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Goring (July 2019) • © VCH Oxfordshire • Landownership • P VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Goring (July 2019) • © VCH Oxfordshire • Landownership • p. 1 VCH Oxfordshire Texts in Progress Goring Landownership In the mid-to-late Anglo-Saxon period Goring may have been the centre of a sizeable royal estate, parts of which became attached to the burh of Wallingford (Berks.) following its creation in the late 9th century.1 By 1086 there were three estates in the parish, of which two can be identified as the later Goring and Gatehampton manors.2 Goring priory (founded before 1135) accrued a separate landholding which became known as Goring Priory manor, while the smaller manors of Applehanger and Elvendon developed in the 13th century from freeholds in Goring manor’s upland part, Applehanger being eventually absorbed into Elvendon. Other medieval freeholds included Haw and Querns farms and various monastic properties. In the 17th century Goring Priory and Elvendon manors were absorbed into a large Hardwick estate based in neighbouring Whitchurch, and in the early 18th Henry Allnutt (d. 1725) gave Goring manor as an endowment for his new Goring Heath almshouse. Gatehampton manor, having belonged to the mostly resident Whistler family for almost 200 years, became attached c.1850 to an estate focused on Basildon Park (Berks.), until the latter was dispersed in 1929−30 and Gatehampton manor itself was broken up in 1943. The Hardwick estate, which in 1909 included 1,505 a. in Goring,3 was broken up in 1912, and landownership has since remained fragmented. Significant but more short-lived holdings were amassed by John Nicholls from the 1780s, by the Gardiners of Whitchurch from 1819, and by Thomas Fraser c.1820, the first two accumulations including the rectory farm and tithes. Goring Manor Before the Conquest Goring was held by Wigod of Wallingford, a kinsman and prominent official of Edward the Confessor. His lands passed in part to the Norman magnate Robert d’Oilly (who had married Wigod’s daughter Ealdgyth), and in 1086 Robert held 20 hides in 1 Above, vol. overview; cf. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, ‘The Genesis of the Honour of Wallingford’, in K.S.B. Keats-Rohan and D.R. Roffe (eds.), The Origins of the Borough of Wallingford: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives (2009), 63. 2 DB, ff. 157v., 158, 159. The third may have been what became Goring priory’s Stapnall’s grange: below (Goring Priory). 3 Hardwick Estate Office, deed 6 May 1909. VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Goring (July 2019) • © VCH Oxfordshire • Landownership • p. 2 Goring, possibly c.2,400 acres.4 The manor passed after his death c.1092 to his daughter Matilda and her husband Miles Crispin (d. 1107), forming part of Miles’s honor of Wallingford,5 and overlordship remained with the honor and with its successor the honor of Ewelme.6 Tenancy of the manor (held as two knights’ fees)7 belonged by 1154 to William Druval,8 who was succeeded before 1174 by his nephew Thomas Druval.9 He retained the manor in 1185 but died soon afterwards, his brother Hugh acting as guardian for Thomas’s under-age son Hugh.10 The elder Hugh may have died in 1194 when the manor escheated to the Crown,11 and the younger Hugh was dead by 1202, when Alan Basset had custody of his lands during the minority of Hugh’s own son and heir Hugh, who was of age by 121212 and died probably in 1240.13 Another Hugh Druval was granted free warren in Goring in 1254,14 and one or perhaps two further men of that name held the manor successively until at least 1301.15 By 1303 it belonged to John de Mohun, Lord Mohun, of Dunster (Som.), lord of neighbouring Streatley (Berks.), who had given his Somerset manor of Isle Brewers to Hugh Druval in exchange.16 John and his wife Ada received a grant of free warren in Goring in 1314.17 The manor had by then been reduced in size probably partly through grants to Goring priory, and in 1279 contained around 12 hides, perhaps c.1,440 a. in all.18 From John (d. 1330) the manor passed to his grandson John de Mohun, Lord Mohun, who came of age in 1341 and died a distinguished soldier in 1375. His widow Joan (d. 1404)19 retained a life interest under a settlement of 1346,20 and may have leased the manor to Elizabeth Loveday of Elvendon, in whose name courts were held in 1377 and 4 DB, f. 158; Blair, A-S Oxon. 174. 