Great Wymondley is a village and former

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

situated near Hitchin, now in the parish of Wymondley,Natural and historic environments
www.wymondley.org in the North Hertfordshire district, in the county of Hertfordshire, England. Despite the names, Great Wymondley is a smaller settlement than its neighbour,

Little Wymondley Little Wymondley is a village and former civil parish situated between Hitchin and Stevenage, now in the parish of Wymondley, in the North Hertfordshire district, in the county of Hertfordshire, England. Paradoxically, it has a larger popula ...

. In 1931 the parish had a population of 285.

Landscape

The village is set in an agricultural landscape which is protected within the

Green Belt A green belt is a policy and land-use zone designation used in land-use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges, which ...

. The soil is

boulder clay Boulder clay is an unsorted agglomeration of clastic sediment that is unstratified and structureless and contains gravel of various sizes, shapes, and compositions distributed at random in a fine-grained matrix. The fine-grained matrix consists o ...

above chalk.

Field system

In the late 19th century the historian Frederic Seebohm, who lived in Hitchin, studied Wymondley's

field system The study of field systems (collections of fields) in landscape history is concerned with the size, shape and orientation of a number of fields. These are often adjacent, but may be separated by a later feature. Field systems by region Czech Republ ...

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 Baldock ( ) is a historic market town and unparished area in the local government district of North Hertfordshire in the county of Hertfordshire, England, where the River Ivel rises. It lies north of London, southeast of Bedford, and north n ...

. He was also aware of research that had been done on the work of Roman land surveyors (known as ''

gromatici ''Gromatici'' (from Latin '' groma'' or ''gruma'', a surveyor's pole) or ''agrimensores'' was the name for land surveyors amongst the ancient Romans. The "gromatic writers" were technical writers who codified their techniques of surveying, most ...

''). As well as aligning roads, Roman land surveyors were involved in organising field boundaries. Seebohm argued that Wymondley's

open field system The open-field system was the prevalent agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Each manor or village had two or three large fields, usually several hundred acr ...

, 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 The jugerum or juger ( la, iūgerum, ', ', or ') was a Roman unit of area, equivalent to a rectangle 240 Roman feet in length and 120 feet in width (about 71×35½m), i.e. 28,800 square Roman feet ( la, pedes quadratum) or about hectare (0.62 ...

. 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 The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is the process which changed the language and culture of most of what became England from Romano-British to Germanic. The Germanic-speakers in Britain, themselves of diverse origins, eventually develope ...

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 Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

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

Buildings

Ruins

There are two

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

s in the parish: *

Wymondley Roman Villa Wymondley Roman Villa is a ruined Roman villa near Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England. It is also known as Ninesprings Roman Villa. It is situated in the valley of the River Purwell in the parish of Great Wymondley. In Roman times, as now, the villa wo ...

. The remains are situated near

Ninesprings Ninesprings is a country park situated in the South East of Yeovil, Somerset, the United Kingdom. It is the largest country park in South Somerset, spanning over . The site lies on Yeovil Sands (a yellow micaceous sand) of the Upper Lias, in ...

in the valley of the River Purwell. It has been partly excavated. * Great Wymondley Castle. The earthworks of a motte-and-bailey castle and associated manorial enclosure 20m east of St Mary's Church.

Extant buildings

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is Grade I listed. It has a

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

nave and

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

, the latter being an

apse In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an '' exedra''. ...

built of small rounded stones. 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.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Hertfordshire Roman sites in Hertfordshire Former civil parishes in Hertfordshire North Hertfordshire District