The History: From 1086 to Modern Day
Every landscape carries the marks of those who came before us. Beneath today's crops and footpaths lie centuries of stories, from the ancient woodland and medieval farming to changing field boundaries and the people whose lives have been shaped by this place. Understanding the history of the field reveals that it has never stood still; it's been quietly evolving for hundreds of years, and its past continues to shape the landscape we see today.
The Past in the Present
Every hedgerow, ancient oak and field margin captured on this site is a living blueprint of medieval engineering and Victorian ambition. The wildlife and farming cycles we see today are entirely shaped by a deeper, invisible map, one laid down by lords, woodsmen and hunters over six centuries ago.
This page decodes the DNA of the modern Knebworth field by tracing its evolution from a vast medieval wildwood, into a grand 313 acre royal deer park, before it was ultimately carved up into the arable fields and pastures of the 19th century. By understanding the historic boundaries of the Old, New and Great Parks of Knebworth that once dominated this field and its margins, we can better appreciate why today's margins and woodlands remain such vital, unchanging corridors for nature.
Pre-1845: From Ancient Forest to Lord's Deer Park
The Domesday Village & The First Shift (1086-1300's)
The documented story of this landscape begins with William the Conqueror's Domesday Book of 1086. The survey reveals that 11th century Knebworth, then named Chenepeworde, was a busy and economically vital community centred around a major agricultural manor. Domesday records 33 heads of households living in the village (comprising 24 villagers, 4 smallholders and 5 slaves). Because the survey only recorded the adult male heads of families, the true community was probably close to around 150-200 people. For the 11th century, this was classed as a large and thriving settlement.
The text logs a heavy commitment to arable farming, noting that there was enough active crop land to keep 8 plough teams (each pulled by a team of eight oxen) working the heavy Hertfordshire clay.
Crucially for our field's history, Domesday records that Knebworth possessed woodland capable of sustaining 1000 pigs. The Normans didn't measure forest by counting trees or calculating area, they measured it by pannage - how many pigs could forage on the fallen autumn acorns and beech mast. In modern terms, a woodland dense enough to feed 1000 pigs would have spanned roughly 1000-1500 acres of continuous forest.
Originally, this entire medieval settlement cluster, its church and the original manor house sat closely together as a single hub, however in the 1300's this layout was permanently disrupted. In order to establish the medieval Old Park (likely to be the estate's original deer park). The Lord of the Manor cleared the immediate surroundings, forcing the entire population to move away from the house and church. The displaced community relocated down to the edge of the park boundaries, establishing the new settlement line we know today as Park Lane. While this original 14th century park sat just north of our modern day focus area, its creation permanently reshaped the geography of Knebworth.
It's likely that the medieval Old Park was transformed into a very large rabbit warren in the mid 15th century and along with the medieval Little Park which was created to the immediate south of Knebworth House and its walled gardens sometime prior to 1481, was then later absorbed into the mid 17th century New Park.
Sources: Medieval Parks of Hertfordshire, Anne Rowe. Open Domesday by Anna Powell-Smith. Stevenage Borough Council, Settlement in the Stevenage area in the Mediaeval period.
Park Wood, a modern day remnant of the medieval woodland described in the Domesday record.
Late 1300's - Early 1400's, The Medieval Wildwood & The Birth of The New Park
The Assarting of the Wildwood.
To the south of Park Lane, the land looked entirely different to that of the original Knebworth settlement. A massive, continuous ancient forest (possibly) covered this deep southern block of the estate, stretching down to the southern parish boundaries. This was a wild, dense wood but would have been strictly managed as a vital economic asset by the estate. Modern Park Wood and New Wood are the surviving edge remnants of this original forest.
By the dawn of the 15th century, the Lytton estate formally expanded its park system directly into this heavily timbered area, creating a large, newly enclosed hunting ground, simply called the New Park. In order to create the wide open grazing lawns required for the park, clearance of the woodland began and infrastructure was installed. Manorial accounting records provide us with a tangible look at the intense labour required to carve out and maintain this new park layout.
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1401-1402 - Workers constructed a bridge at "Newparkponde".
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1402-1403 - One acre of wood was sold in the New Park.
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1410-1411 - 900 faggots (a bundle of small branches, brushwood or twigs used to start or feed a fire) were made in the New Park and sold.
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1412-1413 - trees were felled.
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1412 - 120 perches (approximately 600 metres) of new hedge was made and 40 perches of hedge repaired.
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1483-1484 - Broken branches were sold from 8 virgates (approximately 240 acres).
Sources: Medieval Parks of Hertfordshire, Anne Rowe.
New Wood, another modern day remnant of Knebworth's historic woodland.
1400's - 1641, The Great Park Era.
Life, Labour and the First Farmers.
This is perhaps one of the most critical chapters in the history of "A Knebworth Field".
While the original medieval New Park was born out of the old southern forest, I believe it to be located very much around the land immediately south of Park Lane, extending towards the centre where the first water management systems were created alongside the grazing lawns. For a period of around 80 years, both the New Park and the Great Park feature independently within the manorial accounts. It's my hypothesis that during this 80 year period, the Great Park referred to the wider area of land whilst the New Park referred to the original areas carved out for deer management. As stated in my "About" section, I'm not a historian so I'm ready to hear and certainly welcome any alternative suggestions on this.
