Totternhoe
[From Samuel Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England 1831.]
TOTTERNHOE, a parish in the hundred of MANSHEAD, county of BEDFORD, 2 miles (W.S.W.) from Dunstable, containing 450 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Bedford, and diocese of Lincoln, rated in the king's books at £10, endowed with £400 private benefaction, £200 royal bounty, and £300 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the Trustees of the late Earl of Bridgewater. The church is dedicated to St. Giles. On the north side of it passes the Roman Iknield-street, skirting the downs, upon which are the remains of Totternhoe castle, overhanging the village of Stanbridge: the keep mount is lofty and encompassed by a circular fosse within another that is square, the latter enclosing the entire breadth of the ridge. Near this fortification is an ancient camp of a parallelogramic form, and to the east-ward are extensive quarries of freestone and limestone, below which, at a great depth, is a bed of clay.