HERTFORDSHIRE AND BEDFORDSHIRE EXPRESS
Friday, June 17, 1955
A headless cavalier and Neolithic razor-strop are part of Pirton’s inheritance
Did you happen to be on the highway between Pirton and Hitchin at midnight on Wednesday? If so you may have seen a headless cavalier mounted on a white horse riding silently towards Hitchin. This legend is but one of the many to be found in Pirton, a village rich in the facts and fiction of history.
The ghost of this particular spectral gentlemen is said to ride from Highdown, the small Elizabethan mansion in Pirton, to Hitchin Priory on June 15 each year at the suitably witching hour. His name was Goring.
In 1648 during the Second Civil War he became wounded and went into hiding in a secret chamber in Highdown. On being suspected he hid himself in the hollow of a large wych-elm by the gateway where however, he was soon discovered and butchered in cold blood.
Highdown is a particularly fine example of a small Elizabethan mansion house, with numerous gable ends, quaintly twisted chimneys and mullioned windows. Built of clunch, said to have been dug from a chalk pit by Wellbury Cottages on the roadside from Hexton to Hitchin, it stands near Tingley Wood.
No fewer than five carved escutcheons point to it being a Docwra house. It was begun in the 16th century by Sir Thomas Docwra, the last Grand Prior of the priest-military order of the Knights Hospitallers and carried towards completion by his great-grand-nephew, also Thomas Docwra, in 1599. Impaled with his arms are those of his second wife, Jane Periam, to whom there is a tablet and charming epitaph “by herselfe composed,” in Pirton Church. The Docwras played a considerable part locally as Royalists in the Civil War and suffered much from fines and sequestrations.
King smashes windows In 1727 Highdown was sold to Ralph Radcliffe of Hitchin Priory. Thus the ghost of Goring rides to the residence of those who owned Highdown after his murder.
When he was Prince Regent, George IV kept some of his racehorses at Highdown. They were exercised at Lilley Hoo by Emilus Henry Delme Radcliffe and the king would often visit him at the mansion with Beau Brummell. Strange tales have been handed down in Pirton of their nightly revels; on one occasion the king broke the windows by throwing empty bottles at them.
Another residence of the Docwras was a house near the church, known as Old Hall. It became the vicarage in 1930. For some years before that it had been an inn and was but the one remaining wing of the original 16th century manor house.
A mere thirty years But what of Pirton itself? Walk down the High Street and ask to hear the village’s history. Your question is likely to be good-naturedly and seriously returned with: “I couldn’t tell you I’ve only been here thirty years or so.” And then quite probably you will be directed to Mr. R.L. Bryant headmaster of Hitchin Wilshere Dacre School at School House or to Mr. John Thrussell at the Post Office.
Pirton Post Office is the sort of place one might find in a Dickens novel. Festooned with useful commodities, it has none of the cold efficiency experienced in its counterparts in towns and many a discussion on Pirton has taken place over that counter when someone has dropped in for a packet of aspirins or a Road Fund Licence.
Well fortified castle How did the name Pirton arrive? Conjectures have been varied. One theory has it that the second half of the name came from “tun” , the Anglo Saxon for fortification, another – Victorian – that Pirton is the place of pears: Pearton. A most ingenious suggestion says that Pereton, as it was sometimes spelt, means town of the holy father – bearing in mind that when the Normans invaded, Archbishop Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, owned the Manor of Pirton, and was reputed to own a palace nearby. In reverse, ton-pere, a mixture of French and English.
Whichever may be true, Pirton certainly shows signs of having been well fortified. One of the first noticeable features of the village is how little can be seen for much of the time. This is because you are walking on the outer ditch or road of what was Pirton castle. The road was made sunken purposefully to afford protection for cattle when the village was likely to be raided. It was also a useful manoeuvre to be able to move along the road without being seen. The castle was probably begun in King Stephen’s time though it is too grand a term for what was little more than a wooden keep for many years. The mound was built as a look out point – you could neither see Deacon Hill nor Wilbury Hill – and was later fortified by the Saxons, Pirton’s chief ancestors.
The mound is large covering more than an acre of ground and is almost surrounded by a broad, deep moat. On the west face of the mound, about midway between its base and former crown level, there still exists its early rim or fighting platform. The purpose of this is made clear by the picture on the Bayeux tapestry of fort Dinan showing the Norman soldiers defending the castle keep from a fighting platform surrounding it. At the south-west corner of the mound the ground rises rapidly for a few yards until it reaches the level of the fighting mound or rim and at this point appears to have stood the gate-house defending the drawbridge which gave access to the castle keep.
Bottomless moat There is a tradition at Pirton that a sawpit and well existed within the moat at this point. When the water of the moat was frozen over the village lads were afraid to venture upon the ice near the draw bridge area because it was said that the moat was bottomless.
Two other tales testify its depth. The first is that two men, well primed with beer, found themselves on opposite sides of the moat and were overcome with a sudden desire to shake hands. They walked towards each other with outstretched arms and promptly disappeared beneath the waters. The other tale is that a knight, heavily clad in armour, spotted his sweetheart within the castle and galloped like fury for the drawbridge. But some humourist swiftly hauled it up and he drowned. That tale, however, is said to be confused with the one in which a complete chaise and four horses were drowned in Blind Pond not far from the moat. Some Pirton residents still say in connection with this tale, that they can sometimes hear the coach bells faintly ringing below the water.
Though Pirton is still drying out from the time when the Wash was but a few miles from the village, there are dips and ditches around the main moat which puzzle some authorities. It is said that some were made when the road taxes were increased and metal was transferred from one road to another and again it is said that they were part of the defences of an earlier mound and basecourt of pre- Norman days.
Neolithic shave It is easy to see how the castle, and close to it the church, were the centre of life in Pirton. Council houses are now diffusing its closely nucleated lay-out put you can still follow the sunken road circling the moat and castle and notice that all roads lead to the castle. Incidentally, the roads of Pirton were so bad in former years that the one cart that the village owned was kept at Hitchin.
It is hard to imagine now that anywhere marked on the map as being under 1200 ft in and around Pirton was once inundated with water alive with fish. When ??????????? carried out the excrement ?????????? thousands of stranded fish ???? fossilised ????? and was dug up epochs later by Pirton villagers. The fossilised substance known as coprolite was sold as artificial manure until science found a less laborious method of providing it.
Many Roman coins were found in the days of coprolite digging but no evidence of there having been a Roman settlement. The greatest “find” made at Pirton occurred quite recently when a farm worker was discovered using a Neolithic axe head to sharpen his razor. It had actually been thrown in the dustbin by the time the search for it was made.
Excavations are in progress at Pirton at the moment, under the direction of Mr. G.L. Evans, curator of Hitchin museum, in an effort to date the earthworks of the castle more exactly. There is now definite evidence of occupation at a date soon after the Roman Conquest, before 100 AD.
More discoveries Sundry excavations around the old castle mound by the church have been made at various times. Both Mr. Bryant and Mr. Thrussell have headed parties with picks and shovels, and in 1907 some finds were made by a hard-working party under the vicar, the Rev. E.W. Langmore, who organised the rebuilding of the south transept of the church. It is recorded in the vicar’s diary of events that: “We, the undersigned, hereby agree to work at the vicarage quarry for the Transept Committee at 2s. a day from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and we undertake to do so at our own risk.” The stone laying ceremony took place three years later, and reports of this Herculean task found their way into newspapers as far afield as Australia.
Their material was ‘clunch’ dug from Pirton chalk pit, situated in the glebe land along the Holwell Road and two interesting “finds” were made. These were fossils of fish encased in stone for many hundreds of years. One of them has been identified as a Ctenothrissa and can be seen in the church today.
Pirton church is not as prepossessing as some and is seen at its best in the accompanying photo-graph. As indicated by the rounded windows built up into the wall of the nave it appears to be Norman in design, but was evidently built upon a religious foundation of a much earlier age – it is several degrees out of the east-west orientation. One unusual feature is a priest’s chamber in the upper part of the porch with a stair case to it from the inside of the church but it is no longer in use. There is a complete record of vicars of the church starting with a certain Roger in 1218. Until the 19th century, however, the parish of Pirton was incorporated with that of Ickleford.
The church had a narrow escape in the last stages of the war when a flying bomb landed on a tree nearby and completely demolished the Baptist chapel. While talking of chapels it is worth noting that Pirton Methodist Church is unusually large for a village of below a thousand in population and has a fine organ.
Pirton village hall too is held up as a model. It was opened in 1932 thanks to Mr. Bryant and other villagers putting in much hard work and eventually prevailing on the Rand Charity and Carnegie Trust for financial aid.
More the village, including beauty spots around it such as Pirton Grange, life if the village 80 years ago, and reminiscences of some Pirton characters, will be related next week. M.J.P.