Every single accounting record assigned under the Great Park (and I believe the New Park), happened directly within the area of "A Knebworth Field." Rather than just being a newly assarted expanse of grass, the estate's records reveal a hive of intense human activity, heavy manual labour and changing land use over 200 years:
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1402-1403 - (Timber Management): Heavy forestry work was constant. Accounts record the felling of 8 massive oaks and a beech tree being felled, specifically for the purpose of creating a bridge in the New Park. Also recorded are the commercial sales of several parcels of wood.
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1481-1482 - (Income From the Park): Accounts compiled during this time show that agistment of animals (charging outsiders to graze their livestock on the park grass) was 32s 4d. Income from the sale of loppes (branches, side shoots and smaller boughs of a standing tree) specifically from 13 hornbeams amounted to 4s 12d.
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1481-1482 - (Securing the Boundary): The manorial accounts record that during this period, 19s 2d was paid to two men to construct 115 poles (approximately 578 metres) of new fencing. To deter poachers and predators they were paid 6s 11d for setting sharp wooden spikes (le berdynge) into 83 poles (approximately 417 metres) of the fence. 16d was paid for the carriage of four heavy wagon loads of wooden stakes to complete the job. Also in this period, a payment of 27s 5d was recorded to maintain the park pale (the grand boundary ditch and bank).
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1511 (The Lord's Stables): By 1511, the use of the park was beginning to shift away from deer and the Great Park was officially reserved for the use of the lord's horses.
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1541-1542 (Pigs and Pasture): This period shows that the landscape was once again heavily utilised for livestock with manorial accounts logging significant income from both livestock grazing (agistment) and the charging for pigs to feed on autumn acorns (pannage).
1561, The First Stirrings of Change.
The most fascinating shift occurs in 1561. For the first time we see evidence of the very first stirrings of the Great Park being sub-divided and rented out.
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A tenant paid 13s 4d for a tenement called Le Parkgate and the agistment of two cows and a horse in the Great Park.
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A tenant paid 6s 6d for a tenement called Naylers and the agistment of one cow in the Great Park.
It shows that the park was losing its status as a private hunting ground and was transitioning into tenant farming plots. The grand plan to replace this old area with a brand new ornamental park closer to Knebworth House was likely already forming in the minds of the Lytton family nearly a century before it happened.
1541, The Decommissioning.
The final decommissioning of the Great Park came in 1641 when Sir William Lytton completed a brand new, fashionable "New Park" wrapping tightly around Knebworth House. With the family's deer and ornamental landscaping moved north, the Great park became completely redundant in its present form. Its status as a park was changed forever and the 313 acre block was permanently broken up into the network of agricultural tenant farms that established the footprint of the arable field that I photograph so extensively today.
Sources: Medieval Parks of Hertfordshire, Anne Rowe.
View across the historic "Great Park" lands from north to south. August 2026.
The 1845 Tithe Apportionment: A Snapshot in Time
The 1845 Tithe Apportionment records serve as a vital, legally binding census of the Victorian landscape. Historically, tithes were a medieval tax requiring parishioners to give one-tenth of their agricultural produce directly to support the local church. By the 1830's, paying this tax in actual crops, livestock or wool had become very messy and inefficient. To solve this, the government passed the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, which ordered every parish in the country to be meticulously mapped and assessed so these traditional payments could be converted into a fixed, annual cash rent. This bureaucratic shift resulted in a flawless, plot by plot snapshot that permanently recorded the exact name, acreage, land use owner and tenant for every single pocket of land.
For "A Knebworth Field", the 1845 Tithe records show that all of the 37 land parcels that fell across the field and woodlands were owned by one of three people - Sir E. G. Earl Lytton-Bulyer (Lord of the Manor), Reverend Charles Buchanan Pearson (Rector of Church of St. Mary and St. Thomas, Knebworth) and John Thompson a 57 year old locally born farmer. The names of these individual parcels of land act as layers of historical DNA, providing clues as to when and why each pocket of land was carved out of the old landscape.
The map below is a visual representation of the 1845 Tithe Apportionment map, showing the numbered field parcels. In the next section we will look at each section to see what it can tell us.
The Ancient Woodland Parcels
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Parcel 254. Park Wood. (Woodland) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
A large and direct remnant of the original medieval wildwood. The name was solidified when the woodland became enclosed within the medieval park pale.
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Parcel 237. Park of New Wood. (Woodland) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
The name marks the exact boundary of the estate's original 15th-century New Park expansion and preserves the 400 year old memory of the moment this specific pocket of ancient forest was newly enclosed by a physical park ditch and bank.
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Parcel 230. Copse Wood. (Woodland) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
Derived from the old French word couper (to cut), a "copse" or "coppice" means a managed wood where trees were cut down to ground level on a seven to twenty year cycle. This name tells us that this specific pocket was used to produce a continuous supply of young, flexible rods and poles, likely for weaving medieval hurdles and fences and the production of charcoal.
The Medieval Hunting Glade Parcels
In historical landscape terms, a "Lawn" (originally Laund) was an open, grassy clearing surrounded by dense woods. These pockets were intentionally created and maintained inside a deer park so that the deer had grazing and would also naturally gather in the open, giving the Lord and his hunting parties a clear line of sight. By 1845, these open glades had been ploughed up into arable crop fields but their names beautifully preserve the footprint of the old hunting grounds.
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Parcel 243. First Lawn. (Arable) Owned by the Lytton estate and tenanted by Thomas Franklin.
