Pirton (St. Mary)
PIRTON (St. Mary), a parish, in the union of Hitchin, hundred of Hitchin and Pirton, county of Hertford, 3½ miles (N. W.) from Hitchin; containing 764 inhabitants. This place is called Perstone in Domesday book; and Ralph de Limesy, an eminent Norman soldier, to whom the township, with many other possessions, was given after the Conquest, founded a church here. The parish comprises by measurement 2700 acres, and is two miles distant from the London and Bedford road. The females are employed in the manufacture of straw-plat. A fair is held for sheep early in November. The living is a vicarage: the tithes were commuted for land and a money payment in 1811; the glebe consists of 154 acres, valued at £200 per annum. The church has a chancel entirely separated from the body of the edifice. Upwards of thirty skeletons of various sizes, with several urns containing burnt bones, and some fragments of coarse pottery, were lately found in a field called Dane-field; the bodies appeared to have been placed regularly, a yard asunder, with the heads towards the east.
Transcribed from A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858.