The Hundred of Ossulstone is mentioned in the
Domesday Book, published in 1086. Originally meeting at Oswald's Stone, the
hundred court eventually moved south-east to the vicinity of Holborn, where by the 19th century it was being held in a building in the north east corner of
Red Lion Square, by that stage an outpost of the legal quarter of London close to
Lincoln's Inn. Following the
de facto end of hundreds as a judicial unit in the late 19th century, the building became the headquarters of
Conway Hall Ethical Society. It was always the largest of the six hundreds of Middlesex, and from early medieval times it had more than 20 parishes and some of the most complicated ecclesiastical units and liberties in the country, as there were many medieval foundations outside of
London's walls. ;Parishes Taking New Brentford as part of Brentford Ossulstone had fourteen land-border parishes – one, St Pancras, only as to a far corner in
Highgate. ;Borders clockwise Ealing bordered three parishes of
Elthorne to the west. Six parishes (from a little of Ealing to a corner of St Pancras in Highgate) bordered three parishes of
Gore hundred to the north-west. Then, proceeding clockwise, an arm of Finchley and the
strip parish of
Friern Barnet formed a single counter-salient into the small parishes in and around
Chipping Barnet in
Hertfordshire, these being the only great salient into Middlesex's shape. Hornsey, Stoke Newington and Hackney in the hundred's northeast bounded
Tottenham parish in
Edmonton hundred (sometimes called a half-hundred). Four parishes starting with Hackney bordered the
Becontree hundred of
Essex to the east. Finally two of these land-border parishes and many others had the
Thames as their southern limit. Beyond the tidal Thames lay the Blackheath Hundred of
Kent to the southeast and those of Lambeth, Brixton and Kingston in
Surrey. Until Westminster and Putney Bridges were built in the 18th century the bridge to cross the Thames below Kingston was
London Bridge. Ossulstone however omitted the
City of London in which lay that bridge, as it surrounded the compact city to the west, north and east. Westminster for many purposes formed a "liberty", meaning it enjoyed its own customs as to markets, and freedoms from wider royal precepts and hundred courts. ;Battles The very edges of the Hundred were militarily strategic and included the sites of all three of Middlesex's known, notable battles: • The
Battle of Brentford (1016) was a minor victory of
Edmund II of England ("Ironside") against the Danes. • Towards the end of the
Wars of the Roses, the
Battle of Barnet in 1471, together with the
Battle of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire the next month, restored
Edward IV of England to the throne. • The
Battle of Brentford (1642) was a minor
pitched battle and royalist victory of commander
Prince Rupert. It was less than three weeks after the partial success and larger
Battle of Edgehill in Warwickshire. The resultant standoff and retreat to Oxford for the winter was dubbed the
Battle of Turnham Green in the next parish of Chiswick in Ossulstone. ==Divisions==