y 18th century, if not before, the majority of houses lay in Wick Dive, together with St. John's church and the site of the manor house, most of which was demolished in the late 17th century. (fn. 45) Wick Hamon church, dedicated to St. James, was taken down after the union of the two parishes, but its site is marked on later maps as a field named 'Old Church Yard' to the south of the brook. (fn. 46)
Earthworks on the edge of the modern builtup area indicate that both villages were somewhat larger in the Middle Ages than they were in 1717. (fn. 47)
To the south of Wick Hamon village land was imparked in the 13th century, disparked in the 17th, and re-imparked in the 18th, before being finally ploughed up during the Second World War. (fn. 48) Most of the rest of the parish, outside the woodland, was cultivated as common arable in the Middle Ages and, to a reduced extent, until inclosure in 1757. Wick Dive and Wick Hamon each had its own three-field system. (fn. 49)
Apart from the park keeper's lodge, the only settlements outside the village which can definitely be said to have medieval origins are Dagnall, not far from Deanshanger, and Mount Mill, on the Ouse in the extreme south-eastern corner of the parish, both of which are first recorded in the early 14th century. (fn. 50) Mount Mill was a small farm of 17 a. in 1717, (fn. 51) whereas Dagnall was an estate of 128 a., sold off by Henry Lord Spencer in 1640 and repurchased for the Wicken Park estate in 1753. (fn. 52) Mount Mill probably only ever comprised the mill itself and a few adjoining parcels of land but Dagnall may have been a medieval hamlet, with its own open fields, which later shrank to two farms. (fn. 53)
Two other settlements stand apart from the two villages. One is Wicken Hurst (whose name appears not to be recorded in any medieval source), a small farmstead on Kings Brook at the southern limit of Wicken Wood which seems likely to have originated as a roadside assart on the edge of Whittlewood. By the early 18th century, when it was sometimes known as Little Wicken, Wicken Hurst comprised part of a hamlet of four or five houses, the rest of which lay on the opposite side of the brook in Passenham. (fn. 54) There was a brick kiln on the farm during most of the 18th century, in a copse named Brick Kiln Spinney in 1717. This closed down c. 1800 but another works was established at about that date at Old Copse on the Passenham side of the brook, which was in use throughout the 19th century. (fn. 55)
To the south of the 17th-century park keeper's lodge and later mansion, the map of 1717 marks a moated site, which then formed a small freehold outside the Wicken Park estate. (fn. 56) Remains of the moat were still evident in 1838, by which date it belonged to the Mordaunt estate. (fn. 57) Presumably it marks the site of an isolated medieval farmstead, unless it was the keeper's lodge belonging to the medieval park.
Settlement from the 16th to the 19th Centuries.
In 1511 the two manors were purchased by John Spencer of Snitterfield (Warwicks.), whose grandson, Sir John Spencer of Althorp and Wormleighton (Warwicks.), secured the union of Wick Dive and Wick Hamon into one parish in 1587, (fn. 58) from which time the manor was also conveyed as a single estate, generally known as 'Wicken alias Wick Hamon and Wick Dive'. (fn. 59) The Spencers only occasionally resided at Wicken, although in the early 17th century Robert Lord Spencer rebuilt both the capital messuage belonging to the manor of Wick Dive and the lodge in Wicken Park. (fn. 60) Most of the farmhouses and cottages in both villages were also renewed in this period. The redundant church of St. James, Wick Hamon, however, was taken down. (fn. 61)
Wicken changed hands by purchase again in 1716, when it was acquired by a London merchant named Charles Hosier. Whereas during the Spencers' time the parish had formed a small outlying portion of a large estate centred elsewhere, for Hosier it became his principal residence, which he improved through the purchase of the remaining freeholds and the building of a new 