5 Sanders, Eng. Baronies, 54, 93. 6 e.g. Red Book Exch. I, 309; Feudal Aids, IV, 154, 201. 7 e.g. Red Book Exch. I, 309; Book of Fees, I, 446; Feudal Aids, IV, 154, 201. 8 Eynsham Cart. I, p. 106; Red Book Exch. I, 309; below (other estates). For the Druvals, cf. Goring Charters, I, pp. xl–xliv; Boarstall Cart. pp. 302–3; C.D. Tilley, ‘The Honour of Wallingford, 1066–1300’ (Univ. of London PhD thesis, 2011), passim. 9 Pipe R 1174 (PRS 21), 88; Eynsham Cart. I, p. 106; below (Goring Priory; other estates). 10 Pipe R 1185 (PRS 34), 221; Eynsham Cart. I, pp. 10–11; cf. M. Chibnall (ed.), Select Documents of the English Lands of the Abbey of Bec (Camden 3rd ser. 73, 1951), 13–14, where a date c.1190 is more likely. 11 Pipe R 1194 (PRS n.s. 5), 17; below (Goring Priory). He was certainly dead by 1196: Goring Charters, I, p. xlii. 12 Rot. Lib. (Rec. Com.), 27, 77; Book of Fees, I, 118; Red Book Exch. II, 598. 13 Close 1237–42, 343; Goring Charters, I, p. xli; Boarstall Cart. p. 303. He was alive in 1235: Oxon. Fines, pp. 95, 97; Book of Fees, I, 446. 14 Cal. Pat. 1247–58, 325. 15 Rot. Hund. II, 42, 777; Feudal Aids, IV, 154; Boarstall Cart. pp. 296, 303; Goring Charters, I, pp. xli– xliv, no. 50. 16 Feudal Aids, IV, 291, 314; Cal. Pat. 1301–7, 327; VCH Berks. III, 512–13. 17 Cal. Chart. 1300–26, 249. 18 Rot. Hund. II, 777−8. 19 Complete Peerage, IX, 21–5; Cal. Inq. p.m. VII, p. 218. 20 Cal. Inq. p.m. XVIII, p. 386; TNA, CP 25/1/190/19, no. 64. VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Goring (July 2019) • © VCH Oxfordshire • Landownership • p. 3 1379.21 Joan’s heirs were her daughters Elizabeth, countess of Salisbury, who died childless in 1414; Philippa, duchess of York, who died also childless in 1431; and Maud (d. 1401), the wife of John le Strange, Lord Strange, of Knockin (Salop.).22 Goring belonged to Philippa in 1428,23 but by 1438 the lord was Maud and John’s son Richard le Strange (d. 1449),24 heir to both the Mohun and Strange baronies. From him the manor descended to his son John (d. 1479) and to John’s daughter Joan, who married Sir George Stanley (d. 1503), son and heir apparent of the earl of Derby.25 Their son Thomas inherited the earldom on the death of his grandfather in 1504, and the Strange and Mohun baronies (including Goring) on his mother’s death in 1514. Following his own death in 1521 the manor was held by his widow Anne during the minority of their son Edward, 3rd earl of Derby, who reached full age in 1530; thereafter it passed with the earldom from Edward (d. 1572) to his son Henry (d. 1593), to Henry’s son Ferdinando (d. 1594), and to Ferdinando’s brother William.26 He sold it in 1597 to his distant cousin Sir Edward Stanley of Tong (Salop.),27 who in 1605 sold it to Sir Francis Stonor of Stonor Park in Pyrton.28 From Sir Francis (d. 1625) Goring descended with Stonor to his son William (d. 1651), to William’s son Francis (d. 1653), and to Francis’s brother Thomas,29 who sold Cleeve mill in 166230 and retained 699 a. in Goring in 1674.31 The following year he sold the manor house and the 282-a. demesne (Goring farm) to his brother Henry,32 and in 1680 conveyed the rest of the manor to Henry (later Sir Henry) Allnutt of Ibstone (Bucks.). Allnutt granted it in 1682 to his youngest son Henry (d. 1725), a London barrister, under whose will the manor and estate (comprising 358 a. in Goring in 1826) were left to his kinsman and executor Richard Clement of Sandford, in trust as an endowment for Goring Heath almshouse. Richard, who was called lord of Goring in 1728, died in 1730, and the lordship was exercised thereafter by trustees of the almshouse charity.33 21 OHC, E1/M1/CR/2; E1/M2/CR/2 (citing a lease by the Mohuns); below (Elvendon); local govt (manor cts). 22 Complete Peerage, IX, 24–5; Cal. Inq. p.m. XVIII, p. 386. 23 Feudal Aids, IV, 201, mistakenly calling her Eliz.; cf. Goring Charters, I, lxiv. 24 TNA, C 88/121/59; OHC, E1/M1/CR/30. 25 Complete Peerage, IX, 25; XII (1), 355–6; TNA, C 1/1519/75–6. 26 Complete Peerage, IV, 208–13; L&P Henry VIII, III, pp. 1185–6; OHC, E1/M1/CR/19; Berks. RO, D/ECw E1. 27 OHC, O15/2/1D/1; TNA, CP 25/2/198/39/40 Eliz. I Mich. 28 OHC, O15/2/1D/3. 29 VCH Oxon. VIII, 155; OHC, O15/2/1D/5; O15/2/4D/1–3. 30 TNA, CP 43/319, ro. 146; ibid. CP 25/2/707/14 Chas II Mich.
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