A BRIEF
HISTORY OF FURZEFIELD
RECENT
TIMES...
The County
Council bought 40 acres of land in 1935 called
Furzefield; it lay between Mutton Lane and Cranborne Road
sewage farm. Eighteen acres of this land was to be
developed into a sports facility to which the King George
V Memorial Foundation promised a grant. World War II
delayed the project but the playing field and a pavilion
(converted from the British Legion Hall memorial hall)
was opened in 1957.
150
YEARS AGO
The earliest
reference to the name Furzefield Wood is 1824. A mid-19th
century map of the area shows Furzefield Wood. This mid-19th
century Map of Field Names has Furze Field Wood marked in
more or less the same shape as today. The Furzefield
meadow where the Potters Bar Brook runs is there too
and split in two fields - Upper and Lower Halfpenny
Bottom. At the eastern end of the wood there are
also two small areas - Dell Wood and Shepherd's
Dell. The King George Playing field is marked as
Arable field (existing oaks on the field in 1998 may be
indicators of these old field boundaries).There are two
other fields called Two Acres and Further
Hickman marked.
400
YEARS AGO...
An earlier map
still, the 1594 map of
Ralph Trewell (Wyllots Manor) doesn't show the
Furzefield wood but the meadow is shown: look for Longe
Pightell* the Lorde Windsor. I overlaid the 1594 map
and present day map on computer,
lining up Mutton Lane, Darkes Lane and Billy Lows (New
Lane on the 1594 map) and the correlation is very good.
An inset on this map bears an uncanny resemblance in
shape to Furzefield wood too - it's called The High
Lande the Lorde Windsor. The area of the Potters Bar
Golf Club also matches the field boundaries very well in
places. Furzefield Wood then in those times was part of a
much larger piece of woodland called Hasyars Lande.
The name Hasyars is probably a corruption of Asgar
the Anglo-Saxon. [*Pightell (Old Eng.) = pightle = pingle
= enclosed field.]
900
YEARS AGO...
Before this time
the history of the Manor of South Mimms, which I assume
always contains Furzefield, is rather complicated for
South Mimms actually moved position and its ownership
changed many times. Before 1066 the whole area was held
by Ansgar, Staller of London, Middlesex and
Hertfordshire. Ansgar was the grandson of Tofig,
the standard bearer of King Canut (1016-1035).
By 1086 the
Domesday Book contains a reference to South Mimms (Mimes)
as a berewic and part of the Manor of Edmonton.
The site of the first South Mimms is likely to be where
the twelfth century South Mimms Castle stood,
and its mediæval replacement, Mimms Hall, stood
(about half a mile away from the present day South
Mimms). The Norman conquest in 1066 meant that all lands
were transferred from the Anglo-Saxon Ansgar to Geoffrey
de Mandeville, a Norman baron. After 1066 the
history of the area is rather more complicated...
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