Little Berkhamsted - its Place in History

Lords of the Manor

Chronological Listing

Main Source: C E Johnston THE EARLY HISTORY OF LITTLE BERKHAMSTEAD; THE LATER HISTORY OF LITTLE BERKHAMSTEAD (see those articles for more complete details).

The Domesday Book recorded that before the Conquest in 1066 the Manor of Berkhamstead (sic) had belonged to King Edward the Confessor and all the kings his predecessors. (Note that there was no mention in Domesday of the adjective “Little” before the name of the village).

After the conquest, as with almost all of the estates in England, it was bestowed by William on one of his followers, Harduin d’Eschalers, and the list from then on is as follows:

1066–1223 The d’Eschalers family

*1223 - August 25, 1224 Falkes de Breauté

The French Invasion

1225 The Crown

1226 John Marescall

1228 Nicholas de Moaeles

1337/47 William de Botreaux

1402 John Norbury

1466 Sir John Say

1529 Lord Mountjoy

1539 Anthony Denny

*1600 Humphrey Weld

*1610 John Weld

1645 Phineas Andrews

1655 George Nevill

*1679 Elizabeth Fleetwood (née Nevill)

1713 John Dimsdale the younger

*1726 Thomas Dimsdale

Thomas Dimsdale afterwards became 1st Baron Dimsdale (of Imperial Russia) with whose family the manorial rights still remain (that would have been in 1911, when the second of Charles Johnston’s articles on the HISTORY OF LITTLE BERKHAMSTEAD was published in THE HOME COUNTIES MAGAZINE, VOLUME XIII).

More information of Lords of the Manor of special interest, as marked* above, is shown in separate articles.