A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 



Luton, as royal demesne, is not mentioned as situated in any hundred at the 

 time of the Domesday Survey, but from the thirteenth century onwards, 

 together with its hamlets of East and West Hyde, Limbury cum Biscott, and 

 Stopsley, it formed a soke.^" The hundred of Flitt, to which Luton would 

 have owed suit, having become attached to the manor before 1229, this union 

 of the manor and the hundred by its consequent merging of rights probably 

 arrested the development of the soke along independent lines. In 1 297, on 

 the occasion of the levying of a ninth, Luton was assessed separately from the 

 hundred ;" whilst a taxation of 1523 gives the hamlets — whilst omitting 

 Luton — as within the hundred. Subsequent to this latter date Luton is 

 found as within the hundred of Flitt. ^'^ 



The courts of the hundred were held every three years alternately at 

 Silsoe and Luton, and up to a date as recent as fifty years ago the bailiff 

 of the manor of Luton once a year fired a gun in front of the mansion of 

 Wrest Park, Silsoe. This was done in assertion of some right claimed in 

 respect of the hundred, and it was the custom for the bailiff to be invited 

 into the house for refreshment.*" 



The parish of Shillington, which is situated partly in this hundred and 

 partly in that of Clifton, will be found under the latter hundred. 



BARTON IN THE CLAY 



Bertona (xi. cent.) ; Bertuna (xii. cent.) ; Barthon 

 (xiii. cent.) 



The parish of Barton has an area of 2,318 acres, 

 of which 1555^ are arable land, 73 1 J permanent 

 grass and twenty-five are covered with woods and plan- 

 tations ;' the soil, which is strong clay with a subsoil of 

 clay and chalk, produces wheat, oats, barley, beans and 

 peas. The land rises from north to south, the lowest 

 point (193 ft.) above the ordnance datum being in the 

 north, while in the south, where the Barton Hills are 

 situated, an altitude of 543 ft. is reached. Among these 

 hills are several old gravel and chalk pits, which have 

 been worked for many years. The village of Barton 

 lies at the foot of the northern slope of these hills, 

 along the Bedford and Luton main road, with a few 

 houses on the branch roads to Sharpenhoe on the 

 west and Hexton on the east. There is an ancient 

 round-house or lock-up, a red-brick building with a lead 

 roof, but it has not been used for some years. The 

 church stands at a little distance to the south-east of 

 the village and, with the rectory and a group of small 

 houses on the west and north, forms a separate hamlet 

 known as Church End. The rectory house, in 

 part of considerable age, has a central hall and east 

 and west wings with late sixteenth-century wood 

 mullioned windows in the hall, and a staircase with 

 finials in the west wing. In the hall windows are 

 a number of fragments of old stained glass, some no 

 doubt from the church, and in the garden is what 

 looks like the panelled shaft of a fifteenth-century 



pinnacle, which served till lately as a doorstep in the 

 village, until rescued by the present rector, the 

 Rev. J. H. Spokes. 



The house is moated on the south and west, and 

 lies at the foot of the grass-grown chalk slopes, a 

 projecting spur to the south-east being terraced 

 in linches denoting ancient cultivation. The parish is 

 well watered, a number of springs rising at the foot of 

 the hills, and in the rectory garden the moat is fed by 

 a spring at its east end. A petrifying spring at 

 Barton, which turned wood into stone, is mentioned 

 in 1738 in the Atlas Geographicus. A hammer made 

 of a perforated quartzite pebble was found at Barton in 

 1903, together with a small drilled bead-like pebble of 

 translucent quartz.' 



Among the place-names found in the parish are the 

 following : — Vancroft,' Bavlande Furlong,* Bery Lott, 

 Brayes Messuage,' Bridgend Messuage,' Penny's Bush, 

 Leet Wood and Stanley Wood. 



The Inclosure Act for the parish was passed in 

 1809.' 



The overlordship of BARTON was 

 MANORS vested in the crown at the date of 

 Domesday Survey and so remained until 

 the Dissolution when the manor itself was taken into 

 the hand of the king and annexed to the manor of 

 Ampthill in 1 542,' being afterwards leased for short 

 periods only ; the rights of overlordship must have 

 lapsed after 1628' as there is no further mention 

 of them. 



2» Feud. Aids, i, 22. 



" Lay Subs. R. '^, 'ji. Luton was as- 

 sessed at j^3i i8j. 3(/,, a comparatively 

 large sum where the whole hundred only 

 paid ^38 151. 3</. The Hund. R. and the 

 Plac. de Quo War. also treat Luton as 

 independent of the hundred. 



" Ibid. ^, ^, ^^ ^A, g'^, &c 

 ^ From information supplied by Mr. 

 Austin. 



1 Statistics from Bd. of Agric 1905, 

 ^r.C.H. Beds.i, 31, 162. 

 "Add. MSS. 219. 

 ■• Ibid. 223. 



308 



536, No. 



' Pat. 21 Eliz. pt. 6. 



' Chan. Inq. p.m. Misc. 

 138. 



^ Local and Personal Acts, 49 Geo. IH, 

 cap. 67. 



8 L. and P. Hen. VIII, xvii, 18 {21). 



» Pat. 4 Chas. I, pt. 35, r. A. 



