COUNTY INVENTORIES.
THE year 1910 will mark an era in the chronicling of the history of the country. It will be remembered as the year in which was published the first of what we hope will be a long series of inventories of our national possessions. In 1908 there were appointed two Royal Commissions,—one to make an inventory of the ancient and historical monuments of Wales, under the chairmanship of Sir John Rhys ; the other, with Lord Burghclere as chairman, with similar terms of appointment in regard to the "monuments and construc- tions connected with or illustrative of the contemporary culture, civilisation, and conditions of life of the people in England, excluding Monmouthshire, from the earliest times to the year 1700, and to specify those which seem most worthy of preservation." Both Commissions have now published their first Reports, and it is interesting to compare their methods, particularly as regards offering to the public) the results of their labour. The Commission dealing with the Welsh monuments issued their Report as a White Paper, in which, in befitting language, it was explained that the terms of appointment did not allow the expenditure of funds upon excavation or exploration, and also that the Treasury had expressly forbidden the inclusion of photo- graphs in the Commissioners' Reports. The Treasury stated that they "would not be justified in sanctioning any expenditure upon the preparation of photographs except in
so far as personal visits may be obviated by these means, and an economy effected under the head of travelling expenses." The Commission dealing with English monuments have been more fortunate. Lord Burghclere and his collabo- rators have incorporated their first Report in a handsome volume of three hundred and twelve pages, illustrated with over sixty plans and reproductions from photographs, and they have given the volume the sub-title "An Inventory of the Historical Monuments of Hertfordshire." The book is to be obtained from Messrs. Wyman at the price of Hs. 6d., and we have no doubt will find a large public. Lord Burghclere has seen exactly how such an inventory should be made, and in what form it should be issued to attract readers. We can imagine no more fascinating a series of volumes for a library than these county inventories, containing as they do not only a sketch of the history of the county's inhabitants, but in addition a detailed list of the county's monuments. Nothing so complete has been attempted in our time. We hope that when the Commission on the Welsh monuments issues its first inventory we may find that after all the difficulties as to adequate illustration have been surmounted, for without doubt the form in which Lord Burghclere's Commission have pub- lished the inventory of Hertfordshire is the right one. Few Hertfordshire houses will be content to lack so admirable a volume.
Hertfordshire was a good county for the Commissioners to choose as the first field of their investigations. There must naturally be a great deal of preliminary work in dealing with whatever county happened to be chosen first, and there were obvious reasons for not starting with such a county as Wilt- shire or Devonshire, with their wealth of historical associa- tions. Hertfordshire offers a good, simple, straightforward field to dig in. It has specimens of most of the kind of monuments which are to be found in other counties ; but none of them are overwhelming. It has an unexplained prehistoric relic, the Grims Ditch or Graemes Dyke which runs through Tring, Wigginton, Northchurch, and Great Berkhamstead. It has some thirty round barrows of the Bronze Age or later periods, and one long barrow, in Therfield parish, which is neolithic. Palaeolithic remains in the shape of flint implements have been found scattered over the county. But its most interesting relic of antiquity is Romano-British. The full history of Verulam, and of the Roman or Romano-British occupation of the town or muni- cipium of Verulamium, has yet to be written. The site is to be excavated systematically, and when that excavation is complete we shall probably have added enormously to our knowledge of the history, not only of the town, but of Roman Britain as a whole. More than sixty years ago excavation revealed the remains of a Roman theatre, the only one hitherto discovered in England; we can look at the remains of the forum, and it may be that further careful exploration may discover a Romano-British church. Verulam, of course, was not a Roman military station. All the traces that we find are of "a good-sized country town, a number of country houses and farms round it, and an adequate supply of roads." A very interesting point as regards Verulam is its independence. It may have been overshadowed by Roman London, but it was not connected with it. Forests still nnpierced lay between the Thames and the Hertfordshire town, the full excavation of which is one of the most fascinating tasks awaiting English antiquaries.
