Knebworth, in the south of the district, is a community with a complicated history. The medieval community worshipped in the twelfth-century Church of St Mary and St Thomas of Canterbury, now in Knebworth Park. It remains the official parish church. The present park dates from about 1641, when Sir William Lytton created ornamental gardens around Knebworth House. The main medieval park lay between what we now call Old Knebworth (formerly Knebworth Green) and Gipsy Lane, around Park Lane. Another, the Little Park, lay between Old Knebworth and Knebworth House.

The name Knebworth Green, recorded since the time of King Edward VI (1547-1553), for what we now know as Old Knebworth is a sign that this was not the main settlement. The community recorded since the time of Domesday Book perhaps lay around St Mary and St Thomas’s church, as archaeologists saw slight earthworks here in 1989.

The railway arrived in 1850 and in 1884, the Lyttons of Knebworth House persuaded the railway company to build a new station 1.8 km (about 1¼ miles) east of Knebworth Green, just past Deard’s End. A new community was beginning to grow around it by the 1890s, in what had been the extreme southeastern corner of the parish. Known at first as Knebworth Station, it had simply become Knebworth by the 1930s. The boundary changed to incorporate Swangleys Farm and Roundwood Cottages, previously in Datchworth, into the parish.

The Church of England opened a Mission Room on Gun Lane in 1880, where the Royal British Legion Club now stands. As the community grew at Knebworth Station, it was not enough to meet the needs of the new village, so a new church was commissioned, to be designed by the famous architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944).

Lutyens had already worked in Knebworth, designing the Arts and Crafts style Homewood for his brother-in-law Victor, Lord Lytton in 1901, a new garden at Knebworth House and cottages in Knebworth Garden Village, an intended planned settlement around Knebworth Station, in 1904. Work began on the Garden Village in 1912 but it was interrupted by the First World War and foundered for good in the 1920s. In the meantime, Knebworth Station continued to grow, with an increasing need for a Church of England church there.

Lutyens designed what he originally called Christchurch in 1911, with a site in the intended Garden Village donated by Lord Lytton. A local builder, William Darby, won the contract for building it, and work started in April 1914. The outbreak of war slowed its construction, as it became harder to get hold of building materials and many labourers left to become soldiers. As a result, the plans had to be scaled back, with the nave reduced in length and the west end abruptly finished off with a plain brick wall. Edgar Jacob, Bishop of St Albans, consecrated the church on 12 November 1915. He chose the dedication to St Martin of Tours, as the saint’s day falls on 11 November.

William Darby followed Lutyen’s very specific instructions about the quality of materials he wanted for the church. The bricks and pantiles for the roof came from his own brickworks on Spinney Lane at Rabelyheath and he used Portland Stone for the columns, as Lutyens specified. The shortage of materials meant that the portico with steps intended for the west end – the entrance – was left until 1963. Sir Albert Richardson designed an extension to the nave (but without portico and steps), which includes the present cupola containing the 3½ tonne bell. Work on his alteration was finished in 1964, creating the church that can be seen today.

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner described St Martin’s Church as ‘one of Lutyens’s most remarkable churches’. Its location on a slight rise gives it an imposing presence, which is enhanced by the wide overhanging eaves. Inside, Lutyens’s attention to detail includes the organ with its pipes arranged in double spirals and a shallow apse at the east end, containing the altar.

Archaeologists are interested not just in the most ancient of remains, glittering ‘treasures’ or the pyramids of long-dead pharaohs. The remains of the recent past, even when they stand as complete buildings, are just as valid a subject for study. Often they can tell us so much more as they come with a richer background of documentary evidence, social context and living memory. St Martin’s Church is one of these special places.

Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews

In early 1959, Jack Wilkerson, a farmer and amateur archaeologist in Barley, southeast of Royston, made a discovery on one his fields. The field’s name – Aldwick – is a clue that something ancient lies under the ground there: recorded since the time of Elizabeth 1 (1558-1603), it is from Old English old (’old’) and wic (‘habitation’). It lies on a gentle slope north of the village, west of Bakers Lane, on the north side of a shallow valley facing northeast towards the county boundary at Cumberton Bottom. Digging into darker circles in the field, Mr Wilkerson found that they were surface traces of infilled pits that contained animal bones and prehistoric pottery of Early Iron Age type (about 800-400 BC).

At this point, he contacted the University of Cambridge for advice. The Disney Professor of Archaeology, Grahame Clark (1907-1995), had just been elected President of the Prehistoric Society and arranged for a magnetometer survey of part of the field. It was a new, experimental technique that was first used archaeologically in 1956: no-one had previously tried it on a site with chalk bedrock. Although the results appear vague when compared with those we might expect to see today, the surveyor Martin Aitken (1922-2017) was pleased with them. They revealed a large, flattened horseshoe-shaped anomaly as well as groups of smaller potential features. A more detailed survey of the area around the horseshoe-shaped confirmed that the signal derived from something measuring about 13 m wide and 9 m deep.

Professor Clark then sent Mary Cra’ster (1928-2008) to excavate the site. She revealed 101 roughly circular pits and found that the horseshoe-shaped anomaly was caused by a buried ditch of the same shape. The ditch had a uniform fill and contained almost no finds, unlike the pits. Both ends were cut through earlier pits, and the ‘open’ end faced obliquely down the slope. Mrs Cra’ster thought that it was the drip-gully of a building but although postholes were found both inside and outside the area it enclosed, none could be made into a convincing roundhouse shape.

During the 1959 season, the archaeologists excavated 101 pits in an area 33.5 × 24.4 m (817.5 m2). In the following year, they found another 31, in 1961, a further 18 and in 1962, another two, making 152 in total. Aerial photographs show that this is just a small proportion of the total; they also indicate that the pits are grouped into more than a dozen clusters. Groups of pits like these are typical of Early Iron Age sites (including, locally, at Blackhorse Road in Letchworth Garden City and Jacks Hill in Graveley).

The pits at Aldwick vary greatly in size. The largest were a little over 3 m in diameter, while the smallest were only 0.75 m in diameter; their depths similarly varied between 1.4 and 0.15 m (remembering, of course that this was the depth cut into the chalk, not from the original ground level). Most had vertical sides and flat bases, although some were wider at the base than at the surface of the chalk (often described as bell-shaped) and a few had sides that sloped in towards the base. Sixteen pits were more irregular, and Mrs Cra’ster was unsure if they were deliberately left this way or if they were unfinished examples of the more regular types.

All the pits were deliberately backfilled, and none showed signs of silting. The material consisted of three types: pure chalk rubble, a mixture of chalk rubble and domestic rubbish, and pure domestic rubbish. It is unlikely that the pure chalk came from digging the pit it was found in: there would be little point in keeping it ready from backfilling. Instead, it perhaps came from a new pit being dug next to the one being filled in.

One of the largest pits contained a layer of ash in the bottom, evidently from a fire that had consumed material inside it. The ash contained cereal grains and other seeds, as well as a burnt plank, potsherds from a single, broken pot and a small iron sickle. Mrs Cra’ster suggested that it was an accidental spontaneous combustion of damp grain being stored in the pit, although it is difficult to account for the potsherds, as the pot they came from was already broken at the time of the fire. Perhaps it fell into the pit during the fire. On the other hand, it could have been the deliberate destruction of grain ruined by fungus or mice.

Why do we find so many pits on Early Iron Age sites? A hundred years ago, archaeologists interpreted them as houses (‘pit dwellings’) as they often contain domestic rubbish and traces of burning, which were thought to be hearths. Thanks to the work of Gerhard Bersu (1889-1964), a German archaeologist who fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s, who excavated at Little Woodbury (Wiltshire) in 1938-39, the idea of pit dwelling was discredited. His two trenches identified the postholes of a roundhouse, which he recognised as the main dwelling on the site, and numerous pits that he interpreted as being dug for grain storage.

