Ossulstone is the large area from Finchley and Friern Barnet southwards. The map shows the substantial parishes (black) and many of the major newer settlements (green).
Ossulstone is an obsolete subdivision (hundred) covering 26.4% of – and the most metropolitan part – of thehistoric county ofMiddlesex,England.[2] It surrounded but did not include theCity of London and the area has been entirely absorbed by the growth of London. It now corresponds to the seven London Boroughs ofInner London north of theThames and, fromOuter London, in decreasing order, certain historic parishes of the London boroughs ofEaling,Brent,Barnet, andHaringey.
Ossulstone was named after "Oswald's Stone" or "Oswulf's Stone", an unmarked minor pre-Romanmonolith which stood atTyburn,London (the modern-day junction of the Edgware Road with Bayswater Road). Oswald's Stone was earthed over in 1819, but dug up in 3-years later in 1822 because of its presumed historical significance.[3] Later in the 19th century it was to be found leaning againstMarble Arch. In 1869, shortly after an archaeological journal published an article about the stone, it disappeared and it has not been found since.[4]
The Hundred of Ossulstone is mentioned in theDomesday Book, published in 1086.[5]
Originally meeting at Oswald's Stone, thehundred court eventually moved south-east to the vicinity of Holborn, where by the 19th century it was being held in a building in the north east corner ofRed Lion Square, by that stage an outpost of the legal quarter of London close toLincoln's Inn.[6] Following thede facto end of hundreds as a judicial unit in the late 19th century, the building became the headquarters ofConway Hall Ethical Society.
It was always the largest of the six hundreds of Middlesex, and from early medieval times it had more than 20 parishes and some of the most complicated ecclesiastical units and liberties in the country, as there were many medieval foundations outside ofLondon's walls.
Parishes
Taking New Brentford as part of Brentford[n 1] Ossulstone had fourteen land-border parishes — one, St Pancras, only as to a far corner inHighgate.
Borders clockwise
Ealing bordered three parishes ofElthorne to the west. Six parishes (from a little of Ealing to a corner of St Pancras in Highgate) bordered three parishes ofGore hundred to the north-west. Then, proceeding clockwise, an arm of Finchley and thestrip parish ofFriern Barnet formed a single counter-salient into the small parishes in and aroundChipping Barnet inHertfordshire, these being the only great salient into Middlesex's shape. Hornsey, Stoke Newington and Hackney in the hundred's northeast boundedTottenham parish inEdmonton hundred (sometimes called a half-hundred). Four parishes starting with Hackney bordered theBecontree hundred ofEssex to the east. Finally two of these land-border parishes and many others had theThames as their southern limit. Beyond the tidal Thames lay the Blackheath Hundred ofKent to the southeast and those of Lambeth, Brixton and Kingston inSurrey. Until Westminster and Putney Bridges were built in the 18th century the bridge to cross the Thames below Kingston wasLondon Bridge. Ossulstone however omitted theCity of London in which lay that bridge, as it surrounded the compact city to the west, north and east.[8] Westminster for many purposes formed a "liberty", meaning it enjoyed its own customs as to markets, and freedoms from wider royal precepts and hundred courts.
Battles
The very edges of the Hundred were militarily strategic and included the sites of all three of Middlesex's known, notable battles:[n 2]
In the 17th century the hundred was split into five divisions, which had their ownhundred courts and so assumed the remnant administrative purposes of theHundred. TheTower Division (also known as Tower Hamlets) had significant further responsibilities, as by having its ownlord-lieutenant it took on military responsibilities normally exercised at county level. The five divisions of Ossulstone were:[8]
^Many historical works consider Brentford together. That is all the Brentford chapels (later created parishes) later united. New Brentford was already for decades governed by its ownvestry before its parish status in the mid 17th century,[7]
^In the case of the last Brentford Battle note thatPutney Bridge andRichmond Bridge were not built until the 18th century, the three road bridges between them even later, starting with the first Kew Bridge. Thus Medieval-foundedKingston Bridge was guarded by the Roundheads; equally Brentford's bridge over the River Brent and the gathering of Royalist troops in Berkshire led to the Roundheads barricading the small town. In the 1471 Battle of "Barnet" the high ground of the Great North Road through elevated Barnet town was unusually shrouded in mist which heightened the fighting.Philippa Gregory's semi-fictionalThe White Queen attributes the mist toElizabeth Woodville's mother,Jacquetta of Luxembourg who betrayed allegiances to her pro-Lancastrian dead husband. She married her eldest daughter into the House of York, siding with Edward IV.
^Of the ten parishes in the Kensington Division, Chelsea had a very small riverside enclave of Kensington until its 19th century abolition. Chelsea was slightly more often than the others recorded with the saint of its church, St Luke's Chelsea
Map of Divisions of Ossulstone Hundred – the map indicates that technically the Westminster Division was an independent constituent of the Holborn Division.
