Wyke’s ‘Heronfields’

Some houses in the area of Brewery Lane and Wyke Road have heron in their name and overlook the ‘Heron fields‘. See the 1887 map. Most people assume that the heron birds which frequent this area are the origin of the heron name. However A.D. Mills in ‘The Place Names of Dorset’ gives another explanation - heron meaning ‘angle, corner or projection of land’. Perhaps a triangular piece of land from the large field had been set aside for habitation, and this was the heron. However, the large heron fields are more likely to have been the original source of the name.

The Apportionment associated with the Gillingham Tithe map 1841 gives field names and can be cross-linked with the 1841 census. The only heron fields on the Tithe Map are the ones at Wyke. The word heron is derived from the Old English word ‘hyrne’ and that the Middle English form was ‘herne’ meaning ‘an angle, bend or corner‘. A fully grown heron was called a herneshaw because of its bendy neck and projecting beak.

A.D. Mill’s book gives eight herne references for Gillingham. The first is a field name, ‘la Hurnycroft‘, which is probably our heron field, and it takes us back almost 700 years to the year 1313. The ‘y’ is probably a contraction of ‘yng’ meaning ‘place’ - the place where there is a herne. According to the 1850 Directory of Archaic Words by James Orchard Halliwell, the word ‘croft’ can be applied to any area of land, but its use is sometimes more specific - ‘a meadow near a house’. If this is the case, then the only house adjoining the Heron Field in 1313 was probably Wyke Farm, although it could be argued that the original Wyke Farm was not here but at the Queen’s Farm near Thorngrove at the other end of the Heron Fields. There are four Hurnelane references in the Mills book dating from 1609 back to 1313 and there are two surnames: 1306 Richard Atte (at the) Herne, 1270 Robert de la Herne. Charles Howe in his book ‘Gylla’s Hometown’ gives two Wyke surnames: From the List of Gillingham persons in the

14^th c. Customary, 1329, Richard de Wyke and from the List of persons on Pipe Rolls, 1255, Robert de Wyke - in charge of the King’s works.

So the heron or herne is almost certainly the right angled bend in Stock Water where the river runs close to the causewayed road in front of Wyke Hall. This was near where Richard-at-the-Bend probably lived in the year 1306. Such a feature provides a permanent boundary marker even though the river is little more than a brook. It also marks the place where two or three early track ways probably crossed.

Although the origin of the name of the Heron Fields may be different from what many would imagine, the heron bird still frequents this area and it may have been here for a very long time. There is a local legend which says that there was a Roman heronry here. Herons were once an important delicacy so that it is quite possible that the Romans brought the birds over from the Continent. The heron was probably a great prize when King John visited his Hunting Lodge here in Gillingham with his hawks on many occasions between 1204 and 1214.4

Early maps show that there was a road or track running across the heron fields which probably originally went right up to the Wyke Hall gates. Three trees on the 1884 large scale OS map are on this line. Also the Isaac Taylor map of 1765 shows what is almost certainly a ‘crows foot’ pattern of double avenue of trees radiating from the house towards Milton, Wavering Lane and Wyke Road. There was almost certainly a rabbit warren at Wyke Hall. In 1841 a field close to Wyke Hall was called ‘Conygar’ and from the Middle Ages to the 17^th century a ‘Coneygarth’ was a man-made enclosure for rabbits. This may well be the ‘Coninger’ of 1369 - ‘the warren of the Manor and Lordship of Gillingham’, although Wyke was strictly a separate manor.