I. Stodden Hundred.

The name of Stodden has recently been discovered as applied to one of the “Open Fields” of Pertenhall. This reference occurs in an original terrier of the glebelands of that parish, dated 1607. These lands, amounting to 34 acres, are detailed in the usual way under the headings of the five following Fields—Haile or Hall, Marche, Lytle, Chawdwell and Stodden Fields, the glebe-lands lying in Stodden Field totalling 8 to 9 acres. In a later terrier of the same lands, dated 1708, this field is termed Hony Hill Field, the other names remaining as before. That the Stodden Field of the 1607 terrier is identical with Hony Hill B'ield is readilyproved by comparison of the nearly identical descriptions of the glebe in the two cases. Honey Hill Wood lies over the N.W. border of Pertenhall in Kimbolton parish; and as half an acre in Stodden Field is described as lying upon “Swynsheed hyll,” Stodden Field is therefore located in the N.W. portion of the parish of Pertenhall. This conclusion is confirmed by the process of elimination of the situation of the other fields.

(i) Hall Field (spelt Haile once only in the 1607 terrier) certainly derives its name from the brook (called Hallbrooke in the same terrier) which crosses the parish from W. to E., and was apparently called the Hail Brook in the parishes of Swineshead and Riseley higher up. The road to Little Staughton, as set out in the Pertenhall Enclosure Award (1797) is described as leading out of the Bedford to Kimbolton Turnpike Road “in a south-eastward direction to and over the brook or ford called Hail Ford and into the parish of Little Staughton.” An allotment of 60 acres under the same Award, “lying in Hail Field bounded on the S. by the parish of Little Staughton and on the W. by the Little Staughton Road” clinches the question of the situation of this field, i.e. in the S.E. of the parish.

(ii) Marche Field was the land lying to the S. of Green End, as the following description of an allotment of 41 acres in this field shows—“bounded on the N. by the St. Neots road8 and on the S.E. by the parish of Little Staughton.”