EARLIEST TRACES OF SETTLEMENT.

An unclassifiable Palaeolithic flake and some worked flints including leaf-shaped arrowheads and scrapers have been reported as having come from within the parish (Ordnance Survey Map ref 841584 and 844573). The Palaeolithic period or Old Stone Age refers to a huge period from 450,000 to 10,000 BC but Neanderthal Man, who may well have used worked tools, was in existence from around 35,000 to 100,000 years ago.

A Roman coin was discovered at Ordnance Survey map reference 836579 and there is evidence of Iron age (750 BC to 42 AD) & Roman (43AD to 410 AD) settlement (OS 841590) where finds included both Iron Age and Roman pottery, part of a quern (a pestle-like hand grinder), part of a bronze bracelet and part of a bronze toilet set. A further site has been identified between the main part of the present village and Mere Barn  (OS 831580) showing a series of rectangular ditched enclosures which have yielded Iron Age & Roman pottery,  Roman tiles and a flint scraper plus a coin depicting Nero (60 – 64 AD). Four further sites have provided evidence of Iron Age & Roman activity providing mostly pottery fragments.

The sites that have been identified are scattered fairly randomly over the whole area surrounding the present village and do not appear to relate specifically to existing physical features of the present day village site, the streams or the roadways.

 

(Data from Inventory of Archaeological Sites in Central Northamptonshire HMSO 1979).

 

1086 and beyond.

 

The village now known as DENTON has had a number of different names in years gone by.

In the Domesday Book, prepared following a countrywide statistical survey of England in 1086, the name appears as Dodintone. Subsequently in the 12^th century the name became Dudintun followed by Parva Dudington (13^th century), Deynton (14^th century), Dodington alias Deynton (16^th century) and later Doddington Parva alias Nether Doddington (17^th century) to become Little Doddington, Divington Parva or the present day Denton by the 18^th century. As the standards of literacy in those days were low it is likely there were other minor variations in between.

The Domesday Book offers some of the earliest documentary evidence of land ownership. The survey undertaken by Duke William of Normandy’s (William the First) Counsellors on 1085/6 shows that ‘1 hide in Dodintone (in the Wimersle hundred) was held by Countess Judith', his niece, who lived from 1054 -1094.  A hide was a variable unit of land supposedly sufficient for one household to live on. It was also a basis of tax assessment and at one time an attempt was made to standardise the area of a hide to be 120 acres but this was never universally adopted.

Countess Judith was the daughter of King William’s half sister Adelaide and of Lambert, Count of Lens, and she was the widow and heiress of Earl Waltheof who she was alleged to have betrayed.  He had previously owned the large composite Manor of Yardley. She was quite a substantial landowner not only holding several other hides within the Wymersley hundred but also other substantial land holdings elsewhere both in Northamptonshire and in a further 10 counties throughout the Midland & East Anglia.

A further one- half hide in the name of Countess Judith was held by Winemar (Wynemar of Hanslape – later Hanslope).

A total of 3 hides in Denton & Whiston were held by Ramsey Abbey (St Benedicts of Ramsey) who appear to have acquired them in earlier years from Duke Brithnoth  (who died in 991 AD fighting the Danes).

By the 12^th century Countess Judith’s hide in Denton had passed to David, King of Scotland, while Ramsey Abbey still owned 1½ hides of which part was held by Walter Fitz-Winemar and the rest by William de Whiston. Their respective holdings are quoted in 18^th century records as 6 small virgates and 10 small virgates but as a virgate was normally understood to be around ¼ hide or 30 acres these figures seem questionable.

There is evidence that the ½ hide held by Winemar had later been usurped by Countess Judith and subsequently recovered by Ramsey Abbey.

Later in the 12^th century William Peverel (the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) obtained possession of that land originally held by Countess Judith but on Peverel’s forfeiture in 1155 the land went into the hands of King Henry II and thereafter with the rest of the Peverel assets to the Earl of Ferrers. The estate of Robert de Ferrers, the Earl of Derby, was itself forfeited in 1266 whereupon it was granted to Edmund of Lancaster, the son of King Henry II. In 1297 Laurence of Preston is noted as holding one knight’s fee (tenure of property for a knight for which the Crown required military service in return) in Denton and Quinton. Some 130 years later in 1428 the De Preston line was still in evidence in the person of Winmer de Preston who held the tenure at that time.

The ten small virgates of land held by Ramsey Abbey (as originally occupied by William de Whiston) were still in the Abbey’s hands in 1271 when 9 virgates were on life tenancy to John De Cave and the 1 remaining virgate on life tenancy to William de Bradfelde. By 1316 a part of Denton was in the names of John De Cave and Margery De Meuse who also held land in Whiston. When Whiston passed to the Earl of Gloucester the Denton land went with it and at the time of his death in 1387 Hugh, Earl of Gloucester was noted as possessing half a knight’s fee in Denton held by Sir Thomas Griffin. The name of Griffin is in evidence for a considerable time thereafter and when an apparent descendent of the original line, Edward Griffin, died in 1569 his share in Denton was noted to be worth 40 shillings and occupied by Sir Henry Compton.

Another part of the village was, in 1284, held by John De Hastings as part of the estate of Huntingdon. This family held other land at Brafield and Houghton and eventually these holdings were passed to the Comptons, Earls of Northampton.

In 1639 Henry, Lord Spencer, is noted to have recovered property including the Manor of Denton and by 1647 James, Earl of Northampton in shown as dealing with the affairs of the Manor at that time. Subsequently the land of Denton tended to descend with the Manors of Yardley Hastings and Castle Ashby and to the present time Lord Northampton of Castle Ashby owns considerable land in Denton and surrounding areas.

The lie of the land.

By the time the Act of Inclosure (see picture right courtesy of NLIS) relating to Denton was passed in 1770 the parish of Denton, or Divington Parva as it was known at that time, was stated to be ‘several open fields containing about seven hundred acres and also a common and several copses, and other commonable waste ground containing about seven hundred acres’

When Whellans Directory was issued in 1849 the area of the parish was quoted as 1970 acres but by 1869 boundary reorganisation had reduced the area to 1572 acres and the 1898 Kelly’s Directory quotes a figure of 1554 acres and this is almost precisely the same as the official figure of 630 hectares quoted in Government records which still apply to the present day.

The parish is roughly triangular in shape and lies on land rising southwards between 84 metres and 112 metres above mean sea level (early references refer rather grandly to the village standing on a ‘declivity’).

Geologically the area is almost entirely covered by Boulder Clay (laid down as a moraine deposit at the end of the last Ice Age) except in the valleys of the various small North flowing streams where, in places, limestones and silts have been exposed. Indeed the village had no less than 3 stonepits in past times from which stone was taken for local building work.

The soil in described as a cold stiff clay or loam and there is reference to it having a light black surface towards the South side of the parish. The use of the land has changed over the years in that the 1770 Inclosure Act refers to only 700 acres of the total 1400 acre parish as being fields (the rest being copses & wasteland) whilst by 1849 there is quoted to be 340 acres of wood with the rest (1630 acres) being grassland whereas today the amount of woodland is very small indeed and almost all of the land (excluding the part occupied by the buildings of the village itself) is either cultivated grassland or, more predominantly, arable land.