Baldock
Baldock is a historic market town in the North Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. The River Ivel rises from springs in the town. It lies north of London and north northwest of the county town of Hertford. Nearby towns include Royston to the northeast, Letchworth and Hitchin to the southwest and Stevenage to the south. In 2021 it had a population of 10,615.
History and etymology
Baldock has an exceptionally rich archaeological heritage. Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements show the site of Baldock has been almost continuously occupied since prehistoric times.The earliest monument in the area is a narrow cursus, probably from the middle Neolithic. At the beginning of the Iron Age there was a hillfort at Arbury Banks, 5 km to the northeast of Baldock, that dominated the area. In the Late Iron Age, the local power base shifted from the hillfort to the vicinity of Baldock. The soil was easily farmed and transportation was more convenient. In the later part of the middle Iron Age Baldock became the site of a large oppidum, arguably the largest such site in Britain. The oppidum in turn became a sizeable Roman settlement, which although not administratively important, seems to have been a significant cultural centre. The Baldock area is also host to the highest quantity of finds of ancient coins in Hertfordshire after the Verulamium region. The site was used until the fifth or sixth century, with some rare sub-Roman pottery found in the vicinity. The Roman settlement gradually disappeared during the so-called "Dark Ages" and left unoccupied through the eleventh century, and resultantly there is no entry for Baldock in the Domesday Book.
Baldock was founded by the Knights Templar as a medieval market town in the 1140s. It was laid out by the Knights Templar on land in the manor of Weston in the hundred of Broadwater, granted by Gilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Pembroke before his death in 1148. The 1850 tithe map, drawn up before the parish boundaries were extended in the later 19th century, clearly shows the boundaries of the land grant made from the manor of Weston in the 12th century; it is a triangular parcel of land beside the old Roman Road, cut out from an older estate.
The popular story for the origin of the name Baldock is that it is a derivation from the Old French name for Baghdad: Baldac or later Baudac. While Damascus was the farthest location of Templar military activity during the Crusades, they would have been aware of the significance of Baghdad, which was widely regarded as the most prosperous market in the world. Perhaps the Templars hoped that the name would confer a similar prosperity on their own market town in England. Founding contemporaneous documents use the spelling Baudac, but it is first recorded as "Baldac" in the Pipe Rolls of Hertfordshire in 1168.
Walter William Skeat writes in The Place-names of Hertfordshire :
Others, however, consider it more likely that the Knights Templar used a name already in use, particularly since the location was already a crossroads. In addition the settlement was already thriving as a late Anglo-Saxon part of Weston. Alternative etymologies have been suggested, including Middle English balled, meaning "bald", together with Old English āc, meaning "oak" ; and a conjectured Old English personal name *Bealdoc, from beald, meaning "bold", with a diminutive -oc suffix. These derivations, however, are not entirely satisfactory.
The modern layout of the town and many buildings in the centre date from the sixteenth century, with the earliest dating from the fourteenth century.
Thanks to its location, the town was a major staging post between London and the north: many old coaching inns still operate as pubs and hotels, and Baldock has a surprising number of pubs for its size. The High Street is very wide, a typical feature of medieval market places where more than one row of buildings used to stand. In the case of Baldock, the bottom of the High Street had three such rows, until Butcher's Row was demolished by the turnpike authorities in the 1770s.
Since the 16th century, Baldock has been a centre for malting, subsequently becoming a regional brewing centre with at least three large brewers still operating at the end of the 19th century, despite a decline in demand for the types of beer produced locally. The 1881 Census records approximately 30 drinking establishments. Throughout the early 20th century a large number of pubs continued to operate, many of which were sustained by the adjacent and much larger town of Letchworth, which had no alcohol retailers prior to 1958, and had only two pubs and a single hotel bar until the mid-1990s. Its larger population had for many years visited both Baldock and Hitchin for refreshment.
The Wynn almshouses, in the High Street, were founded in 1621 and were endowed "To the World's End" by John Wynne, a cloth merchant from London who left £1000 in his will of 1614 for their upkeep.
Since 1850, the town has a railway station which today operates on the line between London Kings Cross and Cambridge. With frequent services to London, including fast services of around 30 minutes, the town is home to many commuters. The station is part of the Thameslink Programme which connects Cambridge to Farringdon, City Thameslink and Blackfriars via the Great Northern Route.
