We are thrilled to announce the opening of our new office on Knockhundred Row in Midhurst. It’s the black shopfront in the photo above (where it was previously possible to obtain a motor for hire).  

The origin of the name Knockhundred Row has sparked much local discussion. Some have suggested that it might refer to some archaic right of the Lord of the Manor – allowing him to ‘knock-up’ one hundred people for his service. However, "Knock" means "hillock," derived from the Brittonic word ‘cnoc,’ and a hundred was a Saxon administrative, military, and judicial division of land introduced between 613 and 1017, intended to support approximately 100 households. Knockhundred is therefore the hundred hill.

In Saxon times, Midhurst was a parish within the Hundred of Easebourne and had no recorded settlement before the Domesday Book in 1086. Midhurst, its castle, and town are generally believed to have been established later, in the twelfth century.

Mark Gardiner, in An Historical Atlas of Sussex, says of hundred meeting places in general: “The meeting of the hundred court to administer justice was generally held at a central spot, sometimes a notable landmark, a central settlement or an area of no-man’s land between a number of estates. The courts were attended by all freemen within the district, and that large gathering also provided an opportunity for goods to be bought and sold. Markets commonly developed at hundred meeting places, particularly where the sites of the hundred were near an estate centre rather than a remote location.” Presumably the hill in the middle of the wood (St Ann’s Hill) was chosen as a prominent location in the middle of the hundred of Easebourne.

The name Midhurst was first recorded in 1186 as Middeherst, meaning “Middle wooded hill”, or “(place) among the wooded hills”. It derives from the Old English words midd (adjective) or mid (preposition), meaning “in the middle”, plus hyrst, “a wooded hill”. It is appealing to think that the market, and Knockhundred Row, could have developed around the hundred meeting place in a woodland clearing even before the establishment of the town!