During the 1960s, Collin Bowen (191-2011), P D Wood and Peter Reynolds (1939-2001) tested Bersu’s hypothesis. They found that so long as the bedrock is well-drained, the pits cut into it make excellent grain storage silos so long as the temperature inside them remains below 12° C and the contents are kept dry. Each pit needs to be filled to capacity for long-term storage to work, and the average pit will have contained more than a tonne of processed grain. This tells us a lot about the efficiency of agricultural production in the early first millennium BC. At the experimental farm at Butser (Hampshire), Peter Reynolds found that a single pit can remain viable for more than twenty years. The grain would form a protective skin where it was in contact with the bedrock, and some of the pits at Aldwick had evidence for it. Whether any pits were used for more than one season cannot be proven with existing archaeological data: it is possible that they were abandoned after just one year.

Archaeological thought and interpretations have moved on since the 1960s. We now know that not all pits were used for grain storage and we also know that those that were had an ‘afterlife’. Iron Age societies were very different from ours and people did not separate their religious beliefs from everyday activities. This distinction came about as recently as the eighteenth century, when the Enlightenment tried to make rational thought the basis of everything we do. Our modern attitudes, which seem so natural to us, are unusual in the broad sweep of history.

Taking this into consideration, we can see how the people at Aldwick would have seen their pits as connected with the realm of Andumnos, the underworld. Unlike the Classical underworld, which was a place of gloom and mists, Andumnos was a paradise of eternal youth and plenty. Putting grain underground was perhaps seen as a way of preserving its ‘youth’ and ensuring that food would be plentiful in the coming year. When a pit fell out of use, people would need to make offerings to the gods who had taken care of their produce. During the 1990s, archaeologist J D Hill showed how they would place special pieces of pot, bone and even human remains into disused pits. They also placed rubbish that had been left out on open middens. This explains why the pits at Aldwick did not just silt up but were deliberately backfilled as soon as they were no longer needed. It also explains why sherds from the same pit could be found in different pits. Perhaps these vessels had developed a special significance while they were in use, making them valuable gifts to the underworld deities. A dog skeleton found in one of the pits was probably not simple ‘rubbish’, but the burial of a valued (non-human) member of the community, in the same way as an infant skeleton was placed in a couple of the pits.

Making a pit was hard work. If several people worked on one at the same time, it might take half a day to make a typical cylindrical pit. Bell-shaped pits are more difficult to dig, as the overhang carries a risk of collapse, so perhaps experienced pit-diggers worked on these, passing the skills on to younger workers. As we have seen the evidence of filling suggests that in some cases, the diggers made a pile of the chalk they removed or, perhaps, shovelled it straight into a nearby empty pit.

A large ‘working hollow’ on the west of the site was partly examined in 1961. The term covers a wide variety of functions. Some were where people mixed clay, dung and straw to make daub for house walls. Others were perhaps the bases of clamp kilns, effectively large turf-covered sunken bonfires for firing pottery. Some may have been areas where livestock gathered regularly and wore away the ground surface. On one edge of the hollow were burnt bones from a child aged 8 to 9 years old. As with the pits, the bones were perhaps offerings to the ruler of the underworld or aimed to send the child’s spirit to a happy afterlife in paradise..

