Our Land Is AAI, Which I Have Used to Refer to the Field Numbers Allotted in the Arle & Alstone Inclosure Act of 1834
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OOUURR LLAANNDD THE FIELDS AROUND HESTER'S WAY Picture: a blasted oak in the field called Sturmers Piece, behind Fiddler's Green Farm. Leckhampton Hill in the background, with Harthurstfield to the right, Fiddler's Green Meadow and GCHQ redevelopment to the left. (13th Feb. 2000 D.E.) INTRODUCTION As stated, the “Geographical History of Hester’s Way” would have been too cluttered if I had included my pre-Victorian material amongst the text. Here, then, is the older stuff. Some of this is obviously still under research. The reader will have to forgive places where facts are out of sequence, contradictory or repeated: there's a lot to juggle here! Apologies for the current lack of an index, etc. A Bibliography of sorts is at the end of Chapter 11, additional to the titles mentioned in the Geographical History introduction. The same abbreviations apply as in the Geographical History. The most important abbreviation used throughout Our Land is AAI, which I have used to refer to the field numbers allotted in the Arle & Alstone Inclosure Act of 1834. Two-letter codes to do with the studies of Barbara Rawes apply to my personal filing system of notes. Readers please feel free to copy, adapt and use this information as you see fit. Send me your comments, to davidnedgar64 @ gmail.com. July 2015 Chapter 11 is more general and speculative: it’s just my notes made as I read various books on the history of agriculture, picking out the ideas that appear to be relevant to the west Cheltenham landscape. (The straightness of the western boundary of the manor/ parish/ tithing/ borough is of particular fascination to me). Chapter 12 commences the specific story of our area at the aristocratic end of the scale, the “land lords” and gradually works down the scale of gentrification, to the “land workers.” Chapter 16 gives a summary of the local Inclosure Act, which marked a reconstruction of the system: a winding up of the medieval mentality. CONTENTS 11. LAND OF LONG AGO 11.1 UP TO AROUND 950 11.2 MEDIEVAL MANOR ECONOMY BIBLIOGRAPHY 12. ARLE COURT: RISE AND FALL 12.1 THE MEDIEVAL INHERITANCES 12.2 TUDOR ARLE COURT 12.3 LEGAL DOCUMENTS 13. REDGROVE – MEDIEVAL & MODERN 13.0 RESURRECTING REDGROVE 13.1 MEDIEVAL REDGROVE & GROVEFIELD 13.2 GROVEFIELD HOUSE 14. HARTHURSTFIELD 14.1 THE WOODS 14.2 OTHER CHARITY ESTATES 15. FIELD-NAME RECORDS 15.1 NORDEN'S SURVEY OF 1617 15.2 SURVEY OF DEMESNE LANDS 1635 16. LAND'S END: INCLOSURE 16.1 APPROACHING INCLOSURE 16.2 A SUMMARY OF THE INCLOSURE ACT TEXT 16.3 FIELD-NAMES FROM Q/RI41 CHAPTER ELEVEN - LAND OF LONG AGO 11.1: UP TO AROUND 950 11.1.1 MAKE ME AN OFFA: ARCHAEOLOGY AT ALL SAINTS' ACADEMY (repeated from 2.2.0) An archaeological dig prior to the redevelopment of the Kingsmead School site took place in March-May 2010. Evidence was found of Saxon settlement. Two complete human skeletons were found (see 11.1.3), with fragments of pottery vessels and an ornamental bone pin. Also found was the footprint of a large timber Saxon hall, of the type probably used for communal feasts. A good initial outline source of information is Glevensis Vol.43 (Nov 2010) pp.1-6. See also History of Hester’s Way Vol.4 pp.36-38 & Vol.5 p.28. The timber-framed Saxon hall is described as the most striking find, a “post-built structure” 11m by 6m, aligned NW-SE lengthways. This was at the west end of the site, near present-day Seabright Close. Various pits near the SW side of the playing field area contained a significant quantity of Anglo- Saxon pottery fragments (278 sherds), accompanied by some animal bone. Provisional dating of the style of pottery is probably towards the end of the period 500-700AD, apparently post-pagan. A bone “pin beater” provides evidence of weaving, again almost certainly Anglo-Saxon. There were found some “residual” sherds of Roman pottery: [I presume this refers not to the likelihood that Saxons were still using Roman pots, but rather that Roman farmers were in the habit of fertilising their fields with mixed household rubbish]. Some prehistoric Middle Bronze Age pottery was also found in a completely unrelated set of pits at the centre of the playing field. Another aspect of the archaeology was its disruption by the deeper parts of the medieval ridge and furrow arable agriculture. I do note however that the grooves found, spaced at about 15m apart, were aligned precisely N-S; whereas the marks still visible on the playing field surface until 2010 were NW-SE. [This indicates a complete change in the ridge and furrow field system at some