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Parcel 239. Middle Lawn. (Arable) Owned by the Lytton estate and tenanted by Thomas Franklin.
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Parcel 238. Further Lawn. (Arable) Owned by the Lytton estate and tenanted by Thomas Franklin.
Thomas Franklin was a 33 year old locally born farmer who lived at Knebworth Lodge Farm with his wife Mary and their children Thomas, Ellen and Phillip.
The above sequential "Lawn" names probably remain entirely as they were named when the Great Park was still in existence, following the linear progression of the original open deer pasture as it stretched south from Park Lane into New Wood.
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Parcel 244. Pond and Brow in Lawn. (Woodland) Owned by the Lytton estate and tenanted by Thomas Franklin.
Tenanted by the same Thomas Franklin as the "Lawns" above, the Pond and Brow in Lawn was a small, distinct land pocket in its own right, carved out of the First Lawn. Still being seen on maps as late as 1946, this was a slight crest in the landscape which sloped down towards a pond, likely originally created as a water source for the park's deer.
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Parcel 240. The Lawn Spring. (Woodland) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
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Parcel 241. the Lawn Spring. (Woodland) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
In Hertfordshire and the wider Home Counties, the word "spring" when appended to a woodland name doesn't just mean a source of water. Technically it's an ancient forestry term for a "spring wood", a managed woodland explicitly enclosed to promote the growth of new coppice shoots. When estate men coppiced trees like ash, hazel or hornbeam, they had to legally protect the stumps from deer, cattle or rabbits which would eat the tender new shoots. Banks and ditches would be built so that the wood could spring back up securely. The land would have covered two distinct sections to allow for a rotation system. Woodmen would cut down one parcel whilst the adjacent parcel was left standing to mature. By the time they had finished harvesting the new growth from the cut parcel, perhaps a decade later, the other parcel would have sprung up ready for coppicing.
The Park Close Divisions
The word "Close" explicitly means an enclosed, fenced-off field. When the 313 acre Great Park was decommissioned in 1641, it was sliced into smaller farming plots. These pockets were leased out to specific tenant families, who attached their own names to the newly formed boundaries. Due to the early naming of these closes, the family names stuck, even though the original tenants may long since have moved on.
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Parcel 220. Webster's Park Close. (Arable) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
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Parcel 221. Ginn's Park Close. (Arable) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
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Parcel 222. Wheeler's Park Close. (Arable) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
These are the classic, first generation, post-park fields. names like Webster, Ginn and Wheeler were local farming families who took over these specific parcels directly after the deer were removed. The addition of "Park Close" to the name, beautifully preserves the memory that these fields were newly enclosed sections of the old Great Park.
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Parcel 223. Mardell's First Park Close. (Pasture) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
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Parcel 224. Mardell's Second Park Close. (Pasture) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
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Parcel 235. Mardell's Further Park Close. (Arable) Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
Named after the local Mardell family, these are further examples of first generation post-park tenant field names. The addition of "First," "Second," and "Further" to the names of the fields is beautifully descriptive of their location as they move further from the main accessway and down to New Wood in the south.
The Church Lands: A Medieval Island Enclave?
An incredibly distinct boundary anomaly occurs here, where five specific pockets of land were owned entirely separately from the Lytton estate, owned instead by the local Rector, Reverend Charles Buchanan Pearson. This was Glebe land, property likely set aside as far back as the 12th or 13th century to provide an independent agricultural income for the parish priest.
The system of Glebe Land - assigning a permanent endowment of physical fields directly to the parish priest, either to farm or lease for an income, was formalised across England in the 12th and 13th centuries. Once a Lord of the Manor legally gifted a plot of land to the church as glebe, it became the permanent property of the Rector.
When the Lytton family decided to clear the ancient forest and build the massive 313 acre Great Park, this land couldn't be taken back, so it's likely that during the 1400's and 1500's while the Lord's deer and horses were roaming the wider Great Park, the parish priest or his private tenants were actively farming these separate church lands.
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Parcel 225. Three Acres. (Arable) Owned by Reverend Charles Buchanan Pearson & tenanted by George Balls.
A purely mathematical and utilitarian name. When the church lands were squared off and reorganised in the 1700's, old landscape names were often stripped away in favour of exact, practical measurements to help the Rector calculate crop yields and rents.
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Parcel 226. Home Close. (Arable) Owned by Reverend Charles Buchanan Pearson & tenanted by George Balls.
A universal name for the primary enclosed field sitting closest to the owner/tenants farmhouse or place of management, traditionally used for keeping domestic livestock close at hand, although in the 1840's we see that its use is arable.
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Parcel 227. Seven Acres and Half. (Arable) Owned by Reverend Charles Buchanan Pearson & tenanted by George Balls.
This is also an example of purely utilitarian naming determined by the size of the land rather than any local or traditional names.
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Parcel 228. Brow in Half. (Woodland) Owned by Reverend Charles Buchanan Pearson & tenanted by George Balls.
This parcel of land directly adjoins Copse Wood and it's described as woodland. A brow is a slope or incline, which suggests that this parcel of land contains a small, sloping woodland. Had this area been flat, it's likely that the half acre woodland section wood have been cleared and incorporated into an eight acre field rather than the "Seven Acres and Half" that we see above.
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Parcel 229. Eight Acres. (Arable) Owned by Reverend Charles Buchanan Pearson & tenanted by George Balls.
