Wymington
Wymington is a small village and civil parish in the borough of Bedford in northwestern Bedfordshire, England. It is located about south of Rushden, in the neighbouring county of Northamptonshire, and about north-northwest of Bedford. As of 2021, the parish of Wymington had a population of 1,000. The village is home to a 14th century parish church, a Wesleyan chapel, and a school. Wymington is home to four listed buildings, including the Grade 1 listed parish church. The village dates from at least 1086, when it was registered in the Domesday Book, though evidence has been discovered of Paleolithic, Roman, and Saxon settlement in the area.
Name
Throughout its history Wymington has been referred to by various names and spellings, including Wimmington, Winnington, Wimentone, Wimuntun, Widmintun, Wymingas, and other variations. Numerous etymologies for the name have been proposed, with the most common being that it is derived from Old English and refers to a tūn held by a person named Wigmund, Widmund, or Wimund. Other older sources propose that it is a reference to the site of an ancient, possibly Roman, battle.History
Prehistory and Roman settlement
Evidence exists of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement of the Wymington area. Flint implements have been discovered in the area, and in the 1860s a hoard of 60 socketed axes was found on a farm near Wymington, possibly from an ancient bronze smith's stock.Substantial evidence of Roman and Romano-Belgic settlement exists. A complex of enclosures visible today in the form of cropmarks and ditches as well as buried roof tiles and sherds about south of the modern village probably dates from the 1st to 5th century. Additional evidence of Roman occupation has been discovered northwest of the village, where 3rd century pottery, a quern, building rubble, coins, belt buckles, and jewelry have been discovered.
Middle Ages
Evidence of Saxon settlement was uncovered during an expansion of the Wymington school. Shards of early to middle Saxon pottery were discovered in ditches that had probably been dug in the 12th to 13th century. Wymington was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as a parish within the Hundred of Willey, a part of the barony held by Alured de Lincoln, with a population of 23 households.The Wymington manors
The lordship of the Wymington manors was held by numerous individuals influential in English royal politics from the 13th to 15th centuries. The Domesday Book references four tenants in Wymington, two of which held manors. The larger of the two was held by one Walter the Fleming, and was attached to the barony of Wahull at least until 1372, and possibly as late as 1515. Sometime after the Battle of Northampton in 1264, Henry III granted the manor to William de Columbers. Following the Dictum of Kenilworth in 1268, Columbers transferred the manor to Roger de Noers.John Curteys took control of the de Noers manor by the 1350s. Curteys, who was mayor of the wool staple of Calais, was known to have held considerable wealth. He provided funds to re-build the village church, completed in 1377, and made a loan to Richard II in the sum of £20 in 1379, an extremely substantial amount at the time. The church is the only remaining medieval building in the village, and is a noted example of medieval British architecture. On Curteys's death in 1391, control of the manor passed to his wife, Albreda.
The village's connection to Richard II and the crown continued when Sir Thomas Brounflete, the king's Chief Butler and cupbearer, was granted lord of the manor at Wymington in 1397 on Albreda Curteys's death. Brounflete would go on to be the comptroller of the household of Henry IV. Sir Thomas's son, Henry, inherited the manor in 1430, and was sent as an ambassador of Henry VI to the Council of Basel in 1434. In 1448, Henry VI made him Lord Vesci. When Henry died without a male heir in January, 1468, the manor and all of his other holdings in Bedfordshire and Buckingham was sold off by the executors of his estate, with the proceeds going to charity and to the church.
In the late 1500s Henry Stanley, the 4th Earl of Derby and grandson of Henry VII, came into possession of the manor. In 1591, Henry, and later his son Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby, began to sell off large portions of Wymington to the manor in Podington.
The second, smaller manor was held by Alured de Lincoln at the time of the Domesday survey. By 1215, the manor was held by Peter de Survive under the Archbishop of Dublin, shifting again in 1224 to a Robert de la Briwere for services rendered to the king. By 1328, John de Exmouth had obtained the manor, which passed to his heirs. In 1361, de Exmouth's line ended, and the manor was passed to John Curteys, merging the two manors.
Renaissance
By the early 17th century, Wymington was home to two manors, both referred to as Wymington Manor. Only one manor house remains, dating from 1612 on the north side of the village. The other manor house was probably on the opposite side of the village, on the south side of the High Street. By 1621, ownership of at least one of the manors, possibly both, was under one William Bletsoe. It remained in the Bletsoe family until it passed to a John Sawyer in 1708. In 1713, the manor was sold to Major General John Livesay, who had purchased nearby Hinwick House in 1706 and was a former governor of Jamaica.Modern era
Wymington has hosted at least one football club in its history, the Wymington Stars. The organisation was founded before 1896, and fielded teams through until at least through 1931.In the mid 18th century, Wymington was referenced as an "obscure and ruinous village," with 35 stone thatched houses and a population of 216. In 1811 the land of the parish was enclosed. By 1870, the number of houses in Wymington had risen to 71. Also in 1870, a second church was built in the village. This church, a Wesleyan chapel, was built to house a congregation that had been meeting in homes since 1833.
During the Second World War, families in and near Wymington took in children evacuated from urban areas in response to bombing raids, as was typical of many rural towns and villages. In August, 1944 a damaged United States Army Air Forces B-17 "Miss Liberty Belle" based at nearby RAF Chelveston crashed in the village while returning to base on its 65th mission. The aircraft, having sustained battle damage over Saarbrücken following a raid over Merkwiller, was placed into a holding pattern above the village while other aircraft could land at the airfield. While waiting for clearance to land, the aircraft lost power to all but one engine and began losing altitude quickly. The crew narrowly avoided the church tower and school, colliding with a stand of trees and landing in a field on the southern edge of the village. Eight civilians as well as a soldier of the Czech Army billeted nearby rushed to the crash site and were able to pull all the crew members from the flaming wreckage, though only one survived. A B-17G on display at the Grissom Air Museum is painted with the markings of the aircraft that crashed in Wymington.
In the mid-20th century, much of the old 16th to 18th century housing was demolished as part of a development project headed by the Rural Council. Council housing was constructed in the middle of the village along the High Street, and a housing estate was built to the south. Following the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the late 20th century, the industrial estate at Wymington was one of 11 designated storage sites for meat and bonemeal resulting from culled cattle before incineration.
Geography and natural environment
Wymington is situated in a far northwestern corner of Bedfordshire, with the parish boundary following the county line with Northamptonshire. The village has an area of. The town of Rushden is located immediately across the county line. A small brook runs through the village that drains into the River Nene about north. The central part of the village lies in a hollow, and much of the village is obscured from the nearby countryside by hills. While the village is surrounded by farms, the land was never considered suitable for market gardening as is common in the rest of northern Bedfordshire.Sharnbrook Summit and Wymington Meadow nature reserves are located on the southern edge of Wymington along the rail right-of-way. The preserve is operated by The Wildlife Trusts and consists of two sections separated by the railway with walking paths and wildlife habitat. One segment, Sharnbrook Summit, is a small grassland atop the Wymington Deviation railway tunnel, while the other, Wymington Meadow, is composed of a small triangular wild grassland between the deviation and the main line. A Woodland Grant Scheme 3 associated woodland, Great Hayes Wood, is partially located in the far southern portion of the parish, and much of the parish's arable land is classified as part of the Countryside Stewardship Scheme.