Kelshall
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).
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.
Unusual archaeological finds dating back to AD 200 have been discovered in a field near Royston. The artefacts, which form part of a burial, probably of a wealthy and cosmopolitan individual, are a unique find in Britain and experts in ancient finds are already clamouring to study these rare objects.
Discovered late last year by a local metal detectorist in a field in Kelshall, a complete Roman jug was the first thing to be found. A bronze dish, a larger jug and then a third jug were soon uncovered. Realising this was an important find it was reported and Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, North Hertfordshire District Council’s (NHDC) Archaeology and Outreach Officer, decided that it would be a good idea to investigate further.
Once the dig was underway, glass bottles, an iron lamp and wall mounting bracket, two layers of hobnails from a pair of shoes and a box with bronze corner bindings were uncovered. Two shattered, but otherwise complete, mosaic glass dishes stood on top of a decayed wooden box which held two broken clear glass cups and a pair of blue glass handles. The largest glass bottle was hexagonal, and contained cremated bone and a worn bronze coin dating from AD 174-5. A rare octagonal bottle stood next to it. A major find was mosaic glass dishes likely made in Alexandria, Egypt, around AD 200
Currently owned by the farmer and the finder, the North Hertfordshire Museum Service hopes to raise the money to buy the finds, so they can be displayed when the new museum opens later in the year.
After 1800 years, finds like these still impress us with their workmanship. Working together with the metal detectorist, NHDC’s archaeologist and the Finds Liaison Officer, were able to uncover the past and find out and understand so much more about the lives of people in Roman North Herts.
On Wednesday 5 June 2013, I was telephoned by a Mr King, who explained that a deep hole had appeared in his brother’s field in Kelshall, 4.8 km (3 miles) south-west of the centre of Royston. It had appeared during the beet harvest earlier in the year and the harvester had almost fallen into it. As it was close to a public footpath, the brothers were concerned that it might pose a danger to walkers (as well as hindering their ability to farm the field). They were keen to get an opinion on what it might be, so I arranged to visit the site on the morning of 7 June.
On the day of my visit, there was only a low growth of crop in the field, around 25 cm high, but this was enough to make the hole invisible from all angles. It only became visible as a slight depression in the field surface from around ten metres away. This alone made it dangerous, as it would be easy to stumble into it in poor light, especially if one were not paying attention: a running dog would be even more vulnerable.
The hole proved to be a vertical shaft cut directly into the chalk. It was circular and had a diameter of around a metre. Above the chalk, there was a depth of about 70 cm of topsoil over the top of the chalk, more than double what I would expect in a ploughed field at the highest point in the village. This gives a valuable clue about the nature of the shaft. The bottom of the cut could not be seen in the strong June morning sunlight, so Mr King and I tied a stone to a measuring tape I had brought with me and we lowered it into the hole; it hit something solid at a depth of about 4.3 m, although I learned from the farmer that when it had first appeared, he had measured it as more than seven metres deep.
The edges of the shaft were clearly deliberately cut, with blade marks visible in places. This rules out a natural explanation, such as a sinkhole. At the same time, there were no hints that it had ever been lined, either with bricks or timber. No datable objects were visible in the soil around the top of the hole.
There were already clues about what the hole might be. Aerial photographs have revealed cropmarks of linear ditches, including a possible ditched trackway, running through the field, recorded in the Hertfordshire Historic Environment Record as number 6218. The field immediately to the west has also revealed cropmarks, including pits and ditches (Historic Environment Record number 16981). These suggest that this hilltop was formerly the site of human habitation and the presence of a ditched trackway suggests that it might have been occupied during the Roman period (AD 43 to 411).
This makes sense of the feature. During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of Roman wells were investigated at Clothall Common in Baldock, most of which had the same character as this hole: cut directly into the chalk bedrock with no lining, at least, not below the topsoil. Most of them had been left at least partly open when the well stopped being used to obtain water (perhaps when the water turned sour, as can happen), and the top would gradually erode and fall into the shaft. This creates a cone (known as a “weathering cone”) around the top of the well: this is what made the topsoil appear unusually deep in this example, as we were looking at the soil inside the weathering cone, not just the topsoil.
So the King brothers have a Roman settlement on their land. The abandoned well, which had probably never been filled in properly, suddenly appeared in their field when the fills at the top suddenly slumped and fell to the bottom of the shaft. In looking at the aerial photographs, it is possible to see the position of the well in relation to the buried ditches. It appears to have lain close to the track through the settlement, which seems to have been more extensive than a single farmstead. We have a new Roman village to add to the map, thanks to Mr King!