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Summary

13th century deer park with complex history

Monument Types

• DEER PARK (Medieval to Post Medieval - 1066 AD to 1900 AD)

Protected Status

• Sensitivity Map: roman occupation and cropmarks, n of harlow
• Sensitivity Map: hunsdon med village, church, deer park

Full description

A medieval deer park, which became a royal hunting park in the early 1500s, when Hunsdon [2789] became one of the favourite residences of Henry VIII. It was considerably enlarged during his ownership, due to his love of hunting. The earliest record of it dates to 1124, when Richard, Earl of Hertford, granted to the monks of St Augustine of Stoke an annual gift of a doe out of the park at Honesdon <1>.
The Hunsdon estate was granted to her cousin Henry Carey by Elizabeth I, soon after her accession, and there is a fine brass in the parish church to James Grey, deer-keeper, who died in 1591. The estate was disparked by 1881.
<2> gives the documentation for the deer park and maps its likely extent. It was probably created in the later 13th century after Henry Engayne, lord of the manor, was granted free warren; the park is first documented when it was broken into in 1296. Owing to later changes and additions 'it is difficult now to determine the boundaries of the medieval park with any confidence', although later documents suggest it lay east and SE of Hunsdon village. By 1529 Henry VIII had three parks at Hunsdon, the 'old park', 'new park', and Goodmanneshyde park'; these last two may have been very recently established. Old and new parks had a single keeper, suggesting they were contiguous, and appear to have been on the east side of Hunsdon parish extending into Eastwick. In 1553 all three parks contained deer. Three parks are shown on Saxton's 1577 map, the largest north of the house. They seem to have been disparked during the Civil War and turned over to agriculture, but between 1653 and 1671 the new owner of the estate, William Willoughby (Lord Willoughby) reinstated much of the parkland in the south of the parish. Map evidence suggests that 'there were no deer parks in Hunsdon after the early 18th century' <2>.
The northern boundary of the medieval park may be marked by the embanked trackway leading NE from the village to Hunsdon Lodge [30604] <2>.

Cantor, Leonard, 1983, The medieval parks of England: a gazetteer (Bibliographic reference). SHT6459.

<1> Harting, J E, 1881-3, Hertfordshire deer-parks; Trans Herts Natural History Soc & Field Club 2, 97-111 (Article in serial). SHT4077.

<2> Rowe, Anne, 2009, Medieval parks of Hertfordshire, - p136-41 (Bibliographic reference). SHT6026.

Sources and further reading

Related records

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