The Rabbit Warrens of Shropshire
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Diary Dates Friday 27 September 2013 to Courses The newsletter of the Friends of Shropshire Archives, Monday 6 January 2014 ARCHIVES Tuesday 15, 22, 29 October SHROPSHIRE gateway to the history of Shropshire and Telford Window shopping on the past and 5 November 2013 An exhibition highlighting the remarkable Historic Gardens of Shropshire photographs of Joseph Lewis Della Porta. See the feature article in this edition for more details. (This is a repeat of the course held in February 2013). Free at Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury, with a digital Tutor: Fiona Grant. display in the Old Market Hall, Shrewsbury. 2-4pm at Shropshire Archives. Cost: £32 for 4 sessions. Saturday 12 October 2013 Tuesday 25 February Whitchurch History Day and 4, 11, 18 March 2014 A day to celebrate the heritage of Whitchurch Town and its hinterland. There will be talks, presentations, Shropshire Country Houses music, historic walks and tours. See leaflet for further Tutor: Gareth Williams, Curator & Head of Learning to details and booking form. the Weston Park Foundation. 10am - 4pm Brownlow Community Centre, Claypit 2-4pm at Shropshire Archives. Street, Whitchurch, SY13 1LF. Cost: £5 for members of Cost. £32 for 4 sessions. the Friends; £10 for non-members. Wednesday 13 November 2013 Forthcoming events Annual Lecture - ‘Time Team Traveller’ Saturday 26 April 2014 Matt Williams, a regular member of Channel 4’s Time Discover Shropshire Day Team programme. 7.30pm Shropshire Archives. Shirehall, Shrewsbury. Cost £4 members of the Friends; £5 for non-members. Details t.b.c. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The newsletter of the Friends of News Extra... Shropshire Archives is edited by Alison Mussell and designed by Nat Stevenson, Shropshire Archives’ Image Services. Do you have any stories to tell about Window shopping Shropshire’s history or have any news There are three issues per year, paid for by the Friends. The contents are provided by friends and well-wishers. If you would on the past about Shropshire Archives? If you have, like to join the contributors, please contact the editor at the address below. Copy for the next issue needs to be submitted by the editor is waiting to hear from you 15 October 2013. In this issue we feature now. The contact details are below and DISCLAIMER: We have made every effort to ensure that the The rabbit warrens photographs of Shrewsbury shop photographs are always welcome. information in this publication is correct at the time of printing. fronts taken by Joseph Della We cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions. of Shropshire Porta in 1888. Page 2 Page 6 Contact... For further details or to pass on your comments, please contact: Dickin and Co, Ironmongers, 2, Wyle Cop, Shrewsbury Shropshire Archives, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury, SY1 2AQ • Tel: 01743 255350 Email: [email protected] • Website: www.shropshirearchives.org.uk Number 77 . Summer/Autumn 2013 Price £2.00 (free to Members) Mid-seventeenth century map of Sheriffhales showing the warren lodge, rabbits or ‘conies’ and the warren. Shropshire Archives ref. 972/7/1/33 delicacy requiring protection and nurturing. dated 1159 when Henry II (1154-89) granted Feature However, in the post-medieval period the to Roger, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, rabbit was thought of as a useful farming the privilege of free warren, and secondly The rabbit warrens product, sharing areas of permanent pasture a charter of Edward I on 28 January 1307 with sheep and cattle. There are surprisingly granted the right to exercise free warren in few early references to warrens in Shropshire, the manor. This indicates that the warren at with them being recorded at Weston- Prees was a deliberate seigniorial creation, James P. Bowen of Shropshire under-Redcastle in 1274, and Oswestry and although it is likely that naturally, wild rabbits Shrawardine in 1301. Their presence has been prospered. Moreover, the introduction of more widely observed in forest areas such rabbit warrens by lords can be interpreted abbit warrens were an area set to enjoy the right of free warren on their as Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire and as a response to their failure to enclose aside for the breeding and raising estates, but the word became associated the heathlands of Northamptonshire, Sussex, common land and to convert it to tillage. The of rabbits and are an important specifically with the hunting and keeping Kent, Dorset and the Brecklands of East seventeenth century saw attempts by lords feature of the historic landscape, of rabbits. Warrens frequenty developed Anglia, the higher chalk and limestone areas to obtain direct revenue from wastes, one being a distinctive form of residual on areas of unproductive common of the Yorkshire Wolds and upland areas possible income being the establishment Rland use. Typically they had protected wasteland where light, infertile, sandy- such as Dartmoor and North Yorkshire. and enlargement of warrens. The warren boundaries