Our Common Heritage
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Our Common Heritage A collection of six essays about the social history of Chiltern commons An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Published by the Chilterns Conservation Board in January 2015 Our Common Heritage A collection of six essays about the social history of Chiltern commons o CONSERVATION BOARD HITCHIN The M1 Chilterns Area of DUNSTABLE LUTON Outstanding Natural AYLESBURY Beauty TRING HARPENDEN WENDOVER HEMEL BERKHAMSTED HEMPSTEAD PRINCES RISBOROUGH CHESHAM M25 CHINNOR M40 M1 STOKENCHURCH AMERSHAM CHORLEYWOOD WATLINGTON HIGH BENSON WYCOMBE BEACONSFIELD MARLOW WALLINGFORD M40 N River Thames M25 0 5 10 km HENLEY-ON-THAMES GORING M4 0 6 miles M4 READING Acknowledgements The Chilterns Conservation Board is grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for their financial support from 2011 to 2015 which made the Chilterns Commons Project possible. We are also grateful to the project's 18 other financial partners, including the Chiltern Society. This publication could not have happened without the volunteers who researched and wrote these essays. We are indebted to Dr Mary Webb and Ross Osborn for the support and advice they gave our authors. Finally, we would like to pay special tribute to Rachel Sanderson who guided the project throughout and to Glyn Kuhn whose contribution in time, care and design expertise helped to ensure the completion of the publication. Photographs: Front cover main image – Elizabeth Leatherland, courtesy of Hertfordshire County Council Back cover main image – Coleshill Common, courtesy of Coleshill Common Management Committee Small images from top to bottom – Beldam family, courtesy of Shelly Finney Greenmoor Pond in Woodcote by Clive Ormonde Inns of Court Officers’ Training Corps, courtesy of Richard North Statue of John Wesley by Andrew Muir Ordnance Survey 1822 View from Watlington Hill by Clive Ormonde Our Common Heritage The Chilterns were first named and recognised as a distinctive region by the Anglo Saxons in Preface the 7th century and we can trace the history of the commons back to the establishment of the early parishes and the colonisation of the Chiltern woods and wastes during this period. The distinctive character of the Chilterns is founded on its geology and relief as the chalk scarp rises proud of the clay vale and dips gently south-eastwards. It is a deeply dissected landscape of narrow valleys and steep hills with heavy, acidic, stony clay soils on the top. The majority of commons and heaths are on the least fertile soils, at the top of the scarp and on the hilltops, or at the base of the dip slope. The Chilterns Conservation Board's Commons Project included the whole of the Natural Area of the Chilterns, as designated by Natural England, which includes around 200 registered commons. Its success in involving local people and raising public awareness has been paramount in understanding the unique natural and cultural heritage of this precious legacy. With a united approach that encompasses many surviving commons and with partnerships that involve volunteers working on those that need improvement, the project has helped to ensure that sustainable management will secure their future. Open space with access to everyone has always been a part of the Chilterns' history. Although the way that commons have been used has chopped and changed (quite literally), the motivation to embrace the outdoors is as strong today as it has ever been. The six essays in this publication reflect the diversity of uses that commons provided in a region that was both a major route to the capital and a hotbed of nonconformity and dissent. They reflect the everyday difficulties of living in a place where the water supply away from the spring-line was insufficient and farming was hard work on soils that were either heavy and stony, or thin and poor. The undulating relief and steep slopes meant travel was challenging. For some, the commons and heaths provided rough grazing and fuel and for others they were 'a safety valve where those without a land holding could find a perch and scrape a livelihood' (Hepple and Doggett, The Chilterns). Community rights were deeply embedded in the early medieval social system, but common rights did not mean a free-for-all. The rights were regulated and restricted by tradition, charter, and social position. Many of the largest wooded regions were wood-pasture commons that attempted to combine multiple uses. Commons on the plateau saw industries like brick making and pottery kilns located, as at Nettlebed. As the dedicated research in these papers shows, their legacies survive in the archives and on the ground. Enclosures In the opening essay, Enclosures in Watlington: the full circle, Laura Mason draws together in Watlington a history of Chiltern commons as she investigates the gradual disappearance of the local commons with successive enclosures to their modern recreational use. The impact this had on impoverished parishioners from