date, a peculiarity which was first observed I believe at the well-known Wharram Percy excavation in Yorkshire. Since the early-Saxons used a plough that didn’t produce a ridge and furrow effect, I presume the first alignment in these cases is late-Anglo-Saxon (say 900-1100), whilst the second is Norman. The Normans don’t seem to be given credit for perhaps immense restructuring of the landscape. They created, I would dare say, most of our country lanes - at least the more purposeful looking ones - and therefore also the basic layout of what’s between these lanes. See my dubious attribution of this to the Romans in History of Hester’s Way Vol.2 p.2]. The presence of a pre-Norman settlement here should have been no surprise. The area used to be called Oldbury Meadow. This ancient field-name, documented in 1320 with the spelling Oldeburi [see Trapp], hints rather strongly that medieval farmers were aware of something old buried here. Well certainly the story of place-names is not quite that straightforward. The suffix –bury (as for example in nearby Prestbury) is nothing to do with things buried but seems specifically to refer to the prime building of a large estate. This is as opposed to the suffix –ton, as in Uckington etc, which refers to the estate as a whole. So, a ‘bury’ is a manor house, or in this case the earlier equivalent of such a thing (whereas a ‘ton’ is a township – a manor’s full extent). So the medieval farmers called the area Oldeburi because they were well aware that there had once been a still older farmstead of some importance on the site. The name survived onto the 1834 Inclosure Act, where ‘Oldbury Meadow’ was a five-acre plot, now occupied by Waldrist Close, along with the N.H.S. building on Village Road, and the northernmost corner of the Academy grounds. In previous centuries the name Oldbury could perhaps have applied over a larger area. The excavated hall lies within the adjoining plot of ground, which was merely known as ‘Davis’s Piece’ in 1834, that is, a piece of a larger field, which had recently belonged to a Mr Davis. The larger open-field of which that was a piece could once have been called Oldeburi, signifying the site of a former village centre. A forerunner of the building called Arle Farm (now the location of Curtiss Wright - Douglas Equipment) could have been the southern corner of such a village: maybe one day archaeologists will be able to search there. However, this open field named hypothetically Oldbury Field, the area west of the Arle Farm building, would instead in more recent centuries come to be called Barbridge Field. This name is documented in 1606 as ‘Barbridge Feeld’ (see Place Names of Gloucestershire). The nearby bridge after which it was named is documented as far back as 1250, spelled Barwebrug. Barwe was a word which meant a plot of woodland, (here referring presumably to the grove known as Pilgrove, which lay immediately northeast of the bridge 5.2.0). Barbridge and Oldbury were thus rural names of antiquity, which were resurrected as street names a little further south in the 1950s development of Hester’s Way Estate. See 4.1.8 and 5.2.8. 11.1.2 SKELETONS OF ANGLES OR SAXONS? CHRISTIANS OR PAGANS? The two skeletons found were in an area of silty soil. The graves were shallow pits, in amongst the area of pits dated by pottery to early Anglo-Saxon times. Bone samples were sent to the U.S.A. I believe for carbon-dating, and came back with the date 640-680AD - the reign of Osric. Not many skeletons are excavated from that period. The bodies lay crouched, on their sides, and not aligned in the way normal in Christian culture. It appears the influence of Christianity had not completely affected local burial customs. In 409, with the withdrawal of Roman occupation, power across England divided to more than 20 regional tribal kings, with shifting rivalries and alliances. This pattern was continued by the Angles and Saxons. The Saxons’ attacks on what became Wessex began in 495. The first Anglian attack was of Northumbria in 547, but of the West Anglian kingdom not until 584. The latter people were known as Mercians. In 577, the Saxons tackled the land of the tribe of the Dobunni. The Anglo-Saxon term in use for this tribe was Hwicce. Their territory was geographically centred on Cheltenham, but was perhaps best described as two provinces. The southern half contained Gloucestershire except the Forest of Dean but including Bath, with its local capital at Cirencester. The northern half contained Worcestershire and south Warwickshire - perhaps ruled from Droitwich. The Saxons in 577 took the southern half described, but lost it again in 592 to an alliance of the Welsh and Middle Angles.