Mapledurham (October 2017) • Economic History • P
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VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Mapledurham (October 2017) • Economic History • p. 1 VCH Oxfordshire Texts in Progress MAPLEDURHAM Economic History Mapledurham’s economy was long based on mixed farming, supplemented by woodland exploitation and a limited amount of craft activity. There was much early inclosure, especially in the centre and north of the parish, though vestiges of the medieval open-field system survived until the 18th century. Local towns provided ready markets, and the leading tenant farmers prospered in the 16th to 18th century. As elsewhere, early 19th-century agrarian buoyancy was reversed in the 1870s, and by the 1940s several farms were in a poor condition. From the later 20th century the Mapledurham Estate, the main landowner, diversified into leisure and tourism, creating two golf courses and holding open days and other events. The Agricultural Landscape In 1587 the parish’s open fields (covering c.25 per cent of the total area) lay mainly in its low- lying southern part, immediately north of a band of Thames-side meadows. The open-field system was first documented in the late 12th century1 but was probably of considerably earlier origin, and several field-names suggest late Anglo-Saxon collective farming practices, notably a meadow called ‘Churlegrave’ (the ceorls’ grove) on Chazey manor, and a ditch called ‘Aldefeld’ or old field, both mentioned in the late 12th century. 2 In the Middle Ages the two manors had mainly separate open fields, presumably because the pre-Conquest division into two estates occurred before the field system was fully formed. Gurney manor’s fields included Hen, Wheatlands, King’s Hill, and West fields, and Chazey’s Ham, Ridge, Gallows and Lye fields, the last located ‘above the hill’.3 Some other open-field land, meadow and pasture was shared, and Broad mead was divided into lots.4 Intercommoning generated 1 Cooke, Early History, 65–6. 2 Mapledurham Archive, C2/18, f. 38, a late-medieval copy of a deed dating to before c.1194, partly transcribed in Cooke, Early History, 66. Cf. Blair, A-S Oxon. 80. 3 Cooke, Early History, 28–9, 55, 194; Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 71–2; Mapledurham Map (1587). 4 Cooke, Early History, 56–7, 184–5; Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 133–4. 1 VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Mapledurham (October 2017) • Economic History • p. 2 disputes from the Middle Ages onwards, sometimes between the two lords. 5 The field systems apparently remained separate after the manors were combined. Part of the parish’s open field system as shown on an estate map of 1587. Photo by Dan Miles; copyright the Mapledurham 1997 Trust. Permission to reproduce kindly given by Mr J.J. Eyston. The centre and north of the parish were mostly inclosed, and contained numerous pockets of woodland.6 Some extensive woods were partially cleared during the Middle Ages, early assarts including land south of Pages Shaw granted to William Page in the 13th century.7 The 1587 estate map shows many closes apparently carved from woodland, leaving thick hedgerows and shaws,8 and some surviving coppices were grubbed up in the early 17th century.9 A medieval deer park created by the Gournays encompassed c.200 a. in the 1630s, apparently after some reduction in size,10 and in 1722 demesne woodland still measured 289 a., but was said to have formerly covered 400 acres.11 Some replanting took place thereafter,12 and by 1840 there was more than 400 a. of woodland in all.13 Common wastes included Nuney common (an area of scrubby rough grassland) and Chazey heath, 5 e.g. Abbrev. Plac. 184; Cooke, Early History, 18, 22, 25; Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 71, 132–3, 184–5; Mapledurham Archive, C2/1. 6 Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 79–80, 145; Mapledurham Archive, C2/28. 7 Cooke, Early History, plate facing 200; Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 74, 94–5. 8 Mapledurham Map (1587). 9 Below, this section. 10 Bodl. MS Bankes 20, f. 3; below (medieval agric.). 11 Mapledurham Archive, C77, p. 2. 12 Quarterly Jnl of Forestry 14:1 (1920), 49. 13 OHC, tithe award and map. There was 406 a. in 1924: PLU4/AS/A2/12. 