Norton Bury Until a history of Norton bury is written, the following fragments may help to show a sketchy outline. Mrs Hilda Bailey, wife of the Vicar of Norton, wrote a short history of the parish, "Norton in Hertfordshire" in 1931. In this she said: "Both farm-houses (Norton Hall and Norton Bury) are comparatively modern, though the one at Norton Bury undoubtedly stands on the site occupied by former Lords of the Manor. Bury or Burgh means a house or houses surrounded by a moat." The Victoria County History, published in 1908, describes Norton Bury as "the present manor-house". "In front of the house is a rectangular moat about 150 feet by 100 feet having an arm connecting it with a pond nearby, which shews that it may at one time have been more extensive, and perhaps inclosed the manor-house. There are no manor courts held." From an old book of parish customs, the VCH deduced that "the tenants seem to have performed the usual services of carrying poultry and eggs to St Albans, and of doing harvest work, boon work and ploughing." Boon work was simply the special jobs they did when the lord of the manor asked them, and they could hardly refuse. Carrying eggs to St Albans is explained by the fact that in 795 King Offa of Mercia granted Norton manor to St Albans Abbey. After about 200 years, an ealdorman named Leofsig obtained the manor for himself, but after he had been banished for murder, King Ethelred II returned Norton to the Abbey of St Albans. The Saxon families lining around the river valley here were known as the Gifla. This name later changed to Yifla, and eventually as Ivel became the name of the river itself. John de la More, form one of the conquering Norman families, probably lived at Norton Bury. When he died in 1306 he left all his lands in Norton to be added to those already held by the monks of St Albans. More than 200 years after this, the Act of Dissolution in 1536 was a sort of compulsory nationalization of all monastery lands. In 1542, King Henry VIII gave Norton manor to Sir Richard Williams (also known as Cromwell, whose great-grandson Oliver later made a name for himself). Very soon, however, Sir Richard sold the manor to his bailiff, John Bowles from Wallington, and for the next century it passed from one family to another. Norton Church Terrier (meaning a land survey of the parish) in 1637 refers to "Norton-Berry Land on the North" of the Great, or White, Field. The feudal strip system was still operating here, as everywhere else, when William Pym of St Martin's in the Fields bought the manor in 1662. It stayed in the Pym family until the twentieth century. Francis Pym was lord of the manor when the enclosures were enforced and the open fields of Norton were divided by fences and hedges in 1798. An another Francis Pym still owned Norton Bury in 1903. He then sold it with all his Norton and Radwell estates to the new company called First Garden City Ltd. The Pyms did not live here at the time, for Norton bury was held by tenant farmers. From various directories we see that Nicholas Stick was farming here in 1899 (probably much earlier), and was still here as the tenant of First Garden City Ltd in 1912. By 1923, and at least until 1937, the farmer was Charles Webb. After the second world war, Alfred Bertram Sapsed was the tenant of Norton Bury, as he was when Letchworth Garden City Corporation became the lords of the manor in 1963. When the Corporation rationalized its farming policy throughout the Garden City agricultural belt, Norton Bury fell vacant, until in 1978 it was leased to the Letchworth and Baldock Scout District. By a happy coincidence, the District Commissioner at this time was named Peter Norton.
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