The name of this recently extended 20th century bungalow comes from the field on which it was constructed. This was shown in the 1842 tithe map as Chalk Stones.
The Lay Subsidy of 1327 was a tax, at the rate of one twentieth of the value of each person’s moveable goods: it was levied to raise money for a renewal of the campaign against the Scots pursued by the former king, Edward II. Moveable goods were defined largely as crops and livestock, with the result that the tax fell most heavily on country areas. In his Story of the Sampfords, Gerald Curtis states that, in Great Sampford, just over twenty people were listed as being liable to pay the Levy. One of those was Thomas Chakston, who, according to Curtis, “either took his name from,or gave his name to, Chalkstones in Hempstead”.
Whatever the truth of this assertion, it offers a more attractive etymology than the alternative, more prosaic one – that the field was simply named for the white stones turned up there by the farmer’s plough.