Another example of purely utilitarian naming.
George Balls, listed as the tenant of all of the above parcels, was a locally born farmer living in the Bell Plash (Bedwell Parish) area of Stevenage, along with his wife and four children.
Independent Freeholds and Village Edge
This group of land parcels mark the transition where the deep agricultural countryside met the social edge of Knebworth village life, showing how land was carved out for local trade, residents and nature.
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Parcel 148. Garden. (Arable) Owned & occupied by John Thompson.
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Parcel 153. Meadow. (Pasture) Owned & occupied by John Thompson.
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Parcel 155. Meadow. (Pasture) Owned & occupied by John Thompson.
John Thompson was a locally born farmer born in 1788. At the time of the Tithe Apportionment he was living in Knebworth with his wife Elizabeth and their dress-making daughter, Mary. John's ownership of the Tithe parcels mentioned above represents a rare case of non-Lytton freehold land on the edge of the estate, likely used for intensive domestic food production and private grazing.
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Parcel 151, Meadow by Almshouse (Pasture). Owned by the Lytton estate & tenanted by Mary Sherrington.
The Almshouses were erected by Mrs. Elizabeth Barbara Bulwer-Lytton in 1836, following her inheritance of the land in 1810. They were originally built to provide five tenements for "old and deserving people of the parish".
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Parcel 152. Lytton Arms Pub Gardens. (Pasture). Owned by the Lytton estate & tenanted by Mary Sherrington.
The original Lytton Arms Public House was built some time between 1836 and 1841 and served as a public house until 1887 when the building was retired and became Inn Cottage. The new Lytton Arms pub building that we see today was built in 1887.
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Parcel 154. Meadow. (Pasture). Owned by the Lytton estate & tenanted by Mary Sherrington.
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Parcel 236. Nightingale Close (Pasture). Owned by the Lytton estate & tenanted by Mary Sherrington.
Likely named after its local wildlife habitat, Nightingale Close suggests an area that historically housed a thick, undisturbed hedgerow margin or scrubland where nightingales would have nested and sang. Due to this close's position bordering New Wood, this isn't surprising.
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Parcel 149. Three Acres. (Arable). Owned by the Lytton estate & tenanted by Mary Sherrington.
At the time of the 1841 census, Mary Sherrington was a 60 year old widowed publican, living with her daughter Mary Ann and son Frederick, presumably at the then newly built Lytton Arms Public House. She likely made use of her pasture and arable holdings to provide feed for travellers horses, space for livestock trade and space to grow barley for brewing or crops to feed the inn's guests. By the time of the 1851 census, Mary is still living at the Lytton Arms but she's now a retired publican and her son-in-law, Thomas Skelton is listed as the head of the household and a publican and grocer. Mary's daughter Mary Ann (now married to Thomas) and her son Frederick, a gardener are still living with her.
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Parcel 231. Cottage and Garden. (Cottage and garden). Owned by the Lytton Estate & tenanted by Matthew Lumbis.
With no land use explicitly given for this entry in the records, it's likely that this is the residence and garden of Matthew Lumbis and that the garden will have been used, even if not entirely, for the production of some food crops for his family. At the time of the 1851 census, Matthew is a Wood Man and lives at Copse Corner in Knebworth and in fact on the later 1881 Ordnance Map, we can see this cottage explicitly related to as Copse Corner. The cottage and garden parcel that Matthew was tenanting in 1845 was located in the Lumbas Close tithe parcel (below), right next door to Copse Wood.
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Parcel 232. Lumbas Close. (Arable). Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
Due to the remarkably close match between the names Lumbas Close and Matthew Lumbis, I think it's highly likely that this particular close may have been named after an early tenant family from which Matthew Lumbis is part. Another link between Matthew Lumbis and Lumbas Close is that Lumbas Close was situated between Copse Wood and New Wood. Is it too much of a stretch to consider that Matthew Lumbis came from a generation of woodmen who initially tenanted and cleared that particular section of the woodland?
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Parcel 242. Green Lane. (Pasture). Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
This is the ancient access trackway that runs directly adjacent to Park Wood. Left unploughed for centuries, its grassy surface would have served as the primary thoroughfare for timber wagons and livestock movement along this eastern boundary.
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Parcel 147. Cooks Field. (Arable). Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
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Parcel 146. Nup End Common. (Arable). Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
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Parcel 233. Four Acres. (Arable). Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
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Parcel 234. Beech Tree Field. (Arable). Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
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Parcel 150. The Leg. (Pasture). Owned & occupied by the Lytton estate.
The above parcels are unremarkable in the naming, ownership or occupation. They represent practical field naming using the shape of the land (The Leg), a distinct tree marker (Beech Tree Field), an exact size (Four Acres), or an individual worker (Cook's Field).
Sources: The Genealogist, 1845 Tithe Apportionment.
View Across What Would Have Been Four Acres & Lumbas Close, From North To South.
1845-1939; The Woodland Boundaries
Between the landmark 1845 Tithe Apportionment and the mid-twentieth century, map records provide our best evidence into the structural shifts that affected the woodland areas of "A Knebworth Field." The most aggressive changes took place prior to 1939; thereafter, the ancient treelines largely stabilised into the footprint we recognise today. By tracing the sequential Ordnance Survey records, we can observe exactly how a centuries old tapestry of managed timber areas gradually receded to accommodate both agricultural efficiency and country estates.
