AYOT ST LAWRENCE MANOR

Identity: confirmed — The registry name, location, associated place, TNA/MDR record F240865 and authority GB/NNAF/M213817 identify the manor of Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire. Independent medieval evidence records the manor and advowson of Ayot St Lawrence, while Historic England identifies the surviving Manor House at Ayot St Lawrence.
Representative point: 51.8391, -0.2661
Basis: documented_manor_house — The point represents The Manor House, Bride Hall Lane, the listed late-17th-century remodelling of the earlier manor house site. Historic England gives OS Grid Reference TL 19555 17030; the corresponding published decimal position is approximately 51.8391, -0.2661.
Point confidence: high
Boundary status: representative_point_only
Boundary period: Medieval manor documented in 1420-1421; later estate and park documented from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century
Boundary confidence: none
Boundary basis: The 1420-1421 inquisition confirms the manor's constituent resources, including a capital messuage, two carucates, meadow and pasture, and assize rents from free tenants, but supplies no mapped perimeter. Historic England documents a c.70-hectare Ayot House park and later estate boundaries, including Prior's Wood, the village lane, Brimstone Wood and agricultural land, but explicitly describes a landscaped park/estate rather than the full historical manorial extent. The available evidence therefore does not justify substituting either the modern parish boundary or the later park boundary for the manor's territorial boundary.
Sources:
- The Manor House, Ayot St Lawrence - Historic England listing 1296591: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1296591?section=overview — Identifies The Manor House on Bride Hall Lane as a late-C17 remodelling of a C16 timber-framed house, gives NGR TL 19555 17030, and records its historical association with Sir William Parr.
- Ayot House, Ayot St Lawrence - Historic England Register of Parks and Gardens 1000905: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000905 — States that Cornelius Lyde bought the manor in 1723; describes the associated house, manor house, park, church sites, drives and the c.70-hectare later landscape-park boundary; references the c.1800 estate plan held by Hertfordshire Record Office.
- E-CIPM 21-498: Thomas Barre, knight, senior - Mapping the Medieval Countryside: https://inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/21-498/ — The 1420-1421 inquisition records the manor and advowson of Ayot St Lawrence and lists its capital messuage, curtilage and garden, dovecot, two carucates, eight acres of meadow and pasture, and assize rents from free tenants.
- TNA/MDR record F240865: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F240865 — Registry record supplied for the exact manor identification: AYOT ST LAWRENCE MANOR, Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, authority GB/NNAF/M213817.
Warnings / uncertainty:
- No reliable source located that provides a complete mapped perimeter of the historical manor itself.
- The c.70-hectare Ayot House park is a later landscaped estate/park boundary and must not be treated as the full medieval or post-medieval manorial boundary.
- The representative coordinate identifies the documented Manor House rather than the centre of the manor's entire historical landholding.