the complete history of south marston [email protected]
TRANSCRIPT
Sources• Books – Roman Wanborough, Highworth Hundred, Tax Lists, Inquisitions PM, Alfred Williams
• Maps – early county maps, 1773 Andrews & Dury, 1840 Tithe Map, 1886 Ordnance Survey, 1918 Auction
• National Archives & Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre – over 500 deeds, leases, wills, 1840 Tithe Records
• Parish Records – baptisms, marriages & burials 1539-1840 & onwards
• Census Records – 1801 onwards
• Archaeological records – Wiltshire Sites & Monuments Record, Archaeological Data Services, WANHS Magazine
• National Monuments Record - aerial photographs
• Google Earth
• British Museum – pottery collection
• Field-walking – fossils, pottery & coins
• Landscape analysis – numerous text books
• Buildings – SBC Listings Record & past buildings in the village
• Internet – British History Online & Census (e.g. Freecen 1861)
Dinosaurs• 4.6 metres, each mm one million years
• repeated ages of desert, jungle, sea, ice
• prehistoric sea - fossils of 500 million year old coral & 200 million year old ammonites, belemnites & bivalves
• did dinosaurs exist 100 million years ago in South Marston’s Kimmeridge Clay?
Geology
chalk
Kimmeridge clay
alluvium clay
greensand
coral limestone
South Marston
Highworth
Ridgeway
Prehistoric man• 40,000 years ago – Neanderthals?
• 10,000 – end of the Ice Age & hunter-gatherers appear along the Ridgeway?
• 6,000 - neolithic farming – SM stone axe
• 4,500 – Bronze Age civilisation – ritual & worship – SM round barrow
• 2,500 – Iron Age society – Atrebates & Dobunni, forts, pottery, burials
Neolithic stone axe from South Marston
A man-made landscape
SM
Roman 43 - 410• Ermin Street, Cunetio, mansio & Cirencester
• Durocornovium population more than 3,000 - a society that flourished for 350 years but no written record
• Romano-British farming estates (c.1800 acres)
• Villas at Bishopstone & Stanton Fitzwarren – how about Earls Court & Rowborough?
• S Marston road, villa, pottery, coins, SM Park burials
Roman villas in the area?
Stanton Fitzwarren
Rowborough ?
Earls Court ?
Bishopstone
South Marston’s Roman Road?
Durocornovium
AD 500 Saxon Influence• AD 410 Roman administrators & soldiers leave
to defend Rome from Germanic tribes
• towns & economy decay - Durocornovium
• towns people disperse as Saxons raid & settle in kin-based rural farms
• Saxons & Britons eventually live together
• Saxon charters but no written record for SM
AD 700 dispersed farms, marsh & forest (1280 names ley, ledenhull, leighmannesheys & field shapes) & north-south road to Lotmead Roman junction?
AD 900 King Alfred’s burh, security & collectivism sees arable replacing forest & nucleated village: Mersh Tun
Mersch tun – Merston
• where was the marsh? The entire central area is below 95m & Longleaze below 90m - see Google Earth next
• consider sub-soil – clay & greensand interspersed to give dispersed marsh (e.g. West Marsh & Long Marsh to the west)
• consider changing climate & water table
hotel
Longleaze Farm & Great Marsh, then channels - drainage of the marsh or water meadows & cattle ponds? Do the channels pre-date the enclosed fields of 1600?
The Feudal System• Saxon Shires divided into Hundreds of 100 tuns -
Highworth Hundred: Coleshill to Castle Eaton & Haydon Wick to South Marston – 30 villages by 1300
• Hundreds divided into Manors held by a lord - demesne, chapel, reeve, court & bailiff, tithingman, free tenant, villein, cottar; customary tenancies (later copyhold), rents, fines & services; nucleation & open-field system to share oxen, ploughing, good & bad soil, haymaking & harvests, in allocated ridge & furrow strips & common pasture & meadow; virgate (30) & demi-virgate (15); grain subsistence for beer, bread & pottage & animal products (wool & cheese) for market – Sainsbury’s!