1867, Anomaly and Legacy of "Sallow Wood."
The Great Britain Ordnance Survey Map of 1867 confirms that the historic woodland pockets of Copse Wood, New Wood, Park Wood, Brow-in-Half and the Lawn Springs remained fully intact. Although this particular map doesn't provide a great deal of detail, it introduces a fascinating nomenclature anomaly, labelling at least a portion of New Wood as "Sallow Wood."
Sallow is the traditional, historical name for goat willow (Salix caprea) and grey willow (Salix cinerea). While archival records before and after 1867 remain stubbornly silent around references to this name, the field itself continues to provide living proof of the map's accuracy. From my own observations (July 2026) of the wide, grassy field margin at the south end of the arable field, just before it meets New Wood, I've noticed an abundant resurgence of native goat willow. This localised regeneration demonstrates a profound ecological truth: the flora that thrives around the field today is directly linked to the dormant genetic blueprint of its Victorian past.
1881, The Great Clearance.
By the time the 1881 Ordnance Survey was published, the woodland landscape had been radically changed, with Copse Wood, Brow-in-half and The Lawn Springs completely cleared from the map. Whilst I have no documentary evidence to explain the motive behind this restructuring, it's very likely that these smaller pockets of woodland were systematically removed to maximise the acreage of the adjacent arable fields. This agricultural intensification is clearly visible as previously separate plots were merged into larger, continuous sections of workable soil. Perhaps strangely, during the same period, half of what was oce Nightingale Close was allowed to revert back to woodland.
1897, The First Domestic Footprint.
The period between 1881 and the 1897 Ordnance Survey sees New Wood unchanged. The section of Nightingale Close that was previously incorporated into the woodland is still "rewilding". This period however, marks the beginning of a fundamental shift in Park Wood, as we see the first signs of domestic clearance. Along the north-eastern edge of Park Wood, the 1897 map captures the presence of Wood Cottage within a cleared section of woodland, then simply marked "Wood est".
1910, Lloyd George Domesday, the Edwardian Shift and the 1910 Park Wood Elite.
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the woodland landscape of Park Wood began a radical transformation as, in order to raise capital to maintain Knebworth House, the Lytton estate began carving out highly desirable residential plots within the woodland. What had once been an area of commercial timber management became an exclusive high-society enclave. By 1910, the newly laid foundations of four distinct properties permanently rewrote the DNA of this ancient acreage: Parkwood, Wood Cottage (prev Wood est.), Talbragar and Homewood.
The precise details of who owned, leased and lived within this new Edwardian enclave are preserved thanks to a remarkable piece of legislative history. Passed under the Finance Act 1901, Chancellor David Lloyd George introduced a new revolutionary tax on the incremental value of land. To implement it, the government launched a huge nationwide valuation project commonly known as the "Lloyd George Domesday Survey". Between 1910 and 1915, valuation officers visited every single plot of land in the country, meticulously recording ownership, tenancy, boundaries and rental values, cross referenced with detailed maps. For historians, these records provide a highly accurate snapshot of Edwardian society. Because clerks regularly updated these records over the subsequent years, they reveal the hidden human stories behind the estate walls, tracking how ownership passed through elite families and identifying the prominent figures who sought refuge within the boundaries of Park Wood.
Homewood: The most architecturally significant addition to the landscape was Homewood, positioned at the southern end of the Park Wood. Commissioned at the turn of the century, the house was explicitly designed by the legendary architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens, who was married to Lady Emily Lytton, designed the property as a dower house for his mother-in-law, the Dowager Countess of Lytton. Completed around 1901, the building was described as a "virtuoso display by an expert in three-dimensional form." The Domesday records show that in 1910, whilst the Dowager Countess resided comfortably at Homewood, ownership of the property lay with the Earl of Lytton. The track that I call "Green Lane" after its naming in the 1845 Tithe records, today carries the name Dowagers Lane.
The surrounding properties were occupied by industrial and imperial elites whose vast households completely reordered the local domestic economy.
Parkwood (John James Patterson): Occupied the largest footprint of the non-aristocratic parcels. Patterson brought industrial and merchant wealth into Park Wood. His property was so imposing it adopted the name of the wood itself. Patterson's huge fortune, later valued at over £114,000 at probate (well over £15 million today) allowed him to maintain a grand household managed by a live in cook, a lady's maid and upper and under housemaids. In 1910, records show that the Parkwood estate consisted of a house, stable, garden and piece of woodland. Patterson had acquired a 90 year leasehold on the property, the freehold of which remained with the Lytton estate.
Talbragar (Rupert St. John Hughes): Securing his leasehold on the property from the Lytton estate in 1906, Hughes represented the globalised nature of Edwardian Elite society. The son of a wealthy commercial tycoon from Adelaide, Australia, Hughes named his residence Talbragar after a famous New South Wales gold mining district. Backed by Australian pastoral and corporate investments, Hughes lived as a traditional country gentleman, using his Knebworth base to network with top-tier British imperial circles. In 1910, the Talbragar estate consisted of the house, stables, garden and woodland.