2 VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Mapledurham (October 2017) • Economic History • p. 3 which in the early 18th century was tilled two years in seven.14 Small greens were located at the intersection of roads, amongst them Trench Green, on which three lanes converged. Undulating countryside south-west of Chazey Heath (above ‘the hill’). Medieval Agriculture In 1086 Mapledurham Gurney had land for 12 ploughs and Mapledurham Chazey for five.15 Both manors were fully stocked, suggesting that roughly 2,000 a. (or two thirds of the parish) was under cultivation, and that farmland probably already extended considerably into the wooded north.16 Each manor had two ploughs in demesne (run by two slaves on Gurney manor and one at Chazey), but tenant land was much more extensive at Gurney: there 16 villani and two bordars ran 10 ploughs compared with three at Chazey, shared by seven villani and five bordars. Only a small area of meadow was mentioned: 10 a. on the larger estate, and 4 a. on the smaller. Probably that represented only managed grassland, since in 1587 there was up to 98 a. of meadow.17 No woodland was listed, presumably because it was not intensively used. Both estates had increased in value since 1066, Gurney from £8 to £12 and Chazey from £5 to £7, most likely because higher rents were extracted. In succeeding centuries Gurney manor was the more effectively exploited. The deer park near the manor house was established before 1233 (when it was restocked),18 and in 14 Mapledurham Map (1587); map of 1722 (re-planned in 1736) at Mapledurham House (A19); Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 170; below (farms and farming 1500–1800). 15 VCH Oxon. I, 411, 418. 16 Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 73–5. 17 Mapledurham Map (1587). 18 Cal. Close, 1231–4, 277. 3 VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Mapledurham (October 2017) • Economic History • p. 4 the 13th and 14th century it produced deer and rabbits.19 Probably it was created by Hugh de Gournay (d. 1238), since earlier lords apparently seldom if ever visited.20 Suits over common pasture, brought against Matilda de Gournay in 1241 by the lords of Chazey and Hardwick (in Whitchurch), may reflect wider inclosure and reorganisation.21 In 1290 the manor was valued at £30,22 and around the same time supported an annuity of £50,23 indicating significant income from the demesne and tenant rents. Probably the demesne’s size had been increased, as it certainly had by the later 14th century when it lay in compact blocks.24 Rents from free and bond tenants in 1343 totalled £12 14s. ¾d.25 The smaller Chazey manor was valued at just £10 in 1255, and in the late 13th century, when its demesne remained the same size as at Domesday, land values and rents were modest.26 In 1279 John de Chausey had 2 carucates in demesne (c.240 a.), and three villein half-yardlanders paid 12s. rent and owed carting service at harvest time, while six cottagers held 2½ yardlands between them for 3s. rent each and labour services. Four free tenants held yardlands, three of them for little or no rent, and one (John Page) for 13s. 4d. Additional free land had been granted away, notably two yardlands which the prior of Wallingford leased for 8s. a year. Out of 6 a. of meadow the lord held 4 a. in demesne, and the lord and a free tenant had free fisheries in the Thames.27 An inquisition of 1313 valued 192 a. of demesne arable at £1 12s. or 2d. per acre,28 while 10 a. of meadow was valued at £1 (2s. per acre), a pasture at 10s., and a fishery at £1. Three free tenants then owed £1 19s., two yardlanders £1 16s., and two half-yardlanders (perhaps successors of the cottagers) 12s., while labour services were worth £1 8s. 8d., and the manor as a whole £10 3s. a year. The figures indicate a concentration of land in fewer hands and an increase in rents from freeholders, perhaps through part-leasing of the demesne. Thirteenth- and 14th-century tenant holdings on both manors were measured in the usual yardlands and half-yardlands, though subletting may have affected their actual size. Peasant farmers held closes, pieces of meadow, and small areas of woodland as well as open-field strips,29 and labour services appear to have been commuted at an early date.30 19 Cooke, Early History, 202, 205. 20 Above, manors (Mapledurham Gurney). 21 Oxon. Eyre, 1241, pp. 63–4; relig. hist. (glebe). For wider tensions: below, social hist. 22 TNA, C 133/57/2. 23 Mapledurham Archive, C2/18, f. 24; Cooke, Early History, 202. 24 Below, this section. 25 Mapledurham Archive, C1/6; Cooke, Early History, 27–8; Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 109. 26 Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 81–8; Rot. Hund. II, 42. 27 Rot. Hund. II, 778–9. 28 TNA, C 134/29/5. 29 Ibid. 120, 128; Cooke, Early History, 204; TNA, WARD 2/8/27/1; WARD 2/8/27/29; Mapledurham Archive, C1/17. 30 Long, ‘History of the Manors of Mapledurham’, 107–12. 4 VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Mapledurham (October 2017) • Economic History • p. 5 Inhabitants apparently followed local mixed farming practices,31 and a hayward (regulating grazing) was mentioned in 1241.32 Markets presumably included Reading and Henley, supplemented to a limited extent in the 13th century by Wallingford.