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The small Hertfordshire town of Hatfield has a history beginning in the depths of the Saxon era. The first recorded mention of the name comes in AD 680 when a Synod of Hatfield is documented, though it isn't clear if the Synod was held at Hatfield or at Hatfield Chase.
- Parish Church of St Etheldreda
The Bishops of Ely owned the manor of Hatfield from the...
- Hitchin
The town flourished in the Middle Ages due to the wool...
- Tring
Natural History Museum. In 1872 the wealthy Rothschild...
- Aldbury
The Old Bull Inn is full of history and character and is...
- St Albans
Britain Express editor David Ross visits the historic...
- Charles Dickens
This greatest of Victorian writers was born in Landport,...
- Castles
The well-tended ruins of an important 11th-century motte and...
- Museums
An early Victorian school on Queen Street in Hitchin has...
- Parish Church of St Etheldreda
The areas referred to as Hatfield (Haethfeld) in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 633 and 680 are likely in Yorkshire, and are very likely not in Hertfordshire. As with many Americans, I assumed that tracing my ancestors upstream would lead to a solitary well.
Hatfield is a name whose history is connected to the ancient Anglo-Saxon tribes of Britain. The name is derived from when the Hatfield family once lived in either of the places called Heathfield in Somerset or Sussex , or in one of the various settlements called Hatfield in Essex , Herefordshire , Nottinghamshire , Worcester, the East Riding of ...
Pgs 422-424 in the book Story of Philadelphia, it states that the town of Hatfield in Montgomery Co., PA was named after John Hatfield, Pg. 422: ” In 1734 John Hatfield… had an extensive plantation in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and gave the name Hatfield Township to a well-known district in that county.”.
- An Extract from The Domesday Book
- The Brief History of Hatfield, C. 700AD – 1500AD
- A Church Council 680Ad
- Herds of Swine, Sheep, Goats and Oxen
- The Bishop’s Residence
- The Great Wood
- The Open Fields
- The Cecil Family
- Rising Population
- Hatfield Names
The land of the Abbot of Ely. In Broadwater Hundred the Abbot of Ely holds Hatfield. It is assessed at 40 hides. There is land for 30 ploughs. In Demesne (land owned by the Lord but not attached to his estate) are 20 hides and there is (land enough for) 2 ploughs and (land enough for) 3 more ploughs can be made (brought into use). There is a Priest...
Hatfield was known to the Anglo-Saxons as Haethfeld – the cultivated land on the heath – and it may be claimed with the same authority for the town of Hatfield that it has been a place of some importance for as long as the history of England has been recorded. Situated some five miles from the Roman city of Vemlamium, it was probably the site of th...
It is possible that the site of the present Church was originally the place of pre-Christian worship, such sites having often been chosen for this reason by early Churchmen. The spur of land on which the Church stands would have been visible for many miles from the heath land which stretched away westward. It is impossible to say at what date a Chu...
Soon after the Monks were given Hatfield, there is mention of herds of swine, sheep, goats and oxen, the early economy was flourishing. We do not know when the first settlements were established on the hillside where Fore Street now runs, but many of Hatfield’s place names are characteristic of early Saxon place names & the names of single families...
But within a very short time from this date the Monks were to cease to be the Lords of the Manor as in 1108AD, Henry I converted the Abbey of Ely into a Bishopric (a region run by a singular Bishop), and for four hundred years Hatfield became one of the residences of the Bishop of Ely. One of these Bishops, Cardinal John Morton (Bishop 1479 – 1486)...
The Great Wood has already been referenced to as a source of timber for house building and we may suppose that all Hatfield’s houses were timber-framed with plaster panels. The first mention of bricks being made in Hatfield is in 1470, but tiles had been made here well before they were used in the repairs referred to. Licences to dig clay in the Gr...
These big fields were shared out amongst the townsfolk, who held communal land of 40 acres, although it was normally shared by two families. Up to 1603 when the Cecil’s first came to Hatfield, the farmland of the town was largely managed by the open-field system. The crescent of land from Withy Mill to the Rectory lay in several large fields, in ea...
With the coming of the Cecil family many changes were made in Hatfield. New farms were made in the south-east of the Parish, where the land was poor, and the fields had names like “Long Pain” & “Kill Devil”. The process of clearing forest which was nearing completion in the thirteenth century had begun long before the conquest. Some idea of how far...
In 1396 the man who leased or farmed the manor of the Bishop paid the sum, and found it difficult not to be in arrears. The fourteenth century was a period of economic recession throughout the century, a state of affairs made worse by the Black Death of 1349 (in which probably a third to half the population died, a state which was very serious comp...
The names of households in Hatfield during the first half of the thirteenth century give us some interesting information about the development of names. Some of the Christian names appear completely modern: William, Roger, John & Richard. A few old English names are found: Sigar, Daric, Edwe, Edred, Ailmar, Otwy, Ingeleth, Aildred and the female na...
To my knowledge, we do not know who the immigrant ancestors are for any of the three main Hatfield families, which includes the “feuding” Hatfields of Southwest Virginia, the “Pennsylvania” line of Hatfields, and the Matthias Hatfield family . Link to read more on Loyalist John Hatfield.
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The surname of Hatfield is of an Anglo-Saxon origin and derives from the locational surname of Hatfield.