Wood Cottage (The temporary sanctuary of Howard Carter): Positioned alongside these grand estates is Wood Cottage, the first of the domestic properties built within Park Wood. By 1910, it was held via a leasehold by Lady Helen Mabel temple-Gore-Langton (the Countess Temple of Stowe), recorded under family trustees as Helen Maude Adams. At this time, the property is listed as house, stables, buildings and land. The cottage was initially utilised by her son-in-law, Major William Maurice Copland du Quesne Caillard - a decorated cavalry officer whose name elegantly combined the lineages of the prominent Caillard and Copland families. By 1918, as Word war I slowed global on-site archaeological efforts, the cottage was let out to a close friend of the Lytton-Carnarvon circle, Howard Carter. Just 4 years before his hugely famous discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, Carter used this quiet, furnished Knebworth haven to rest his failing lungs, analyse his excavation maps and plan the final, desperate archaeological desert campaign that would change history.
As the inter war period progressed, the elite micro colony began to shift. The original Edwardian pioneers moved on and by 1939, Talbragar had lost its original Australian gold mining name and had been formally renamed Park Lodge.
Decades later, the world of Egyptology would weave its way back into the estate's modern survival story. In her memoir "Board meetings in the Bath", Chryssie Lytton-Cobbold details how she and David Cobbold searched for creative ways to generate foot traffic after opening Knebworth House to the public. Riding the wave of global "Egypt-mania" following the British Museum's blockbuster Tutankhamun showcase, the estate launched its own major, multi-week Ancient Egypt exhibition in the summer of 1976. The house was transformed, leaning in to the Lytton family's historical social connections to the original 1920's excavation era. Complete with meticulously crafted replicas of the tomb's treasures and immersive excavation style staging, the exhibition drew a massive number of crowds. It created a bizarre mid-seventies contrast; inside the house, visitors marvelled at the Pharoah's gold, while on the parkland outside, rowdy festival crowds gathered for legendary rock concerts by bands like the Rolling Stones.
Just 58 years after Howard Carter paced the park boundaries, mapping his desert campaign, the very discoveries he unearthed returned to Knebworth to safeguard the estate's financial future.
When looking across the field today, the hedgerows and tree lines don't just reflect natural agricultural cycles and centuries of agricultural management. they carry the structural footprints of a brief, brilliant window when international industrialists, imperial pioneers, pioneering architects and the world's most famous Egyptologist all shared and enjoyed the very same landscape.
July 2026. Extensive new, young "sallow" growth on the wide grassy margin between the arable field and New Wood.
Egyptologist Howard Carter (left) and an Egyptian reis (foreman) carefully brush away ancient, dried ritual resins to clean Tutankhamun's innermost solid gold coffin, still nested inside the base of the middle coffin. Photograph by Harry Burton, October 29-30, 1925. Harry Burton's Tutankhamun Tomb Photographs Archive, The Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. (burton photographic negative no. 0770). Public Domain.
With the final interwar realignments of 1939, the historical narrative of the woodland boundaries largely draws to a close, as these ancient treelines stabilised into the footprint we see today.
The singular modern exception to this architectural freeze is The Roundhouse, an award winning residential masterpiece constructed within the northern end of Park Wood. This striking eco-conscious dwelling was uniquely built on the circular footprint of a redundant, 14 meter wide, Edwardian water reservoir. Climbing three stories upward around a massive tree-like central pillar, the property is highly celebrated for its off-grid self-sufficiency. the structure features a conical rainwater harvesting roof, rooftop solar arrays and high performance thermally broken Crittall windows. Reflecting a true "full circle" link to its surrounding landscape, the façade of the building was crafted using the crushed concrete of the original reservoir lid, while its extensive oak, ash and larch timbers were sourced less than a mile away on the neighbouring Knebworth House estate.
1845-1972. Field Boundaries: A Changing Tapestry
To look across the singular, wide expanse of "A Knebworth Field" today is to look at a landscape completely scrubbed of its historic divisions. In 1845, the Tithe Apportionment recorded this area not as a single field but as an intricate patchwork of 28 individual parcels of land, each carrying its own distinct character, tenancy and name. The journey from this complex mosaic, down to the modern singular field is a story of agricultural optimisation, which can be traced step by step through the shifting lines on late-Victorian to late 20th century maps.
1881, The First Consolidations.
Because the map of 1867 lacks enough detail to track precise agricultural boundaries, the 1881 Ordnance Survey map provides our first definitive look at how the post Tithe landscape began to merge. By this point, the initial casualties of efficiency were the historic fences and ancient hedgerows that had stood for generations. The map reveals a series of significant unions across the acreage.
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The Lawn Complex: Middle Lawn and Further Lawn were formally unified, their dividing boundary completely uprooted. At the same time, the two pockets of woodland known as Lawn Springs vanished from the record, their timber cleared and soil absorbed into a newly expanded First lawn and the adjacent Websters Park Close.
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The Park Closes: Boundary lines were completely erased between Websters Park Close and and Ginns Park Close, forging them into a single, larger arable unit. Meanwhile, though the margins of Mardells First Park Close and Second park Close remained unaltered, Mardells further Park Close surrendered its identity, merging into a much larger footprint which included Beech Tree Field.
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Woodland Assimilation: As noted in the changing woodland records, the clearance of Copse Wood allowed its former acreage to be claimed by the plough, divided between and absorbed into Cooks Field and Mary Shillington's Meadow. Nightingale Close was in part lost to agriculture however with its southern end being absorbed into New Wood.
Through these combined losses of three distinct woodland pockets and the removal of internal hedgerows, the twenty eight original parcels of the 1845 Tithe map had now been whittled down to 21.
