Great Wymondley
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]
The village is set in an agricultural landscape which is protected within the Green Belt.[1] In the late 19th century Frederic Seebohm studied the village's field system using detailed maps and concluded that it was laid out in Roman times. This finding has been confirmed by later scholars. The dimensions of the fields suggest the use of an ancient unit of measurement called the jugerum.[2] The implication is that there was continuity in the way the land was managed after the Anglo-Saxon settlement of this part of Hertfordshire.
Buildings
Ruins
There are two scheduled monuments in the parish:
- The remains of a Roman villa. The site is near Ninesprings in the valley of the River Purwell. It has been partly excavated.[3]
- The earthworks of a motte-and-bailey castle and associated manorial enclosure 20m east of St Mary's Church.
Extant buildings
The church, which is Grade I listed, has a Norman nave and chancel. Unusually for a medieval church in Hertfordshire, there is an apse:[4] originally the church at Little Wymondley had an apsidal east end too.[5]
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
- Natural and historic environments www.wymondley.org
- Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England (1986) Michael Wood
- "Roman villa (site of)".
- Hamilton (April 2015). "The earth beneath our feet". Hertfordshire Life.
- "Church of St Mary the Virgin (Little Wymondley)". Retrieved 2019-01-31.
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].
