In 1884 Sir John Evans showed to Mr. W. G. Smith “a good white ovate palaeolithic implement,” one of two found on No Man’s Land Common.  In December, 1886, Mr. Smith visited the gravel pits there and found a somewhat similar implement in situ; this latter is engraved in his Man the Primaeval Savage.  At the same time Mr. Smith found two neolithic celts on the common.

Nobland Green (11/4 mile N.W. from Widford Station, G.E.R.) is little more than a farm and a few cottages.

NORTHAW (2 miles E. from Potter’s Bar Station, G.N.R.) is a village on the Middlesex border, near the source of the river Colne, and a place of considerable interest.  In the wood N. from the village there lived a hermit named Sigar, the subject of some monkish legends.  He lived about the time of Henry I., and was buried beside Roger the Monk (see Markyate Street) in the S. aisle of the Baptistery of St. Alban’s Abbey.  There was originally a small church close to the village, E.E. or perhaps late Norman; this was replaced by the cruciform church of St. Thomas Becket, a pseudo-Perp. structure, destroyed by fire in 1881; the present cruciform building of Ancaster stone is Dec. with a conspicuous W. tower carrying four pinnacles.  Note the piscina, three sedilia and credence table in chancel; also the finely carved font of Ancaster stone, on marble pillars, presented by the children of the parish.  There are several memorial windows, of only local interest; but the pulpit and reredos are both good, the former showing the four Evangelists in canopied recesses.  Unfortunately, only a portion of the old registers were saved from the fire of 1881.

NORTHCHURCH, or Berkhampstead St. Mary, forms one long street with Great Berkhampstead, but is a separate village, 1 mile W. from Berkhampstead Station, L.&N.W.R.  The cruciform church is Dec.; it stands in a small graveyard close to the high road to Tring.  The most curious memorial is the brass near the porch to Peter the Wild Boy, who was found wild in a forest in Hanover in 1725 and brought to England at the desire of Queen Caroline.  He lived at a farm at Broadway (q.v.) and died in 1785.  There is also a curious sentence about this church in Chauncy:  “Henry Axtil, a rich Man starved himself, and was buried here April 12, 1625, 1 Car.  I.”  The church was entirely restored in 1883, when the present N. aisle was added.

Northfield, a small hamlet, is a little S. from Ivinghoe (Bucks).

NORTON, near the tiny river Ivel and the Roman Icknield Way, is 1 mile W. from Baldock.  The large building on the hill-top close by is the Three Counties Asylum.  The manor belonged to the Abbot of St. Albans at the time of the Conquest; and in the year 1260 Roger de Norton, who took his name from this village, became the twenty-fourth abbot of that monastery.  The church, E.E., is of great antiquity, some parts of it having been little altered; it is of flint, and stands at the N.E. end of the village.  It contains two or three old memorials, but none of historic interest.  A pretty walk from the church leads through Norton Bury and beside the Ivel to Radwell Mill.