The 1881 Ordnance Survey edition, which was the first to introduce such a high level of specific detail, also provides us with a snapshot in time as to the ancient, veteran or simply prominent trees that lined the field boundaries. Some of these marked trees are likely to be the magnificent, deep rooted remnants of the ancient woods that had been cleared in some cases centuries prior. Because the Ordnance Survey permanently abandoned the labour intensive practise of charting individual boundary trees after this era, the 1881 map remains a solitary historical window into the true wooded character of the old Victorian hedge lines.
1897, The Turn of the Century.
The publication of the 1897 Ordnance Survey map proved that the momentum toward a consolidated landscape was accelerating, reducing the total parcel count to 20.
During this decade, The Leg was systematically joined with Three Acres, a plot historically tenanted by Mary Shillington. More evocative still is the sudden structural absence at Copse Corner. The house and garden which in the mid-nineteenth century had been tenanted by Matthew Lumbis, completely disappeared from the map. In their place, only a few faint lines remain, suggesting that while the living quarters were gone, a tangible mark remained on the earth - perhaps the crumbling foundation stones of a family cottage or the low, forgotten boundary of an old garden wall.
All evidence of trees along individual field margins has now been erased, not necessarily through physical uprooting but due to the Ordnance Survey's decision to no longer mark these living, historical remnants.
1922, Domestic and Civic Footprints.
By 1922, the general landscape and layout of the fields remained remarkably consistent with the 1897 boundaries. It appears that the sweeping modernisation characterising the first twenty years of the twentieth century was largely concentrated within the residential developments of Park Wood, leaving the central agricultural lines untouched. However, infrastructure quickly followed architecture, leaving distinct geometric stamps on the field margins.
The most notable changes include an infrastructure expansion to support the local housing boom: a massive 14 meter wide water reservoir appeared at the north-eastern corner of what was once First Lawn. Engineered by the Lytton estate with heavy concrete and industrial steel, this reservoir functioned as a gravity-fed water system. It stored mechanically pumped water at a high elevation to provide consistent, modern water pressure to the upper floor bathrooms of the newly constructed grand houses nearby.
The map also documents further changes, this time along the northern boundary of Home Close. A new structure formed a distinct rectangular enclosure within the top eastern corner of the close, close to the nineteenth century schoolhouse. While the school itself had become redundant in 1912 when children were transferred down the hill to the new London Road facility , this mapped anomaly I think captured the physical footprint of the old school playground. In later decades, as horse drawn transport vanished from Park Lane, this solid, open playground clearing naturally evolved to meet the demands of the modern combustion engine, functioning today as a residents car park.
Finally, the 1922 map records a temporary structural anomaly in the north-western corner of "A Knebworth Field", showing two divided closes spanned by an intersecting feature. Because this structure vanished from all subsequent map editions, it represents (I think), a temporary field gate enclosure. Situated close to Park Lane with Manor Farm positioned just opposite, this layout would have served as a vital agricultural pinch point, the primary funnelling boundary for managing livestock, heavy horse team and early farm machinery entering the wider arable landscape.
1939, Encroachment and Allotments.
The publication of the 1939 Ordnance Survey map, the final cartographic record before the onset of the Second World War, captured a landscape adjusting to social expansion along its northern fringe. In 1922 a row of workers cottages had sprung up just north of our area of interest, adjacent to the track that navigates the northern boundaries of the fields. In 1922, these cottages had no visible rear gardens, however by 1939, a neat row of rear garden plots had encroached into the northernmost fields, reducing their arable acreage. Likely to meet the needs of these same cottages, the land that was once Mardells First Park Close was bisected to create two parcels, the southern one now being shown as allotment gardens.
1946-1960, Post War Stagnation.
Following the residential encroachment captured in 1939, the landscape entered a prolonged period of structural freeze. The Ordnance Survey maps of 1946, 1950 and 1960, along with contemporary aerial photography from 1950, record no changes to the internal field boundaries. During the years spanning the Second World War and immediate post war recovery, major infrastructure overhauls of the working fields seemed simply not to be a priority. Agricultural attention was focused entirely on maximising crop yields within the existing framework of the land, leaving the network of Victorian fences and divisions completely untouched for over two decades.
The 1950 Ordnance Survey aerial map does provide us with our next snapshot as to the state of the hedgerows and boundaries at the time. In comparison to the beautiful hand drawn maps of the 1881 survey which recorded many notable trees along the field boundaries, the 1950 tree count appears much reduced.
1972, The Great Consolidation.
By 1972, the decades long stagnation ended with a massive, unprecedented shift across the arable landscape. A series of aggressive consolidations had systematically torn down the old boundaries, compressing the remaining twenty parcels down to just eleven:
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The Northern Amalgamation: Across the entire northern expanse, an immense agricultural sweep was forged. First Lawn, Websters Park Close, Ginns Close, Wheelers Park Close, Mardells First park Close (including the wartime allotment gardens), Mardells Second park Close and the northern section of Mardells Further Park Close were all unified into a single, massive arable plot.
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The Western Union: The historic boundaries that defined Eight Acres, Seven Acres and Half, Three Acres, and half of Home Close were completely uprooted combining them into a single western block.