As well as pits and a ‘working hollow’, there were groups of postholes. One group of four excavated in 1959 was a typical ‘four-poster’ structure, often thought to be above-ground granaries. These may have for grain that would be used in the near future rather than for long-term (over-winter) storage. The others, around the horseshoe-shaped ditch, do not make a pattern that suggests a building. Some of them can be joined to make straight lines, which may mean that they show the position of fences, but there are too few to be certain.
The Iron Age farm or hamlet must have been successful. Aerial photographs show that the pits spread across much of the field, with associated ditches perhaps defining areas that were farmed. There may even have been earlier activity on the site, as metal detectorists have found two broken fragments of a Middle Bronze Age (about 1550-1150 BC) rapier; one piece is the tip, the other from the middle of the shaft. Although found 7½ months apart, these two pieces were probably from the same weapon. The break may have been deliberate: North Hertfordshire Museum has on display a Middle Bronze Age sword from St Ippollitts broken into three pieces before being thrown into a pond.

The accompanying aerial photograph shows the site, with its huge density of pits in the centre and north of the field, with the ‘working hollows’ down to the south and one to the west. On the south-eastern side of the site are some ditches that may show where contemporary field were located. A pair of ditches widely separated runs from the south of the site towards the north-northwest. If they are part of a single feature, they might be part of a droveway for livestock. It is interesting to see that almost all the pits on the site lie to its northeast, while all the ‘working hollows’ lie to the southwest, a good indication that the ditches were in use at the same time as the rest of the site.

One mystery remains. How did the medieval peasants who named the field know that it was the site of an ‘old habitation’? Perhaps we underestimate how much people in the past recognised the traces of ancient pottery and metalwork as belonging to people even further back in time.

Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews

During the building of the A505 Baldock Bypass in 2003-4, Albion Archaeology excavated several sites along its route. Close to the A507 Buntingford Road, archaeologists discovered a large boundary ditch, up to 3.5 m wide and up to 1.5 m deep. It ran for at least 140 m along a west-southwest to east-northeast course through open countryside (determined by the types of snails found in the bottom fills).

The excavators suggested that it formed the southern boundary of the town that was growing up in Walls Field during the first century BC. It originally had a gateway through it, some 5 m wide, that was eventually blocked. By the second half of the first century AD, it was falling into disrepair: people were no longer cleaning out the soils accumulating inside it. In the early second century, a dump of much older rubbish finally filled it. Among the material thrown in was a small gold coin issued by the ruler Cunobelinos.

The coin weighs 0.9 g, and its size shows that it is a quarter stater. Staters were originally Greek silver coins based on the Phoenician shekel, but some cities also minted gold versions, worth between 20 and 28 silver staters according to the place. Philip II of Macedon (father of Alexander the Great) paid some of his mercenary troops in gold staters, which they brought back to western Europe. There, their rulers began to copy them, slowly modifying the designs. They first arrived in Britain in the second half of the second century BC and by about 100 BC, British rulers were issuing their own versions. A stater of the early first century AD was about half the weight of a Roman gold aureus; an aureus was worth about forty day’s pay for a legionary soldier, so our quarter stater would be the rough equivalent of five days’ pay.

Cunobelinos came to power about AD 10, claiming – probably justifiably – to a son of the Tasciouanos who had ruled the area north of the Thames from about 25-10 BC. He issued his first coins at Camulodunon (Colchester), with a laurel leaf design, hinting at a military victory. He was soon also issuing coins from Uerulamion (St Albans) and over the coming decades expanded his sphere of influence across much of southeastern Britain. Writing a century later, G Suetonius Tranquillus simply referred to him as britannorum rex (‘king of the Britons’) when he exiled his son Amminius, who had been ruling in Kent and fled to Caligula. Cunobelinos died shortly after this and his son Caratatcos (‘King Caractacus’) succeeded him.

Cunobelinos would have remained an obscure character, a footnote for Classical scholars and a mere name for numismatists, had he not enjoyed a medieval afterlife as three separate people. The fifth-century historian Paulus Orosius (about AD 375-420) quoted Suetonius’s phrase Adminio Cynobellini Brittannorum regis filio (‘Adminius, the son of Cunobelinos King of the Britons’) in his Historia Aduersus Paganos (‘History against the Pagans’), a work specifically intended to rebut claims that Christianity had led to the decline of the Roman Empire. He unfortunately miscopied the phrase as Minocynobellinum Britannorum regis filium (‘Minocynobelinus the son of the king of the Britons’) or used a manuscript that had already mangled it.

