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General
In the census of 1881 a large number of people in Hinxworth had their occupation given as ‘fossil diggers’. It is unlikely that there was a vast store of fossils in Hinxworth and it is equally unlikely that there would be a strong market for them even if there was. But what were they digging up that was valuable and in large enough quantities to employ so many men?
The diggers were in fact labourers digging up coprolites, fossilised dinosaur dung. This was dug up in vast quantities and ground up as fertiliser for use by the local farmers.
The name derives from the Old English words hengest and worth and means ‘Stallion enclosure’. In the Domesday Book of 1086 the name appears as Haingesteuuored.
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Hinxworth Place
Hinxworth Place seems to have at least two ghosts, one of a monk and the other of a child who met its end in a tragic accident, and maybe three.
In the 1960s the owners of the house would often hear the sounds of footsteps going along an empty upper floor corridor. At that time the corridor had a partition wall which divided the house into two but the footsteps were heard both sides of the partition almost as if it wasn’t there. The footsteps would then move outside the house and fade away. When the cause was investigated it was found that a staircase once existed at the point where the footsteps moved outside.
In the 1800s Robert Clutterbuck was Lord of the Manor and reported that he had seen the ghost of a monk in the porch leading to the cobbled courtyard. Robert was famous for writing ‘The History and Antiquities of the County of Hertford’ in the early 1800s. A local newspaper reported that a plaque dated 1770 once adorned Hinxworth Place, this was later covered over during Victorian times and vanished completely when repairs were done to the house in the 1940s. The plaque was said to bear these words:
This is the place where a monk was buried alive in the wall.
His cries can sometimes be heard at midnight.
The final haunting is by the ghost of a child whose cries can be heard on cold autumn evenings when the house is surrounded by mist. The story has it that the owners of the house left their child in the care of a young nursemaid while they walked across the fields to the nearby church. While they were gone a young servant boy decided to scare the nursemaid by covering his head with a sheet and making ghostly noises as he climbed the stairs. He entered the room wherein were the nursemaid and her young charge but his reception was not quite what he expected. The terrified nursemaid lashed out at the ghost with a poker and sent the boy servant crashing to his death at the foot of the stairs. The servants tried to revive the boy as he lay in a puddle of blood but it was too late. Now the terrified screams and the sound of the kitchen pump can be heard echoing through the house.
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