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Greenfield is a small village about from the town of Flitwick in Bedfordshire, England. It lies across Flitwick Moor from the larger settlement of Flitwick and is on the opposite side of the River Flit. It forms part of the parish of Flitton and Greenfield. The main street (High Street) has junctions with Pulloxhill road, leading to the village of Pulloxhill, School Lane, the site of the old village school. High Street also has a junction with Mill Lane, which was until the 1960s a cart route to Ruxox Farm, Maulden and Ampthill and now leads to footpaths and bridleways to Maggot Moor, Flitwick Moor, Ruxox Farm, Flitton Moor, and the village of Flitton. Houses along High Street are a mix of thatched cottages and Bedfordshire brick dwellings, with an assortment of renovated or rebuilt barn buildings in keeping to some extent with earlier farm courtyard structures. Due to closures, there is now only one public house in Greenfield called The Compasses. Three former pubs, were the Swan Beerhouse on Mill Lane which closed in 1909, the Nags Head Beerhouse on the High Street which closed in 1913, and the Old Bell Public House which closed more recently in 2007. There was also once a post office and store on Mill Lane, and the village store on the High Street (formerly Cockroft's), and a village school on School Lane that was later used as an artists studio by artist and sculptor James Butler (artist). The former beer houses and stores are now private residences. A new village school was built on Pulloxhill road during the 1960s. ==History== The original agrarian folk community has had a long known history stretching back to the pre-Roman times. Evidence of an ancient settlement has been found on the adjacent woodland mire area of Flitwick Moor. Artifacts can be found in fields and ditches in Greenfield, mainly of flint scrapers and arrowheads from the mesolithic era, and even into the neolithic era and Iron Age due to the useful durable nature of the local flint. Ancient Briton relics respecting the Celtic god of thunder, such as a Wheel of Taranis, have been found at the Ruxox site, which in the 1220s became the Ruxox Cell of Dunstable Priory. Roman artifacts such as tiles, fragments of pots have and an altar to the cult of Bacchus have also been found locally at Ruxox (Hutchison 1986). During the last decade of the 18th century, field enclosure was introduced, quite late on in history, and riots were instigated by local tenants who gathered to protest as their livelihood was under threat. Further threat to the local folk way of life would also come from the relatively late introduction of Protestant Christian thought in the area. Greenfield was expanded in the 19th century as a Methodist settlement alongside the Church of England settlement at Flitton. Temperance meetings were introduced and organized by newcomer nobility from Wrest park, which led to the demise of two key local beerhouses that served the traditional folk community at the time. During Victorian times, the local Lady Cowper visited Greenfield from Wrest Park, and described Greenfield as “an ‘End’- ‘a long straggly, fenny place with poor housing and rough people. Many were originally squatters and built makeshift houses”. There was significant hardship at this time with some families taking bread from charity. There were still “Poor Rights” for the locals which allowed them to cut peat from the Moors for drying and burning. There were ten shareholders of Flitton Moor who paid 15 shillings a share and Greenfield Moor divided into 6 portions at 12 shillings each. The local primary school (once located on School Lane) was built during the time of Church of England school development era to improve literacy and “elevate the local populace” from superstitious beliefs. This is now a private residence and the primary school was moved to Pulloxhill road during the late 1960s. Regarding health care during the Victorian times, cottagers had to pay between 1 shilling and 10 shillings a year depending on the treatment, and the very poor who could not afford the fee would have to rely on local folk treatments and cures. The area was once well known as a strawberry producing area, and the fields were full of strawberry plants on either side of the main road. Carts would take the strawberries to Luton until the 1920s when a blight and a series of rook infestations destroyed the crop. Mill Lane was named after the watermill that ground wheat and barley corn until the 1950s and was located at the bottom of the lane. The mill was fed by a millpond, now a stream at the west side of the lane, and the outflow ran downhill into a ford that filled up when the mill was grinding corn. When grinding stopped, the river was diverted using sluice gates around the back of the mill. The mill photographed was built in the mid 19th century, although the records of Dunstable Priory indicate that there has been a mill on the site since at least year 1200 that served Ruxox Augustinian Ruxox Cell and local community. After a series of local disputes, Greenfield Mill was unused and became derelict from 1959 to 1970 when it was demolished to make way for houses. The bridleway at the bottom of Mill Lane is the scene of an unsolved murder. In 1939, a worker from the nearby Ruxox Farm was attacked with "maniac brutality" on his way to his lodgings at the White Hart Inn in Flitton List of unsolved murders in the United Kingdom. The silver coins of his wage packet had been taken but the rest was left with the smashed body. During the investigation, the local mill disputes and folk theories relating to ancient artifacts being removed from Ruxox farm (the site of both ancient Celtic and Roman shrines) were dismissed by the local police. Scotland Yard concluded that the murder was more likely committed by a passing vagrant. The verdict on police records was stated as “murder by person or persons unknown”(). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Greenfield, Bedfordshire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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