Ossulstone (deceased)
The pecking order of what passed for local government in the olde days, was topped by the Counties or shires, followed by the Hundreds and, in the basement, parishes. There were some bespoke arrangements, the City of London being one. The pic above is of a Medieval 'Moot Court'. If you read my last post, you will know that the City of London was girdled by the River and Middlesex, and that the latter was eventually subsumed by the Great Wen as it sprawled across the surrounding countryside. So what happened to the Middlesex Hundreds? Firstly, a bit more on Hundreds. No one seems very sure what they were originally based on. Possibly, it referred to a hundred Hides, a Hide being the area of land needed to support an ordinary family or, later, several of them. Alternatively it could have been related to an obligation to provide one hundred armed men when required. In the northern counties settled by the Danes, the equivalent of the Hundreds was ‘Wapentakes’ To me, this lends s