• Norman & Monastic exploitation of Saxon system
Royal Merston• 1086 Domesday Book omission – Saxon Royal Manor
of Sevenhampton?
• 1150 Queen Matilda gave an estate in Merston to the Priory of Farley
• 1150 construction of the church of Mary Magdalene
• 1200-1350 Kings’ itineraries Marlborough & Lechlade (London, York, Marlborough, Leicester)
• 1276 Sevenhampton Manor reverts to the Crown
AD 1200 Priory of Farley planned village, less wood & marsh, new church, road alignment, Berton & Wick
West Field
East Field
Medieval 1280• 141 Merston villagers named in Manorial Court
Records from 1271-88 & comparison with Sevenhampton (70 houses) indicates:
• estimated 300 people in 60 houses – the highest population until 1831 (339)!
• some houses at Berton (10), Wick (10) & one or two farmsteads (Chelesies, Wydie, Ley?) but majority in Merston (40) in toft & croft plots 30m x 100m, wattle, daub & thatched houses
1280 villagers named• Merston: 96 inc. 44 from the families of Thomas Warde, Richard
Faber (Smith), William Yrmongar, Robert le Messor [hayward], Simon Cowherd, Walter Molendinarius [windmill?], Robert Godchep, Jacob Renfrey, Stephen Poynant, Henry Le Bedel, Hugo Abbod, Thomas Felawe, Walter Url & Everard the chaplain….
• Berton: 21 inc. 15 from the families of William de Berton, Robert de Abendon, Hugo Stone [quarry] & Walter Hyldyth [hill ditch]…
• Wick: 14 inc. Richard de Wyk (chaplain & steward of the Priory), other “de Wyks” Thomas, Nicholas, Andrew, Robert & Walter & Walter Sculhard & family, Agnes, William, Robert & Margery & “the brewers of the priory”…
• Out-lying farms? inc. 10 from Johannes de la Leye, Richard de Marisco, Robert de Wydie (& Cheles ?)
1280 tracks• primary routes north-south Berton & Highworth to Wick & Ermin Street &
east-west Sevenhampton Court to Stratton Market
• Dark Lane to waddebroke & brokforlonge?
• Green Lane to Bradymoor & Heldichesham
• Pathlay to Ley Farm ? Leighmannesheys, Ledenhull, Berefurlong
• (Nightingale) lane to Chelsiesmede – Chels’ Farm?
• drove to north of Chelsiesmede
• diagonal holloway to Priors Farley, Hackerne Bridge & Bourton
• Rowborough Lane (1629) to Wydie (Great Rowborough)?
• de Marisco Old Vicarage Lane drove – A420 & O V Lane roads post-1700?
marsh
1280 tracks? No canal, railway, A420; alternative Bourton & Lotmead routes; Dark Lane, Green Lane, Path Lay, Chelesies Drove
Chelesies Drove pre-1200
1315 flooding• land use at full stretch to feed 5 million (building oak from
Savernake in 1280 indicates reduced woodland)
• “the chronicles describe the famine in biblical terms: rains fell nearly continuously for three years ….crops rotted & many people died of starvation or disease”
• sheep murain & cattle rinderpest creates the Great Famine 1315-21, killing 10% of the population
• Did it happen here? Are we flooded every century?
• Alfred Williams recalled freak weather: the ruination of Farmer Wheeler at Rowborough Farm “excessive rains came and the floods washed the whole of it away and left him penniless” & in the severe frosts of 1891 the canal was frozen for seven weeks.
1332 Tax List• tax of moveable goods of wealthier villagers
• Merston is wealthy - good pasture & meadow for animal products (second in the Hundred only to Hannington & same in 1334)
• familiar names from 1280: de Abyndone, atte Stone (Berton), atte Wyke & Scolarde (Wick), de Marisco, atte Leghe, atte Wydie & also Le Revehyne (Reeve for absent Priory?)