medieval times to the Victorian era is often best observed in records of their misdemeanours and the harsh punishments they received. Dissension In Dissension to Domesticity Andrew Muir's thorough research provides an unbroken time- to Domesticity line of the history of dissent and religious nonconformity in the Chilterns, starting in the 14th century. It leaves us in no doubt that the Chilterns have had a reputation for dissent from authority and orthodoxy, beginning with the Lollards, and it is not always a happy tale. He maps the nonconformist survival through its ability to adapt to changing circumstances and beautifully illustrates the legacy of little chapels that remain as testament to Wesleyan, Methodist, Baptist and other nonconformist communities. Our Common Heritage Page 1 Meat to Market Phillip Clapham's Meat to Market: droving through the Chilterns is a well-constructed detective story pulling out clues from all manner of sources to work out where drovers moved their livestock through the Chilterns from as far away as Wales and Scotland. Most of the routes were never formally recorded, but vast numbers of sheep and cattle must have passed through the region, especially to the London markets. It is suggested that drovers often avoided the turnpikes with their tolls and hold ups which led them to seek alternative routes. Along the way the importance of manorial waste as drovers sought grazing and respite brings the commons back into focus. Water: paucity The paucity of surface water away from the spring lines in these porous chalk hills has to potable historically presented serious issues in the supply of uncontaminated drinking water. Susan Maguire's case study Water: paucity to potable gives an intriguing insight into the decision- making process in Woodcote which had a pond that failed to meet the Inspector of Nuisances' water quality standards. The tiny village lacked the resources to install a pipeline or dig a well (most Chiltern wells are over 300 feet deep), but this essay carefully explains how the community eventually found a workable solution. On Common On Common Ground, Dr Anne-Marie Ford's fascinating research into families of Romany Ground communities, shows how vital the commons were to the travelling communities as they moved around to the seasonal rhythm of country fairs and festivals. As well as providing camp sites, grazing, and temporary employment on the farms and at the brick kilns, the local common woods provided the raw materials for items to make and sell like pegs and brooms. From Following the centennial anniversary of the start of the Great War, From Berkhamsted to Berkhamsted Battlefield the concluding essay by Norman Groves investigating the use of Chiltern commons for trench warfare training, is particularly apposite. Several commons were used, to Battlefield but the camp of the Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps on Berkhamsted Common was by far the largest. The size and scale of the camp is brought to life in the photographs. Poignant reminders of the heavy death toll of officers in the war add weight to an important piece of social history. The appendix details a project to map the location and orientation of surviving practice trenches that had been hidden in the undergrowth for many years. The volunteers who have contributed to this impressive publication have brought together a series of papers where the delight is truly in the detail. The wide-ranging topics explore all manner of life and death on the Chiltern commons, and demonstrate an indefatigable urge to learn more about this unique region and its cultural heritage. These authors have added another layer to the current body of knowledge and they deserve our thanks and congratulations. Alison Doggett December 2014 Our Common Heritage Page 2 Enclosures in Watlington: the full circle HITCHIN M1 Laura Mason DUNSTABLE LUTON In her report, Laura traces the history of enclosures on the high ground in the parish of Watlington AYLESBURY TRING and the effects on those who were most HARPENDEN WENDOVER dependent on common land – poor HEMEL BERKHAMSTED HEMPSTEAD PRINCES agricultural labourers. The history of RISBOROUGH CHESHAM M25 CHINNOR Watlington also reflects the reaction M40 M1 STOKENCHURCH AMERSHAM CHORLEYWOOD WATLINGTON of society to the loss of common HIGH BENSON WYCOMBE land and our increasing interest Watlington BEACONSFIELD MARLOW in conservation. WALLINGFORD M40 N River Thames M25 0 5 10 km HENLEY-ON-THAMES GORING M4 0 6 miles M4 In August 1549 William Boolar, Insurrection and READING a Catholic, of Watlington was retribution sentenced to be hanged in the town for his part as a local ringleader of the Oxfordshire Buckinghamshire Rising. The hanging was to take place on a market day, and Boolar's head to be prominently displayed – a warning to the Watlington population that the consequences of insurrection would be swift and brutal. The Oxfordshire Buckinghamshire Rising was one of a series of revolts which swept through the English countryside that year.