THREAD. This thread is about how the location of a lost royal manor was identified, and partly about the importance of the landscape to an understanding of the past. It’s the story of the king’s manor at Kingston, Cambs., already ancient in 1086. 
2. Kingston was 1 of only 9 royal manors in Cambs. in 1086 which had *always* been ‘of the king’s ancient demesne’ - royal for time out of mind. The origin of Kingston place-names is controversial - here, as you’ll see, it was probably a royal hunting lodge.
3. In 1065 there was just one manor - the king’s. The rest of the land was held by 19 free peasants. So you’d think that, being the older manor, it’s location would be obvious. But no. By the late 12thC there were 3 manors... which was the royal one?
4. It can’t have been Kingston Wood manor as that had been created by dispossessing the 19 freemen. It seems always to have lain to the south of the village.
5. It can’t have been Debden’s manor, created by 1279 by a rich peasant called Geoffrey of Soham (the VCH’s favoured choice british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol5…) because, as you can see its moat partly overlies (=later than) a block of peasant holdings. In fact, it looks as if Geoffrey ..
6. .. gained possession of the most LH property in the block and then bought up the land beyond it in order to build his moated home. Although I’m not sure when that block of properties was created, it was certainly there by 1279. (Patience, my hearts.)
7. So where was the St George manor. No-one could tell. There appeared to be no other candidate... because the very, very oldest house in the village, built in the 13thC, was called the Old Rectory. ‘Old’ meant it had always been a rectory. Right?
8. Let’s look at the house, then. It’s made up of 2 parts - a mid-12/13thC aisled hall, and a mid-14thC stone cross-wing. The details are british-history.ac.uk/rchme/cambs/vo… (revisions to dating in …ofsusanoosthuizen.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/oosthu…). Anything but a typical medieval rectory - it was palatial.
9. Such houses are vanishingly rare in Cambs. There are about 4 aisled halls, & 2 medieval domestic buildings of stone (outside the monasteries/colleges) in the county.this is the only one in which aisled hall & stone structure survive together.
10. Many of the other aisled halls are manorial - like this one belonging to Barnwell Abbey in Bourn. And, if you superimpose the plan of the Kingston aisled hall onto the plan of the on e at Bourn, they’re virtually identical in area.
11. But maybe Kingston was such a rich living that the rector there could afford a palace? Well, no. In fact, Kingston was one of the poorer livings in the county, almost the poorest among its neighbours. (Source: Prof Pounds’ book, published when he was*90* 🙌🙌)
12. Ok then. Maybe the rector was rich in his own right. Some were well-off. But few of them lived in Kingston. Most sent a vicar to perform services there instead. The first resident rector appears to hv been Dr Fogge Newton who liv Ed in the house 300 yrs after it was built.
13. What were other vicarages in the area like? Comberton vicarage, which survives, is half the area of the aisled hall (& has no stone cross wing) - even tho it brought in 2x as much income as Kingston. & Pounds remarked that ‘the majority of priests could barely make ends meet’
14. So it seems vanishingly unlikely that the house was built as a rectory. Who was it built for? Enter the St George family, a Norman family who built up a large Cambs., were keen to establish their new status, & were the king’s tenants in Kingston by 1182. And look ...
15. ..the church was rebuilt at the same time that the house was built, & has wall paintings of *knights* with distinctive 13thC helmets. In the chancel. Of course, I can’t promise you that the St Georges putting themselves about, but it’s possible. kingstonvillage.org.uk/documents/misc…
16. So yes, I do think that the Old Rectory stands on the site of the king’s ancient, pre-Conquest manor. And there’s some landscape evidence to support it. (a) most churches are close to the manor. That’s certainly true here. (Church blue, Old Rectory red)
17. (b) The site of the Old Rectory was called Burystead in 1680 - a compound of burh (often associated with a manorial site) and stead ‘place’ (Reaney 1943: 314, 344). If this were the site of a medieval manor, which one was it? The only candidate is the royal one.
18. The house & church stand on a small hill overlooking a planned rectangular green to the S. There are 7 small plots (brown) to the E of the green, & 9 larger plots to the W (green).This is a good match with the no. of tenants recorded on the royal manor in 1279.
19. So (c) the manorial block (house & church) dominate a planned settlement, whether laid out by the king or the St Georges.
20. So what do I think happened? I think the St Georges lived in the house until they sold their manor to Kingston Wood manor in 1556.
21. The advowson (right to appoint rectors) had been given to King’s College, Cambridge, in 1457. Those rectors were generally absent. Then in 1556 the lords of Kingston Wood Manor found they had an extra manor house - the St Georges’ house. So they gave the latter to King’s.
22. The fellows of King’s who wr appointed as rectors suddenly had a v posh house only a short ride fromCambridge. And one, Dr Fogge Newton, loved it so much that he was buried in the church. He may also have modernised the house by inserting a chimney & hearths, & other comforts
23. And the house survived, almost untouched until about 15 years ago, *because* it belonged to the church - generally too poor to improve it further. The church sold it into private ownership in 1950.
24. All this & more outlined less breathlessly in …ofsusanoosthuizen.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/oosthu…. And all from readily available sources. Everyone can do this. END
4a. Re the hunting grounds: Kingston Wood manor was in, & enclosed part of, an area of ancient woods & wood-pasture that stood on the high clay-topped plateau between the catchments of 2 rivers. The St Georges (royal tenants) had a park for hunting somewhere in the same area.
