Worth remembering that parish registers were often written up from rough day-books, or even slips of paper, and there may be copying errors in the registers that we see.
The place-name clearly ends
-stead. The Genuki pages for towns and parishes in Herefordshire and Hertfordshire show that
-stead is a far more common ending in Hertfordshire than in Herefordshire.
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/HRT/parisheshttp://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/HEF/ParishesThere seem to be quite a few
Ireland families in Hertfordshire. Thinking a long way outside the box, could it be a mis-copying of an abbreviated form of
Berkhamste(a)d?