Great Wymondley

Great Wymondley
St Mary's Church, Great Wymondley
Great Wymondley Location within Hertfordshire
OS grid reference	TL213287
District	North Hertfordshire
Shire county	Hertfordshire
Region	East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Hitchin
Postcode district	SG4
Dialling code	01438
Police	Hertfordshire
Fire	Hertfordshire
Ambulance	East of England
UK Parliament	Hitchin and Harpenden
List of places UK England Hertfordshire 51°56′36″N 0°14′09″W / 51.94337°N 0.23594°W / 51.94337; -0.23594Coordinates: 51°56′36″N 0°14′09″W / 51.94337°N 0.23594°W / 51.94337; -0.23594

Great Wymondley is a village situated near Hitchin in Hertfordshire, England. Despite the names, Great Wymondley is a smaller settlement than its neighbour, Little Wymondley. It is in the civil parish of Wymondley.^[1]

Landscape[]

The village is set in an agricultural landscape which is protected within the Green Belt.^[1] The soil is boulder clay above chalk.

Field system[]

In the late 19th century the historian Frederic Seebohm, who lived in Hitchin, studied Wymondley's field system using detailed maps in the manorial records. Seebohm was aware that there was a Roman road east of Wymondley, passing through Graveley on the way to Baldock. He was also aware of research that had been done on the work of Roman land surveyors (known as gromatici). As well as aligning roads, Roman land surveyors were involved in organising field boundaries.

Seebohm argued that Wymondley's open field system, as recorded on the maps, incorporated old boundaries and in particular fossilised Roman boundaries. He suggested that the dimensions of the fields to the west of the Roman road reflect the use of an ancient unit of measurement called the jugerum.^[2] Assuming the validity of this analysis, which has been confirmed at least in part by later scholars, one implication is that there was continuity in the way the land was managed before and after the Anglo-Saxon settlement of this part of Hertfordshire. Toponyms also supply some evidence for continuity, for example the village of Wallington near Baldock appears to have been named by the Anglo-Saxons after its Romano-British population.

History[]

Wymondley appears in the Domesday Book with a recorded population of 58 households. This figure does not distinguish between Great and Little Wymondley,^[3] but scholars have been able to derive data about the separate villages from the Domesday record.^[4]

Great Wymondley was a separate civil parish until 1 April 1937, when it merged with neighbouring Little Wymondley to form a single parish called Wymondley.^[5]

Buildings[]

Ruins[]

There are two scheduled monuments in the parish:

• Wymondley Roman Villa. The remains are situated near Ninesprings in the valley of the River Purwell. It has been partly excavated.^[6]
• Great Wymondley Castle. The earthworks of a motte-and-bailey castle and associated manorial enclosure 20m east of St Mary's Church.^[7]

Extant buildings[]

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is Grade I listed.^[8] It has a Norman nave and chancel, the latter being an apse built of small rounded stones.^[9]

Delamere House is an elegant Elizabethan building. There are also a number of thatched cottages, including a row of terraced cottages each named after one of King Henry VIII's wives.

See also[]

• Centuriation

References[]

Further reading[]

• Parishes: Great or Much Wymondley, in A History of the County of Hertford: Volume 3, ed. William Page (London, 1912), pp. 181–185 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/herts/vol3/pp181-185 [accessed 16 May 2015].

External links[]

Media related to Great Wymondley at Wikimedia Commons

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