Stevenage is bordered by Graveley,
Walkern, Aston, Shephall, Knebworth, Letchworth, Hitchin, Ippollitts and Great
Wymondley.
Miscellany
Stevenage is a good example of the
development of the Teutonic type of settlement which is so frequently met with
in Hertfordshire. The old church of St.
Nicholas and the ‘Bury,’ with a few cottages lying about half a mile off the
Great North Road, evidently formed the site of the original Saxon village,
consisting of an agricultural community which desired to be in the midst of its
territories. Probably before the
Conquest, but at all events before the grant of a market and fair in 1281, a
settlement on the road-side was established, where at the fork of the road was
the natural position for the market.
The road-side settlement seems to have prospered and by the end of the
14th century we have the names of streets such as ‘Pilgryms’ and a
little later ‘Lycchenstret,’ ‘Baldokstret,’ ‘Laschmerstret,’ and ‘Pavylane,’
which indicates a town of some size. It
is clear from the number of presentments relating to innkeepers on the manor
rolls that by the beginning of the 15th century it had become the
resort of travellers on the Great North Road.
Possibly on account of this prosperity and the increasing size of the
town we find that about 1405 a number of London tradesmen purchased, probably
as building speculations, small plots of land here. Richard FOSTER of London had a messuage and 6 acres of land; John SYLAM, citizen and pewterer of London,
had 4 acres ‘built upon’; William
RENDRE of London had land in Churchfield called ‘Pyedelacre’; William WALDERN, citizen and grocer, John
HAMOND, citizen and barber, William MARCHFORD, citizen and mercer, Edward
GRYMSTON, citizen and vintner, and others, all of London, purchased small
freeholds.