ABSTRACT
In all there are fifty nine deserted medieval villages in Hertfordshire, more than in any neighbouring county except Buckinghamshire. Even Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex combined have fewer abandoned settlements than Hertfordshire. Almost all the existing medieval documents relating to Caldecote owe their survival to the fact that the manor belonged to an ecclesiastical institution, but documentary evidence relating to medieval villages is seldom extensive. The Domesday Survey records that Caldecote was held by Lemar of Archbishop Stigand before the Conquest. Caldecote lies within a group with six Domesday manors: Ashwell, Bygrave, Hinxworth, Newnham, Norton, and Radwell. Traditional farming practices survived on some manors into the post-medieval period, though enclosure of common fields 'by consent' became frequent by the seventeenth century and was legalised by individual Enclosure Acts in the eighteenth century, and the General Enclosure Act of 1801. The recorded population at Caldecote in 1086, comprising nine villeins, four cottars and a priest, was the lowest of all adjacent manors.
