January 1066, when King Edward the Confessor was still alive, as they regarded Harold II as a usurper. Ælfgifu, the widow of Earl Ælfgar of East Anglia (died 1062), was the tenant in 1066. She was the mother of Earls Eadwine of Mercia and Mōrcǣr of Northumbria, and mother-in-law of Harold II. William I’s half-brother Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, let it to Ralph Courbespine, a member of the Maminot family, after the Norman Conquest. The Maminot’s barony was Dover-Castleward, from which Kimpton was held for two knights’ fees (sufficient land to give two knights income to perform the duties they owed their feudal overlord). The barony passed to the family of Geoffrey de Say (1155–1230), one of the signatories of Magna Carta in 1215. The medieval lords of the three principal manors of Kimpton held their lands from the Maminot and the Say families.
Inside the parish church, dedicated to Ss Peter and Paul
The Domesday commissioners assessed four hides of arable land for tax, set at £12. These fields were worked by seven ploughs, of which two were in demesne (on the lord’s land), although there was the capacity for ten, including an extra team on the demesne land. As well as arable, there was meadow to support six oxen and pannage (woodland foraging for acorns) for 800 pigs. The population is given as 24 adult males (2 Frenchmen, 12 villeins, two bordars, three cottars and five slaves), which indicates that the community consisted of about 150 people.
Archaeology
We need to use archaeological data to understand periods earlier than the Domesday Book. There have been very few archaeological fieldwork projects in the village and no overall surveys, so the following summary is based mainly on monuments recorded in the county Historic Environment Record and the database of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The PAS database has only six entries: one is an Iron Age Coin, one an Iron Age object that may have been an earring, two are Roman coins, one is a medieval coin, and the other two are post-medieval coins.
Walkern may not be part of North Hertfordshire (although Box Wood in the north-western corner of the modern parish was a manor at the time of Domesday Book, part of which now lies in the North Hertfordshire parish of Weston), but I have been helping out its Local History Society for three years. My role has been to advise their project of test-pitting across the village, which is currently on hold because of the CoViD-19 outbreak. Last year, I gave the Society a talk summarising what had been discovered during three seasons of test-pitting across the village; the document you can download at the end is an expanded version of that talk.
The historical background
Walkern is a parish in Broadwater Hundred (one of the ancient divisions of Hertfordshire), first recorded as Walchra in Domesday Book. The name is Old English wealc-ærn, ‘a fulling mill’; these were sometimes known as ‘walk mills’ (wealc-ærn means ‘walk-house’) and were water-mills where cloth was thickened by being pounded. Intriguingly, Domesday Book does not mention a mill, but the mills it records elsewhere were usually flour-mills, as these were a source of revenue for the lord of the manor. The current water-mill at the south end of the village, where the main road crosses the River Beane, was built in 1828 but one is known to have existed early in the twelfth century when its revenue was granted to the parish church.
Bryant’s map of the village, published in 1822
Writing in 1700, Sir Henry Chauncy wrongly, but picturesquely, gave the etymology as being ‘from the moist and ousing Springs which reinforce the River of Bean or Benefician, with a Stream that driveth a Mill out at the South End of the Town; for Wall in the Saxon Language signifies a most or watry Place; and ’tis recorded in the time of William the Conqueror under the Title of Terra Tainorum Regis.’
The church had pre-Norman origins, and it may have been the minster serving the territory of the Beningas, a people who gave their name to Benington. It became a barony under Henry I, with a castle. There was a medieval deer park of over 300 acres. The bad weather and cattle murrain of 1341 led to hardship, with large areas of the open field left unploughed.
Archaeological data
Archaeological data is an important but often misunderstood element in local history. To many people, it is a collection of pretty finds; to others, it is an impenetrable mass of data about prehistoric times. Needless to say, both views are completely wrong. Archaeologists study the physical remains of the past, be they artefacts (including the pretty finds, if any exist), buildings, excavated pits and so on. They may be hundreds of thousands of years old or they may be only thirty years old: age is not important. The basic aim is to put all this data into a chronological sequence and to investigate what it can tell us about the past.
When looking at the archaeology of a single place, the best place to start is to see what is contained in the Historic Environment Record (or HER: they used to be known as Sites and Monuments Records or SMRs). This is a database maintained by the County Council’s Historic Environment Unit, which is used to help planners make decisions about the suitability of development applications.
Classes of entries in the Historic Environment Record for Walkern in 2017
The Hertfordshire HER for Walkern contained 109 entries when the test-pit project was launched in 2017. Over half of the information about the village came from cropmarks (33) and surviving buildings (24). Only 13 finds had been recorded, while only eight archaeological features had been excavated or recognised in foundation trenches.
Adding in data from the Portable Antiquities Scheme database (finds.org.uk) gives 78 extra data points. Most of these (41) are post-medieval in date (after about 1540); there is one prehistoric object, eight Roman, one ‘central medieval’ (about 800-1100), seven high medieval (1100-1350), eight late medieval (1350-1540) and 12 late medieval to post-medieval (1350-1700).
This is not a lot of data overall. There is almost nothing about prehistory (a possible prehistoric ditch has been recorded, while several cropmarks may show the ditches of ploughed-out burial mounds) and even the Roman period can boast just over a dozen entries when it is often one of the best represented periods. So, is it possible to say anything about the development of Walkern through time? With the results of test pits carried out across the village, we can begin to build the outline of a story.
Thatched cottage in Rushden (Herts)
A lot of the historical research into our district has been focused on the four towns – Baldock, Hitchin, Letchworth Garden City and Royston – but they are only part of the story. Most places are villages and hamlets and these were the sorts of settlements most people have lived in over time. There are places that were once regarded as towns – Ashwell, Codicote and Knebworth – because they had markets, but which have become less important, even though they are now larger places than when they had their markets.
The district currently has 82 individual settlements (can you name them all?), spread between 37 parishes. Some parishes have only one settlement – Baldock, Bygrave, Caldecote, Hexton, Hinxworth, Holwell, Ickleford, Kelshall, Langley, Letchworth, Lilley, Newnham, Nuthampstead, Pirton, Preston, Radwell, Reed and Wallington – but the others have more than one. Whitwell is the main settlement in St Paul’s Walden parish, while Codicote and King’s Walkden have seven settlements each (Codicote, Codicote Heights, Driver’s End, Nup End Green, Oakhills, Pottersheath and Tagmore Green are all in Codicote parish, while Breachwood Green, Darleyhall, King’s Walden, Ley Green, Lye Hill, The Heath and Wandon End are the settlements in King’s Walden).
The village pump in Hexton
It gets even more complicated if you go back over 900 years to the time when Domesday Book was compiled, in 1085-6. This names places by vill, a manorial unit held by a specific person or institution. We use the term ‘held’ rather than ‘owned’ because in feudal law, everything belonged either to the king or to the church, so lords of the manor only had properties because their feudal overlords had granted it to them. The could throw out the lord at any time they wanted. Domesday Book lists 103 separate vills in North Hertfordshire; there are six in Reed alone, where today we recognise only one village. This complexity can make life very difficult for the local historian.
In coming weeks, I’m going to be writing about some of these smaller places in the district. I want to show that our history isn’t just about the bigger places, which we might think of as more important. Everywhere has its own story and these stories are every bit as interesting as those of the towns. The history that I am interested in goes beyond the lords of the manor and the parish priests to the lives of ordinary people, the places they lived and how they occupied their time.
If you couldn’t name all the settlements, here’s a list, which includes the name of the parish they are in, when they were first recorded in documents and what we believe the name to mean.