Hatfield and Newhampton is a civil parish in the county of Herefordshire, England, and is north from the city and county town of Hereford. The closest large town is Leominster to the west. The parish includes the small village of Hatfield, the former extra-parochial liberty of New Hampton, the site of former abbey lands of Fencote, the preserved Fencote railway station, and the Grade II* listed 11th-century Church of St Leonard.
History Medieval Hatfield is a common Old English name comprising 'hāeth' with 'feld', describing a "heathy open land or open land where heather grows." The 'hampton' in Newhampton could be either the Old English 'hām-tūn' or 'hamm tūn', for a "home farm or homestead" or "farmstead in an enclosure or river-bend". The place name Fencote means a cot [small house] in a fen [marshy land]. In the Domesday Book, Hatfield is written as "Hetfelde".Mills, Anthony David (2003); A Dictionary of British Place Names, Oxford University Press, revised edition (2011), pp. 222, 229. .Ekwall, Eilert (1936); The Concise Oxfordshire Dictionary of English Place-names, Oxford University Press, 4th ed. (1960), p. 224 .
Within today's Hatfield and Newhampton were three manors, two with a joint population of 17 households. They are listed in Domesday, two as Hatfield, the other Fencote. Hatfield in 1086 was centred at the west of today's parish and included the lands of Hugh de Lasne and Ralf. Hugh's land, with 8 smallholders (middle level of serf below and with less land than a villager), is defined in area by 3 lord's and 6.5 men's plough teams. He took the manor, held in 1066 from Leoffled (wife of Thorkil) under Queen Edith, and was tenant-in-chief to king William I. Ralf's land, area defined by one lord's plough team, is listed with two slaves, and held under William d'Ecouis who was tenant-in-chief to the king, and who had taken the 1066 land owned by Almer held under overlord Queen Edith."Hatfield", opendomesday. Retrieved 14 November 2020. Fencote was centred south-east from today's St Leonard's Church at Hatfield village. The manor, comprising an area defined by 2 men's plough teams, held four villagers, was abbess lands. Lordship in 1066 had been held by the Leominster St Peter's Abbey under Queen Edith. St Peter's kept lordship in 1086 and was tenant-in-chief to king William I."Fencote", opendomesday. Retrieved 14 November 2020."Herefordshire A-L", The Domesday Book Online. Retrieved 14 November 2020. Land at Fencote, run by the ecclesiastical community of women, comprised at least one free hide, however if any abbey or priory at Fencote existed it could have been "dissolved or abandoned before 1066." According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, following Sweyn Godwinson's 1046 abduction of Eadgifu, the abbess of Leominster, and her imprisonment for a year, King Edward refused to allow a forced marriage and returned Eadgifu to Leominster, she by 1047 rehabilitated, perhaps at Fencote, by which time the priory had been dissolved. Leominster Priory was re-established in 1139. The existence of any abbey at Fencote has been debated, it perhaps being merely lands owned by Leominster Abbey. Fencote later became a parish before being absorbed in Hatfield and Newhampton, and other adjoining parishes."Leominster", Monastic Matrix, University of St Andrews School of History. Retrieved 16 November 2020.Bugyis, Katie Ann-Marie, The Care of Nuns: The Ministries of Benedictine Women in England during the Central Middle Ages, Oxford University Press, p. 23 .Richardson, Ruth Elizabeth, "Scandal in the nunnery", Blanche Parry in Blancheparry.co.uk. Retrieved 16 November 2020.Hillaby, Joe; Hillaby, Caroline; Leominster Minster, Priory and Borough C.660-1539, Logaston Press (2006), pp. 42–44 .Lord Rennell of Rodd, "Note on certain pre-Domesday estates East of Leominster", Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club Herefordshire, Vol 39 (1969) part 3. pp. 469–475. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
19th and early 20th century Hatfield in 1831 (as its own parish), was described as in the Hundred of Wolphy, north-west from Bromyard, and containing 155 inhabitants. Ecclesiastical parish living was a perpetual curacy in the Archdeaconry and Diocese of Hereford, and supported by a yearly private benefaction of £10 and a royal bounty of £600, and under the patronage of Sir John Geers Cotterell, 1st Baronet.Lewis, Samuel; "Hatfield (St. Leonard)" in A Topographical Dictionary of England with Historical and Statistic Descriptions, Vol 2, 1831. By 1837, the parish population had reduced to 153 inhabitants in 30 houses, and fairs were held yearly on 23 April and 18 October.Moule, Thomas; The English Counties Delineated Or, A Topographical Description of England, vol II, 10 Wolfrey hundred, p. 47.
By the 1850s Hatfield, a township, was part of electoral district, petty sessional division, county court district and Union—poor relief and joint parish workhouse provision set up under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834— of Leominster, and remained so for at least the rest of the century. Ecclesiastically the parish was part of the Archdeaconry and Diocese of Hereford. The Anglican parish church of St Leonard is described as comprising a chancel in 13th-century style, and a western porch, a chancel, a wooden bell-gable turret with two bells, monuments and a font. The living was a perpetual curracy worth £90 yearly, in gift of the Lord Chancellors Rolfe and Thesiger.Post Office Directory of Herefordshire, 1856, p. 32.Cassey, Edward; History, Topography, and Directory, of Herefordshire, Edward Cassey & Co, 1858, pp. 91–92.
