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 kno