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 grandso