CHAPTER 2

IN THE BEGINNING

        To discover history we have to turn to various official accounts, charters and rolls kept in the Public and County Record Offices, the British Museum and other such places. These early documents are of course written in Latin or mediaeval English, although many are available in translation.

        Hertfordshire is fortunate to have had many historians. The Victoria County History in 1914 covered Hertfordshire, and there is a volume of place and field names published by the English Place Name Society. In the latter are listed the many ways of spelling the name of the village over the centuries:

In 1086, in the Domesday Book, Escepehale

11th & 12th centuries Sepehalle, Sepehale, Scephale and Shephale

15th century Schephale, Shepehale and Chepehale

16th century Shepehalle and Shepholde

19th century often Sheephall

The Society, whose authority is respected, gives the meaning 'a corner of land where sheep were pastured'. In 1728 Nathaniel Salmon, commenting on an earlier historian, John Norden (1598), says

'Mr. Norden calls it Sheepeshale in regard 'that this place has been accounted a wholesome walk for sheep' which will never pass as the greatest part of the parish consists of small enclosures no more famous for sheep than any part of the neighbourhood, besides the Record (i.e. Domesday) hath it Escepehale'.

Salmon goes on to argue the case for Esce being from the same root as Escewelle Ashwell - and referring to ash trees writes

'there hath been many fine ones seen there lately and perhaps more anciently'.

Sir Henry Chauncy whose History of Hertfordshire was printed in 1700 states

'This vill was termed Sheephall from the wholesome food for sheep which produced wooll, the great manufacture of the Kingdom'.

        Did any of Hertfordshire's invaders find their way to this spot, probably only a clearing in the woods? The Celts were driven out by the British tribe of Catuvellauni. In 54BC Julius Caesar captured their first capital of Wheathampstead and a century later Boudicca sacked the Roman city of Verulamium; the Romans rebuilt it and continued to live in Hertfordshire for another 350 years. Then the Anglo-Saxons conquered the whole of the county.

        In 673 the First Council of the English Church was held at Hertford. In the 8th century Hertfordshire became part of the Saxon King Offa's great kingdom of Mercia, and he built a palace at Offley. The 9th and 1Oth centuries brought the Danes pillaging and burning. Their final massacre began at Welwyn in 1012.

        It is easy to imagine how anyone living in our part of Hertfordshire would drive pigs and sheep deeper into the forest if war parties came looking for food. An eye would be kept on travellers along the road; on the Romans on the march. News would filter of Boudicca's rebellion, and of the coming of the Saxons. Pilgrims, priests, rich and poor would be seen on their way to the shrine of St. Alban, or travelling to London.

        The earliest archaeological finds in the parish are three neolithic stone axes; and in 1960 an early Saxon hut was found at Broadwater. The Saxons called this place Sceapa heale, but later on the Normans, who always found difficulty in pronouncing Sc, and prefixed E to such names, came to call it Escepehale. Perhaps it is a sign of peaceful coexistence that the lane to Stevenage passes through farmland known as Fairlands or Fair Lane, from the Scandinavian faar - sheep, thus in the northern tongue meaning just what Scepehale did to the Saxons; and if there is truth in the legend that danewort grew where the Danes stopped, it grew prolifically in the meadows beyond the church.

        Leaving conjecture aside, the first recorded item of Shephall's history comes in the Gesta Abbatum, the St. Albans Abbey Chronicle. Recording gifts it says 'Offa King of the English gave to God and St. Albans ... (here follows a list of lands and the names of other noblemen and their gifts) ... certain other prominent men gave Waldene, Codicote, Shephall, Burnham Green and Welwyn'. Towards the end of the 8th century tradition has it that Offa became connected with the Abbey, perhaps providing a new shrine for the saint's body and endowing the Benedictine community with lands. It is likely that others would follow their great leader with gifts, so perhaps Shephall was given to the community at the same time.

        What is certain is that by the time of the great survey of people, lands and resources, the Domesday Book, completed for William the Conqueror by 1086, Shephall lands were held by two lords, one Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the other the Abbot of St. Albans. The two hides of Lanfranc were previously held by Aelfric, from Lanfranc's predecessor Stigand, though earlier it had belonged to the Abbot of St. Albans. In 1086 Ansketel de Ros was responsible for its cultivation, along with land he held at Datchworth, Watton and Sacombe, all belonging to the Archbishop. In Shephall he had five ploughs and one in use in the lord's demesne. Three villagers shared two ploughs and it was indicated that there was land for two more. There was also meadowland and woodland for twenty pigs.

