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CHAPTER 13 Cambridgeshire and the Peat Fen. Medieval Rural Settlement and Commerce, c. AD 900–1300 Susan Oosthuizen Introduction exhibited at their landward ends at least one hythe, The origins and development of medieval settlement in frequently several, supplemented by small private Cambridgeshire have been well explored, principally cuts which led up into individual properties.6 Rivers by Christopher Taylor, both in overview and through and canals were indeed interlinked in a complex and a series of important case studies.1 The range and far-ranging pattern, which extended both the range of detail of this body of scholarship, still widely accepted, goods traded, and the areas from and to which goods allow a different approach here: building onT aylor’s could be supplied.7 work, this chapter explores the influence of rivers and canals on the location and morphology of rural Regional geography medieval settlement in the Cambridgeshire peat fens The peat fens cover about 4,000 km2, providing a between about ad 900 and 1300 where, as in western delta not only for the major river systems of the east Suffolk and Norfolk, ‘most of the villages along the Midlands (the Nene, Ouse and Welland), along which fen-edge had any number of small staithes and hythes the tides could be felt up to 48 miles inland, but also to facilitate the loading and unloading of boats’.2 for the rivers of the South and East: the Cam (Granta), Strikingly, the Cambridgeshire peat fens appear Lark, Little Ouse, Wissey and Nar.8 The floor of the to be one of the few English regions in which water fen basin generally undulates between a few metres transport remained dominant throughout the Middle below or above sea level, within inland verges which Ages.3 This is not difficult to explain. The great frequently lie at around 5 m above Ordnance Datum, fenland rivers linked Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, the winter floodline; only in a few places does it rise Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire with Rutland, to form clay and gravel ‘islands’ which rise above 5 m Leicestershire and Bedfordshire in the west, above OD – some substantial, like Ely, Chatteris and Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in the March, and others smaller, like Quanea, Apesholt or south, and Suffolk and Norfolk in the east across Shippea.9 Raised areas of peat bog had begun to form the fenland basin (Figure 13.1).4 Furthermore, the from the sixth millennium BC between sea level and comparative cheapness of carriage by water was most the 5 m contour where the fen basin was permanently explicit in the fens, where the necessity to skirt large damp or flooded for extended periods in autumn, tracts of marsh often made road journeys particularly winter and spring; by the eleventh century AD, it indirect.5 The network of natural watercourses which had reached a depth of around 3 m and continued drained the fen had, by the mid-thirteenth century to grow until drainage in the seventeenth century, and probably some time before, been augmented by forming large tracts of wetland between the islands a large number of artificial waterways, locally called and the fen-edge.10 ‘lodes’, most of which (with their catchwater drains) Such low-lying land, sensitive to minor variations 13. Cambridgeshire and the Peat Fen 207 Figure 13.1. The Cambridge peat fenland in the medieval period. Key: areas shown as marsh lie at or below 5 m above Ordnance Datum, the winter floodline. Triangles denote the major settlements in medieval parishes. North is to the top of the page. 1. Ely; 2. Littleport; 3. Wicken; 4. Burwell; 5. Reach; 6. Swaffham Prior; 7. Soham; 8. Isleham; 9. Cottenham; 10. Swavesey; 11. Haddenham; 12. Aldreth; 15. Doddington; 16. March; 17. Ramsey; 18. Thorney; 19. Peterborough; 20. Crowland; 21. Somersham; 22. Little Downham. (Reproduced with permission from Hall 1987, 65; Hall 1992, 102; Hall 1996, 160) in water-level and too damp for arable cultivation, customs of intercommoning between vills seem could nonetheless support a wide range of rich, so ancient that they may even have pre-dated the natural resources: grazing for large herds of cattle establishment of the seventh-century monastic estates and sheep, as well as reeds, rush and sedge, hay, at Peterborough, Crowland and Ely.12 woods, peat and vast quantities of fish and wildfowl. The cohesive geography of the region appears to This productive environment appears continuously have been reflected in physical patterns of settlement exploited from prehistory onwards.11 Medieval and land-use. Medieval field systems in the fen 208 Susan Oosthuizen parishes tended to be divided into a multiplicity of proportion of post-Conquest markets were located irregular subdivisions, like those in