Orosius was a widely-read author in the early medieval period, whose work was known to Bede (AD 672-735), although he did not include this story. The early ninth-century Historia Brittonum (‘History of the Britons’) does quote it, but introduced a further error, making the phrase read proconsul regi brittannico, qui et ipse rex bellinus uocabatur, et filius erat minocanni (‘The proconsul to the British king, who was himself called King Bellinus, and he was the son of Minocannus’). From here, the non-existent ‘Bellinus son of Minocannus’ entered Welsh legend as Beli Mawr ap Mynogan (‘Beli the Great, son of Mynogan’).

Geoffrey of Monmouth (about 1095-1155) wrote a purported history of the Britons covering prehistory to AD 680, the de Gestis Britonum (‘On the Deeds of the Britons’, better known as ‘The History of the Kings of Britain’). He raided existing histories for source material, including the Historia Britonum and a collection of Old Welsh genealogies. From these disparate sources he got the name of Heli, a mis-spelling of Beli Mawr, who appears under this name in the Welsh translation of Geoffrey’s work. Heli was the father of the Cassibellanus who fought Julius Caesar, and Bellinus was a general of his, as in the Historia Brittonum. Cunobelinos finally appears, with (almost) his correct name, Kymbelinus son of Tenuantius, as an ally of Augustus who had been brought up in Rome. He had two sons, Guiderius and Aruiragus; he took the first name from a tenth-century genealogy that names Guidgen map Caratauc map Cinbelin map Teuhant (‘Gwyddien, son of Caratacos, son of Cunobelinos, son of Tasciuanos’), while the second occurs in a poem by the satirist Juvenal. Guiderius was killed during the Roman invasion of AD 43, while his brother Aruiragus married the Emperor Claudius I’s daughter Genuissa and became governor of the new province. None of this is genuine history.

Many medieval writers took Geoffrey’s historical fiction as true. Raphael Holinshead (about 1525-1582) used it as a source for his popular The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, first published in 1577. Shakespeare used the second edition Holinshead’s work, published in 1587, as a source for many of his plays, including Richard III, Macbeth, King Lear (another of Geoffrey’s inventions) and Cymbeline. While the first three are well known and often performed, Cymbeline is no longer highly regarded. First performed in 1611, five years before he died, it was among his most popular until the late Victorian era. Many critics believe that Cymbeline was one of the last plays that Shakespeare wrote.

The story is complex, with three sub-plots not in Holinshead’s work, and picks up themes the poet had explored in earlier works: jealousy, treachery, fidelity, mistaken identity, female to male cross-dressing and family ties. It is impossible to say if the play is a tragedy, a comedy or a romance, as it contains elements of all three: Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews saw it performed almost as a pantomime in Manchester in 1984. A review of this production in The Guardian called Cymbeline ‘one of Shakespeare’s silliest plays’, which was performed by actors who ‘manage to utter some of the most ridiculous lines in the history of drama with hardly a snigger from the audience’. Although the First Folio edition of his works published in 1623 called it The Tragedie of Cymbeline or Cymbeline, King of Britain, the play has a happy ending and only the wicked get their just deserts.

Its relationship to history is non-existent, beyond the king’s name. The real Cunobelinos did not have a daughter called Imogen (the name is a misprint for Innogen, anyway); although Aruiragus probably existed, he seems to have lived two generations after Cunobelinos, so can hardly have been his son; not one other character in the play is historical. Nor did Cunobelinos face an invasion of Britain by the emperor Augustus; no would-be Roman conqueror would land at Milford Haven, although this was where Henry Tudor landed before defeating King Richard III.

As has happened so often with these discussions, the object with which it started has almost disappeared. Small objects can open the doors to much larger and more diverse stories.

Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews