The Hundred of Ganfield
A shire was divided up into hundreds and a hundred = 100 hides or 12000 acres.
The Hundred of Ganfield contains the parishes of:
- Buckland
- Hatford
- Hinton Waldrist
- Longworth (including Charney Bassett)
- Pusey
- Shellingford
- Stanford in the Vale
At the time of the Domesday Survey, the Hundred of Ganfield included nearly all the parishes contained in the modern Hundred.
In the reign of Edward The Confessor the assessment of Ganfield Hundred was 124 hides, I vergate and 4 acres which in 1086 had been reduced to 45 hides, 3 vergates. During the 13c Stanford in the Vale was withdrawn from suit at the Hundred Court of Ganfield by a grant of Henry The Third to William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, which was confirmed by Edward the First to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, then owner of the manor.
By 1275 2 hides in Pusey held by Roger le Cumber had been annexed by Henry of Allemagne to the ‘Earl of Cornwall’s Hundred in North Osney’ and John de Limesey, who held 4 hides in the same place, also neglected to do suit at the Hundred Court. All these places however seem to have been included in the Hundred of Ganfield in 1316.
The Hundred at first belonged to the King, but afterwards came into the hands of Fulk Fitz Warin, who was holding it in 1275 together with the Hundred of Wantage, the descent of which it seems always to have followed.
It would appear from 14c documents, and also from the survival of Gainfield Farm as a place name, that the site of the ancient Hundred Court was in Buckland parish.