        In the Abbot's portion of Shephall there were three hides of land with five ploughs. Another plough was on the lord's demesne. The eight villagers had three ploughs for their own use. There were two cottagers and one thrall or slave. There was pasture and livestock, and woodland for ten pigs.

        The amount of land in a hide varied according to the quality of the land. It once meant the amount of land which needed to be ploughed in a year by one plough to support one family, and it is usual to estimate this as 120 acres. Villagers served on the lord's estate, paying for their land by their labour. Cottagers paid rent in provisions and money, with some service.

        The Abbot was Paul of Caen and the Gesta Abbatum says that he 'in view of his religious zeal and assiduity obtained the transfer of the two hides in Shephall which Ansketel held from Lanfranc'. So by the end of the 11 th century the five hides of Escepehale were united and administered by the monastery at St. Albans.

        Salmon in his History of Hertfordshire tells of other lands ...

'When Henry I confirmed land to the Abbey there was mentioned 76 acres of arable land with one marsh in Scephale the gift of Wimar de Ardes and Alice his wife, and all the land between the highway leading from Stevenage to Hertford and divided from Scephale of the gift of Robert de Tailbois and Ralph his son' ... he concludes ... 'The marsh is the land drained since the conquest, the ancient Broadwater'.

        The Domesday survey of Hertfordshire is not consistent over the recording of churches. No church or priest is mentioned for Shephall. The Abbey monks would preach when they visited. Ansketel had a priest on his land at Watton, and at Aston there was also a priest.

        The British Museum has a document dated AD 1151 - 1154 which is the first record of a church here. Hugo, Prior of Reading Abbey, travelled to St. Albans to arrange the transfer of the church at Shephall from his monastery to that of St. Albans:

'Be it known to all the faithful of holy church both present and future that this is the composition that is made between the church of Radinges and the Church of St. Alban about the church of Sepehale. The church of Rading wholly renounces any claim which it has against the church of St. Alban over the parish of Sepehale, which causes it to pertain to the church of Estuna and be under its jurisdiction, and it grants that a mother church should be had at Sepehale. It shall be under the jurisdiction of St. Alban with all its tithes and appurtenances with this agreement, that the church of St. Alban shall annually pay the church of Rading a silver half mark on the octave day of Easter. The church of Sepehale shall be free of all other commitments in perpetuity ...'

In return St. Albans granted another church to Reading.

        Why should the monastery of Reading first have a church here? It seems likely that, as it was a daughter church of Aston, it was conveyed with lands from that village after the death of Henry 1. Queen Adelezia (the Fair Maid of Brabant) held the manor of Aston as part of her dower; Henry had married her in a vain attempt to beget another legitimate heir after the drowning of his son William in

Both bells were rehung by the Whitechapel Foundry in January 1974.

the White Ship. Henry died in 1135, and on the first anniversary of his death the Queen went to Reading Abbey to give those lands in his memory. St. Mary's, ShephalI is built on a corner of the parish very close to the boundary with Aston. Perhaps it was a kind of no man's land between manors, and once the church was built the people moved their simple habitations into its protection.

        Nothing can be seen of that church, probably only built of wood, but one of the two bells which ring today, Sunday by Sunday, from the tiny bell turret, is tall, elongated and unmarked. From its shape it is dated around the last quarter of the 12th century. Of course it may not always have hung there, and could have come from another church at some time, but perhaps it was proudly made and hung to mark the time when 'a mother church was had at Sepehale'.

        In 1218 Pope Honorius III confirmed the church to the monastery of St. Alban and a vicarage was ordained and endowed.

        At Domesday, Shephall had been in the Broadwater hundred, but later all the holdings of the Abbey were administered from St. Albans, and Shephall became one of the detached parishes of the Cashio hundred. It came under the jurisdiction of the Liberty of St. Albans. Up to the time of Henry VII the Abbot appointed his own justices who had power to hear cases of murder, treason and insurrection. When Henry VIII annihilated civil jurisdiction one of the exceptions was the borough of St. Albans. After the Dissolution, the Liberty assumed jurisdiction over all the area held by the Abbot; this continued up to 1874, when it was merged with that of the county, and Shephall ceased to look to St. Albans for much of its legal administration.

        The church was transferred in 1550 to the Diocese of London. In 1845 it became for a few years part of the Diocese of Rochester, being returned once more to St. Albans when the new diocese was formed in 1877.

Back • Next