East Anglia: the at coastal ports.18 Watercourses supporting similar Bishop of Ely’s demesne at Doddington in 1251, for inland trading networks have been described as a example, was made up of ten fields with names like ‘dendritic path’.19 This phrase is particularly apt for Byrswrong, Estcroft and Akermanslond, while in only the Cambridgeshire peat fens where rivers and canals five of his fenland estates were arable fields arranged linked a subtly differentiated hierarchy of places in the regular two or three divisions of the Midland of greater or lesser importance through formal or System.13 On the other hand, settlement throughout informal trading networks, which might be regular, the fen was predominantly nucleated, even in along seasonal or intermittent, and local, regional, national the eastern edge of the fen in west Norfolk and or international.20 By the twelfth century, for example, Suffolk.14 By the late eleventh century nucleated King’s Lynn (Norfolk) had become a leading national settlements largely took the form of a single focus (for and international port at the mouth of the river Ouse example, Witchford, or Yaxley, Hunts.) or polyfocal through which passed salt, grain, lead and wool as clusters like Haddenham (with its additional nuclei well as spices, wine and luxury goods.21 More regional at Hinton, Linden End, Aldreth, and Hill Row), networks emerge in the carrying duties imposed by Burwell (including Church End, High Town, the Bishop of Ely on his customary tenants: thus Newnham, and North Street) or March (made up of those from his manor at Doddington were required to Knight’s End, Town End, West End, Well End, and transport goods across an area bounded by Cambridge, High Street, Westry, and Estwode). Many settlements St Ives and Ramsey (both Hunts.), and Peterborough contain one or more regular planned elements, each (Northants.), while those from Wilburton additionally characterised by properties of uniform area arranged went to King’s Lynn and Brandon (Suffolk).22 Nor did into blocks which share front and back boundaries local exchange necessarily require formal outlets, since (the latter often labelled Back Lane), into which the evidence from Ramsey (see Feature Box 1) and the parish church is often integrated. Some are explored Suffolk Breckland demonstrates that informal trade in more detail below. Informal settlement with no could be as vibrant and complex as that in places with sign of planned settlement is less common: the almost a market grant.23 deserted settlement at Fenton in Huntingdonshire Opportunities to travel by water were almost (first documented in 1236), for example, seems to ubiquitous across fenland by the High Middle Ages.27 have grown up along one side of a small green near The fenny environment and manorial carrying duties the head of Fenton Lode, itself first mentioned in the meant that most free and customary tenants, many early thirteenth century.15 of whom owned their own boats, were required to travel by water for their manorial lords, while the Transport and trade by water in the small cuts which lead up to many medieval properties from the lodes demonstrate the extent to which medieval peat fens they also used waterborne transport on their own That waterways were used for trade and transport in accounts. The fen offered such men a wider range Anglo-Saxon England (and earlier) is well established: of employment than those in predominantly arable although hythes were first recorded in the later ninth parishes, including the possibility of exploiting fen century when documentary evidence becomes more products either directly for sale or after processing28: common, archaeology consistently demonstrates the reeds, grazing, rushes, sedge, osiers, fish and wildfowl everyday quality of river-borne trade throughout the each contributed to the relative prosperity of peasant period.16 Water transport in the fens expanded after communities here.29 Even the landless were better the Norman Conquest and especially from the later off: at Waterbeach, for example, ‘men with little twelfth century, building upon and extending many or no land could support themselves through their already old trading patterns.17 rights over the extensive common pastures and fens, The importance to the development of medieval listed in 1340 as fodderfen, turffen, fodderlot and commerce of access to and transport by water sheeplot’.30 Pottery, another seasonal (though not has been demonstrated in Essex, where a good specifically a fenland) craft, offers further insight into 13. Cambridgeshire and the Peat Fen 209 distribution and production: in 1070 Hereward ‘the The successful examples are famous: King’s Lynn Wake’ is said to have disguised himself in order to (Norfolk) was founded c. 1096;37 St Ives (Hunts.) infiltrate theC onqueror’s camp by borrowing