In its ecclesiastical buildings Hertfordshire is rich in possession of St. Albans alone. The oldest fragments of Christian architecture in the county are the turned stone balusters in the transepts of the Cathedral, which, the inventory tells us, may perhaps be assigned to the end of the eighth century. They "are of Barnack stone, and are doubt- less re-used material from the Roman city close by." But the county cannot to-day show most of its ancient church buildings, even when they were built of stone. The local material most easily obtained has been Totternhoe stone or clunch, and as this weathers badly it may be the cause of the disappearance of many masonry-built Saxon churches. This absence of really good building-stone also accounts for the local style of domestic architecture, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries mostly took the form of brick and timber. "Though it is possible that in the framework of some Hert- fordshire houses portions as ancient as the thirteenth century may survive, they cannot now be identified, and apart from the scanty remains of the castles, no secular building now standing in the county shows details of earlier date than the second half of the fourteenth century." The two oldest existing secular buildings to which a definite date can be given are the Abbey Gatehouse at St. Albans, rebuilt soon after the great storm of 1363, and the Clock Tower, also at St. Albans, built about 1410. The finest piece of mediaeval brickwork in the county is the remaining western wing of Bishop Morton's palace at Hatfield ; but Hatfield House itself, built of the red brick which became the normal material for domestic architecture in the seventeenth century, was finished in 1611. It is "the finest secular building in the county, and overshadows all other works of its time." If a second edition of this inventory should be published, we should like to see Hatfield done full justice as regards illustration. There are some excellent reproductions from photographs of the old palace and the newer buildings ; but the only photograph of the exterior of the latter which it was possible to obtain for the present volume shows the building disfigured by scaffolding.
In one or two respects Hertfordshire recommends itself specially for an early inventory. Professor Maitland and Mr. J. H. Round have told us, referring to the Domesday Book, that Hertfordshire before the Conquest had been "the home of liberty—a land of sochmen or tenants of a peculiarly free kind, particularly in the north-east of the county." Possibly these free and independent tenants were reduced to the level of 'villeins after the Conquest, but in any case the north-east of the county remains with its own distinction to- day. Much of the land is still unenclosed, and there still survive examples of what Professor Maitland calls the nucleated or concentrated type of village, Germanic in origin, as opposed to the scattered or group system of hamlets, which may be a survival of Celtic arrangements. The typical Hertfordshire village "is formed of a collection of houses, usually including a smithy (a survival of the earlier community), erected round a triangular green, the meeting place of its inhabitants. Here may often be found a pond, the village well and the pound, and sometimes on the green or close at hand, as at Aldbury, Brent Pelham, Great Amwell, Datchworth and Thorley, the stocks and the whipping post. The lock-up, as at Shenley and Anstey, where it forms part of the lichgate, still occasionally exists. The village fire-hook, a survival of the time of half-timbered and thatched houses, yet hangs on the church-house, now the police-station, at Welwyn." The church, in many cases, lies at a short distance from the village, and adjoins the court or hall which in almost all Hertfordshire villages retains the Anglo- Saxon title of "bury." Clothallbury, Shepallbury, Wallingtonbury, Hertingfordbury, are typical names ; sometimes "the Bury" remains alone.
Lord Burghclere and his fellow-Commissioners deserve our grateful thanks. They have embarked on an enterprise which we have every justification for expecting will result in a unique addition to our national possessions. To be given, as the result of the unselfish labours of a body of Englishmen, a new history of our country, with an inventory of its monu- ments, from the barrows and dykes of prehistoric man to the stocks and whipping-posts of our mediaeval ancestors, is to deserve the gratitude, not only of this generation, but of posterity unborn. Lord Burghclere has brought to his task the resource and energy of an explorer combined with the sympathies of an antiquary and a scholar, and his fellow- Commissioners and their secretary have proved themselves worthy of their chairman. We shall await with pleasant antici- pation their next inventory, which is to be of Buckinghamshire.
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