There has been human activity on the site well before the modern town was founded. Prehistoric remains on Clothall Common date back as far as c 3000 BCE. Many Roman remains have been discovered in building work in and around the town, and the core of the Roman settlement lies between Walls Field and Bakers Close. Earlier Iron Age remains have also been uncovered in the same general location, which may be the earliest town ever to develop in Britain.
A medieval leper colony, on Royston Road, was located during excavations in 2003, having been thought for many years to lie to the south-east of the town on the former Pesthouse Lane, the A507.
From 1808 to 1814, Baldock hosted a station in the shutter telegraph chain that connected the Admiralty in London to its naval ships in the port of Great Yarmouth.
A history of Baldock during the Middle Ages was compiled by Vivian Crellin, a former headmaster of The Knights Templar School. Local archaeologists Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and Gilbert Burleigh published Ancient Baldock: The Story of an Iron Age and Roman Town in 2007.
Baldock's position at the crossing of two important thoroughfares, the Great North Road and the Icknield Way has made it a stopping point for a number of illustrious visitors, including Charles I, who passed through Baldock en route for London after his arrest in 1648 and supposedly Dick Turpin. Preacher John Wesley came to the town in 1747.
In the 1960s and 70s Baldock was a centre of laser research at a MOD laboratory called SERL. This facility closed in the late 1970s and some projects and staff were transferred to RSRE near Pershore.
Baldock was formerly the location of a film processing factory which closed before the company could move in; local folklore has it that it was a silent film studio, but this is not the case. The building was then bought by the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Company from Halifax, later becoming the Kayser Bondor ladies stocking factory. The site was redeveloped to become a Tesco supermarket in the late 1980s, but the Art Deco facade of the former factory was retained and incorporated into the new building.
Another notable building in the town is the thirteenth century Baldock Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin at the centre of the town. The original church was built in about 1150 by the Knights Templar before being largely rebuilt in about 1330 by the Knights Hospitaller. It is a Grade I listed building.
Malting and brewing were formerly major industries in the town, but apart from some light industry, today it is mostly a commuter town.
The original incarnation of the local football team Baldock Town F.C. was formed in 1905. The club disbanded in 2001, but a new club was formed two years later.
Baldock Radio Station, sometimes called Slip End Radio Station, opened in 1929 as part of the Imperial Wireless Chain. That year it made the first successful radiotelephone call to the USA, to the RCA radio station at Rocky Point, New York. A radio frequency control station was added at Baldock in 1938. In World War II, Baldock was one of the Allied radio stations that intercepted Kriegsmarine signals and forwarded them to Bletchley Park to be deciphered. After the war, the radio station joined the International Telecommunication Union. Ofcom has operated the station since 2003.
To the east of the town there is a large residential estate that was built in several phases. This is known as Clothall Common. An archaeological dig took place in this part of Baldock in the late 1980s.
According to the humorous book The Meaning of Liff, a Baldock is defined as: "The sharp prong on the top of a tree stump where the tree has snapped off before being completely sawn through".
Transport
It was where the old Great North Road and the Icknield Way crossed. The A1 motorway, was called the Baldock Bypass for some years. A £3,490,762 contract was given to A. Monk Ltd of Padgate in May 1965 for a 6.5-mile bypass, to take two years. It would make 39.5 mile of motorway on the A1, and 13 miles of motorway north of London. The bypass began at Corey's Mill, near Stevenage, to the north of Radwell. Baldock was a big bottleneck on the north-south route.In March 2006, a new bypass removed the A505 road from the town.
Events
Several events take place in Baldock throughout the year. The largest three are the Annual Beer Festival, the Charter fair and the Balstock music festival.Baldock Festival
The Baldock Festival is a cultural festival which started in 1982 and starts on the May Day bank holiday weekend. The festival consists of three weeks of events throughout the town and local area, such as museum displays, wine tasting, whiskey tasting, beer festivals, brewery tours, cricket match, comedy sketches, family quiz night, mystery tour, open gardens, history talks, and several music events, some of which feature local bands. The festival Street Fair is held in the High Street, on the second weekend. Stallholders dress in themed clothing of the street fair theme, in 2022 this was 'Green' Baldock.The Baldock Beer Festival takes place on the first weekend where local and national real ales, real ciders and continental lagers may be sampled.