Hatfield and New Hampton (which at that point was not conjoined within the same parish), was north from the then Worcester to Leominster turnpike road. Significant residences in the parish included The Old Court which is described as a "picturesque mansion in Elizabethan style - a portion of it is in ruins". Hatfield Court, the seat of Thomas Ashton, the builder and supporter of the 1852 built parish free school for the poor, was a "modern substantial villa; the view from the hill on which it stands, is one of the most beautiful and extensive in this county"; the house, "mantled with venerable ivy", was formerly the residence of the Geers and was at the time attached to a farmhouse. Other named places were The Bank, The Rock, Upper and Lower Nicholson, The Common, and Dunhampton. New Hampton, the "extra-parochial tract in Leominster district" [until becoming a parish through the Extra-Parochial Places Act 1857], at the time was of one farm, one house, and of , and by 1870 had a population of 8. A post office is listed, letters processed through Tenbury, with the nearest money order offices at Tenbury and Leominster. Population in 1851 was 173, including New Hampton. Parish area at the time was , its soil 'clayey', with chief landowners that included the ironmaster and MP, Sir Joseph Bailey, 1st Baronet. Occupations listed included the parish priest, the parish clerk, a schoolmistress, seven farmers, a sawyer, a carpenter and joiner, and a shopkeeper who was also a boot & shoemaker.Wilson, John Marius (1870-72), Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
By the 1880s the ecclesiastical parish was part of the Leominster rural deanery of the Diocese of Hereford. St Leonard's chancel, which had been restored in 1878 for £250, is described as containing "distinct traces of Saxon work, but... rebuilt in Early English and later styles", and is listed with a stained glass window of Munich glass dedicated to Thomas Ashton of Middleton, Lancashire, who had lived at Hatfield Court and who died in 1869. Remains of a Saxon doorway was noted in the north wall of the nave, while the chancel had been restored in 1878 by the trustees of the Hatfield estate. Because of restricted revenues, the incumbency had become a vicarage discharged from paying annates—first year's revenues together with one tenth of the income in all succeeding years—which were kept within the parish and were valued at £115 yearly. The vicar was also curate-in-charge at the neighbouring parish of Pudleston, later living there and becoming its rector. The parish registers were dated to 1615, and church seating capacity was 100. A charity of 15 shillings yearly was distributed in the form of bread. The Primitive Methodists had a chapel which had been built in 1869.Kelly's Directory of Herefordshire, 1885, p. 1153.Kelly's Directory of Herefordshire & Shropshire, [Part 1 Herefordshire], 1895, pp. 59–60.
The civil parish, "with a scattered population", was north from Steens Bridge railway station on the uncompleted Worcester, Bromyard and Leominster Railway section of the Great Western Railway. In 1884, under a Local Government Order under the Divided Parishes and Poor Law Amendment Act 1882, part of Docklow parish was amalgamatedwith Hatfield. By 1887 the enlarged 1852 parish free school, complete with a residence for the schoolmistress, had become a mixed National School with a capacity for 100 pupils, and attended on average by 53-54 children, with some from neighbouring Docklow. The parish mail service, which included a pillar letter box near the church, and a post office with sub-postmaster, provided for mail processed through Leominster, with the nearest money order and telegraph offices at Tenbury in 1885, and Bredenbury in 1895.
One of the chief landowners in the 1880s was Sir Joseph Bailey, 2nd Baronet (1858 to 1899), MP, of Glanusk Park, Crickhowell in Brecon, Wales. Parish land was of clay over a subsoil of rock, on which were grown crops of wheat, oats, beans, hops, fruit, with some pasture. Population in 1881 was 139, and in 1891, 251. New Hampton, with 11 inhabitants in two houses, was of . Previously extra pariochial, it was now its own civil parish in the Union, electoral and county court districts, and petty sessional division of Leominster. Residents and occupations listed in the late 1880s included, at Hatfield Court and farm, Howard Ashton the local justice of the peace and county Deputy Lieutenant, and its land agent and farm bailiff. There were between nine and ten farmers, two to four of whom were also hop growers, a further hop grower, a blacksmith, a gamekeeper, an estate carpenter, two shopkeepers, and a shoe maker who later in the decade ran the post office as sub-postmaster.
In 1903 the nave of St Leonard's was restored as a memorial to Miss Vickers of Hatfield Court. The discharged vicarage in 1909 was now valued at £125 yearly, and in 1913 at £130, and still in the gift of the Lord Chancellors: Gifford, Reid and Haldane. The parish vicar, previously living at Pudleston, was now at The Rock (house) in Hatfield, while the annual parish charity of 25 shillings was now distributed in coal. The Fencote railway station had been opened at the east of the parish, where operated the agent for the Fencote branch of the South Wales Coal Company. The National School had now become a Public Elementary School, under the Education Act 1902 which replaced the directly elected school boards with local education authorities. The school was now capable of holding 87 pupils and had an average attendance of 54 in 1909 and 41 in 1913. The post office, which was now also a telegraph office, again processed mail through Leominster, with the nearest money order office at Bredenbury. A carrier—transporter of trade goods, with sometimes people, between different settlements—operated between Hatfield and Leominster on Fridays.Kelly's Directory of Herefordshire, 1909, p. 68.Kelly's Directory of Herefordshire, 1913, pp. 68–69.