made up of artificial banks soiled heathland prevailed. Part of lords’ located on Prees Higher Heath was for the and purpose-built accommodation for demesnes, they were an important feature Warrens are widely evident in the rabbits. Often their custodians, namely of the manorial seigniorial economy, being Shropshire landscape. For instance, the Rabbits or their earlier ancestors the warrener(s), lived in a lodge nearby. symbolic of lordship. Also, warrens were prevalence of warrens has been identified Characteristic landscape features of warrens frequently established close to, or within, the on common heathland in north and east ‘coneys’, were introduced to the are what archaeologists and landscape boundaries of medieval deer parks. Shropshire and the uplands of south British Isles from Spain by the historians term ‘pillow mounds’, low mounds Shropshire, corresponding with studies of which have an oblong pillow-like plan. They Rabbits or their earlier ancestors ‘coneys’, comparable landscape types in England and Normans in the late twelfth century. are usually about 100 feet long and no more were introduced to the British Isles from Wales. For example, R.W. Eyton (1815-81) in his than 30 feet wide and bounded by ditches. Spain by the Normans in the late twelfth Antiquities of Shropshire (1859) referred to sole use of the lord, although it was later Originally, the word warren referred to century. They provided valuable meat and a series of royal charters which granted the leased. For example, in 1708, Thomas Graham hunting rights to small game. Nobles paid fur. In the medieval period rabbit was a right of free warren in Prees manor; the first paid a half yearly rent of £2 5s for the house, 2 Salopian Recorder . Number 77 . Summer/Autumn 2013 Summer /Autumn 2013 . Number 77 . Salopian Recorder 3 warren and an enclosure. Today, the former location the boundary over an area of common wasteland causing considerable damage. Hence, in 1610 tenants thus corresponding with the spatial pattern nationally. of the warren is marked by the house name ‘Warren called ‘The Hide’ or Burlaughton Common between the of Cold Hatton manor complained that rabbits bred In 1803 Joseph Plymley, the author of the General House’ at the roundabout where the A41 and A49 join manors of Weston-under-Lizard and Sheriffhales close and kept were destroying their fields and furthermore, View of the Agriculture of Shropshire (1803) noted (OS 559, 379). to the Shropshire and Staffordshire border. Documents the warrener was presented for unstopping earths in that the warrens in Longnor Park and Frodesley Park reveal that it was decided that a boundary ditch was the corn fields and for refusing to allow them to be near Cardington had been latterly destroyed. This, he In the medieval and early modern periods, manorial to be dug in order to avoid future disputes. A mid- stopped up again. Rabbits were known to eat holly, outlined, corresponded with the widespread decline courts laid by-laws to prevent the poaching of rabbits. seventeenth century map of Sheriffhales (page 2-3) a valuable source of winter fodder, during periods of the preservation of warrens in ‘private grounds’. As For instance, Myddle manor court sought to prevent of bad weather, as in February 1894. H.E. Forrest one observer remarked: the taking of rabbits, ordering in 1611 that: ‘No Man Rabbits often escaped from warrens and observed that rabbits at Bomere Heath, 4½ miles within this Lordshipp shall keepe any firretts or netts for north of Shrewsbury, were ‘driven by hunger to climb ‘Rabbits have of late been much destroyed, by reason of the the destroying of conyes, the warrener and his servants spread onto neighbouring arable and up into holly hedges and eat the young green twigs’. commons upon which they were bred having been enclosed; exempted.’ A charter for a free warren had been pasture land, causing considerable damage. Similarly, the approvement of common wasteland and in some parts of the county they are seldom to be met acquired by Lord Egerton which allowed him a warren - the conversion and enclosure of common land for with, except in a tame state. If a piece of land suitable to the on ‘Haremeare Heath, Holloway Hills, and the rocky the benefit of landlords whether for arable or pasture, purpose was to be set apart for a warren, it is probable that grounds, (where the plow cannot goe) in those pieces shows field boundaries, the state of cultivation and resulted in negotiation as to the extent of rabbit the profit would be equal to any other mode of husbandry, if called the Hill Leasows, which lye between Holloway Hills, ‘the common in question.’ The agreement followed a farming. For example, when on 19 October 1699, Sir not beyond it.’ and Myddle Hill.’ Elsewhere in north Shropshire such succession of legal disputes heard in the Courts of Robert Corbet wanted to enclose part of Stoke Heath, as at Longden, Cold Hatton and Stoke Heath, manor Star Chamber, Wards, Requests and the local common near Market Drayton, an agreement was reached with Clearly, the importance of rabbits in the rural courts passed by-laws to protect the lords’ privilege.