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The Southern Consolidation: At the southern end of the fields, a similar unification took place. Middle Lawn, Further Lawn, the southern tip of Mardells Further Park Close, Beech Tree Field and Four Acres were entirely consolidated. Alongside them, the lands historically known as Nup End Common, The Leg and Mary Shillington's Three Acres and Garden were formally joined.
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The Final Holdouts: By 1972, only a handful of the old Tithe plots retained their independent boundaries. These included of course Park Wood and New Wood, and a number of small pockets along the very western boundary. Other than that, just Lumbis Close, the historically amalgamated Cooks Field and Copse Wood, the remaining half of Home Close and the small historic meadow to its immediate west were the only survivors of the clearance.
Source: oldmapsonline.co.uk
Source: The National Library of Scotland
Source: National Library of Scotland
Source: oldmapsonline.co.uk
Unlocking The 1960's Agricultural Boom and the Expanding Fields.
Why did this huge change to our landscape take place within this timeframe?
The sudden collapse of the field boundaries between 1960 and 1972 was driven by a radical, government backed transformation in British industrial farming. Several crucial factors caused this specific layout shift:
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The Rise of Heavy Mechanisation: The 1960's saw the widespread adoption of massive, heavy diesel tractors and wide-span combine harvesters. These machines required large, uninterrupted expanses of land to operate efficiently. Small, irregularly shaped Victorian plots forced operators to waste significant time and fuel with slowing down, turning and manoeuvring. Uprooting the internal hedges turned tight corners into long, continuous, efficient machine runs.
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The Agricultural Act and Hedgerow Subsidies: Although unthinkable today, the British government actively funded the destruction of the landscape during this era. Under the Agriculture Act of 1947 and subsequent 1957/1967 expansions, the Ministry of Agriculture offered substantial financial grants to farmers specifically to remove hedgerows, clear ditches and merge fields. The political goal was absolute self-sufficiency in grain production and ancient boundaries were viewed as barriers to national efficiency.
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The Transition Away from Mixed Farming: Historically, smaller fields like Mardells and The Lawns were kept separate because they served different purposes in a traditional mixed farming rotation, where some fields held livestock while others grew arable crops. By the late 1960's, farming became highly specialised. the livestock vanished from this pocket of the estate, rendering the thick, livestock proof hedges and holding pens completely redundant. The entire acreage was converted to specialised, continuous arable crop production, clearing the way for the vast, open field layout we see today.
Sources: The Genealogist, 1910 Lloyd Domesday. National Library Of Scotland. Old Maps Online.
A Modern day Tractor Cultivating The Now Wide Expanse Of "A Knebworth Field".
1970's to Modern Day. The Machinery of Efficiency and the Rise of the Ecological Shield
The Great Arable Shift.
In the early 1970's, the landscape south of Park Lane operated under a traditional mixed farming system. Managed generationally by local tenant families, fields like this were a patchwork of cereal crops, root vegetables and grass pastures rotated to sustain dairy herds. Following the UK's entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, national and European policy completely rewrote local agricultural priorities.
The introduction of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provided aggressive guaranteed pricing and production subsidies for cereal crops like winter wheat and barley. At the same time, escalating pasteurisation standards, heavy regulation and supermarket bulk purchasing power devastated the profitability of small scale, localised dairy operations. Consequently, the dairy herds were phased out and the pastures along Park Lane were permanently ploughed. Freed from the constraints of livestock grazing boundaries, the land transformed into a uniform, high efficiency arable monoculture focused strictly on maximum grain yield per hectare.
The Changing Status of Hedgerows and Margins.
By the late 1990's, the "production at all cost" mentality of the post war boom began to reverse. Decades of intensive cultivation had resulted in widespread hedgerow degradation and soil compaction. The introduction of the Hedgerows Regulations 1997 halted physical boundary removals but the most dramatic visual change occurred following the UK's exit from the European Union, which replaced old CAP payments with the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and Countryside Stewardship schemes.
Rather than paying farmers for how much food they produce, modern frameworks pay for environmental outcomes. This explains the wildflower buffer strip which dominates the eastern edge of the field today. Modern contracting outfits explicitly layout these uncultivated buffers to establish flower rich grass margins or herbal leys. Instead of prioritising food production on every square inch, the edge of the field has been intentionally repurposed as an ecological safety net. Rather than rotating this nitrogen fixing alfalfa and red clover across the whole field, it's kept permanently in place along the perimeter to act as an underground sponge, trapping fertiliser run off, providing a long term home for pest eating insects and allowing deep taproots to break up heavy compaction caused by turning machinery.
Wildflowers Growing Along the Margins of the Arable Field
Understanding the Landscape Today: A Visual Conclusion
What we see when we stand in "A Knebworth Field" today isn't a random collection of greenery but a living map written by centuries of human ambition, survival and technology. The vast, open skyline and the ancient woodland pockets are the result of a timeline stretching back to the Domesday Book of 1086 and beyond, tracking through centuries of feudal estate management by the Lytton family and culminating in the highly automated contract farming of the 21st century.
The arable field is sculpted for maximum modern food production, while the uncultivated borders and woodland represent our latest chapter - a conscious return to balance.
To truly appreciate how this historical push and pull manifests on the ground throughout the year, visit my Arable Field page to see the lifecycle of the modern harvest and the Hedgerows and Margins page to discover how these vital biological corridors change and adapt throughout the seasons.
If you have any stories to share regarding "A Knebworth Field" throughout history, or indeed any photographs that you feel may be of interest - please do get in touch.