Black Death 1349• killed 2 million of a population of 5 million in just two years
(compare WWI dead 1 million of 35 million in four years)
• 1377 tax record suggests 145 people died in Merston & 155 remained – did it destroy Wick?
• where are they buried?
• the Black Death recurred four times to 1380 & destroyed communities, religious orders, manors & the feudal system
• many copyhold life tenancies were replaced by 7 year leases!
145 skeletons in South Marston?
1365 allocation• Thomas Pykote, wife Alice & son Robert rent a
messuage with toft & croft between William le Cartere to the west & Andrew le Heywarde to the east [planned plots] for their lives for 6 shillings yearly, pasture for 3 oxen in the woodland & 8 acres of arable:
• one acre in leighmannesheys, trokenbergh, benhull & rywardeslade
• half an acre in longforlong, lowstede, stokforlonge, ledenhull & lithesmore
• one & a half acres in waddebroke• illustrates copyhold landholding – about to change!
Winchester College & Leyplace• Lay or Ley (“wood clearing”) referred to in people’s
names & field names 1230, 1280, 1332
• 1391 Winchester College acquires Leyplace comprising c.60 acres (spread out in common fields)
• 1393 to 1596: eight leases for terms between 7 & 40 years, rather than lifetime copyholds, with the rent decreasing from 23 shillings to 20 shows reduced population meant reduced demand for arable
• WC land allocation becomes enclosed in 1640 & is centred on Pathlay, later Pidgeonhouse Farm
The missing 1400s• few manorial, court, tax records or deeds have been
published for South Marston - historical fracture in “surnames” (no more Poynant, Godchep, Wyk, Marisco, Ley, Wydie, Berton, Hyldyth etc)
• 1380-1480 golden age of wool, cloth & aristocratic magnets - Hungerfords (courtiers to the kings) had stewardship of the Priory of Farley & acquired land for themselves throughout Wiltshire, including South Marston & perhaps paid for the church tower c.1440?
• Hungerfords’ relatives from 1500 include inter-marrying Wanborough/Stratton/Stanton/SM families of Brind, Cusse, Burges, Bryant & Harris & it is they who comprise SM tax payers in 1545 & 1576
Elizabethan Mansion• Manor Farm – Henry Hungerford 1576-82 “my lower house”
• Berton “Manor” – Henry Hungerford junior until 1626.
• Wynnings in Leycrofte, “mansion” built by the Harris family?
• Old Farm - William Brind, “the farmer of Marston” died 1577
• Cusses Place - once de Marisco? now Longleaze Farm?
• Rowborough – Burgess family
• Bennett’s & Beck’s & Dorothie Mundaie’s
• Population 150 – 30 families Jenckins, Pinching, Edne, Grundie, Mundy, Stevens, Tayler, Lewis, Drue, Fowler, Davis, Smarte
1600 Will of Hercules Burges (1565-1617) including 20 shillings to his servant Edmund James (1581-1658) both in Parish Records
Family Histories• Parish Records from 1539 & WSHC 120 wills, 500
leases & deeds name the villagers
• the Parish Records contain family histories for the Southbys (1670-1832), the Mundays (1569-1824) & the Kempsters (1687-1840)
• frequent internet enquiries from people compiling histories of Elizabethan Hungerford, Brind, Cusse & Burges & more recent villagers from the Victorian era
• we have one villager who can trace her history back to 1600 – inc. Jackie Bridges’ cottage Nightingale Lane
Village hierarchy• Before 1500: classed according to type of land-
holding in the manor: cottar, villein, freeman, lord
• After 1500: classed according to monetary wealth: husbandsman, yeoman, gentleman, squire – no “agricultural labourer”
• After 1600: Enclosure, at first, creates many self-sufficient husbandsmen & yeomen farming copyhold or leasehold land of 5 to 50 acres.
1650 Enclosure & Sale• Enclosure of the common fields started with the Hungerfords in
the 1400s & was complete by 1650
• we can trace ownership of most of the parish back to 1650
• enclosed land was more valuable, the Hungerfords “gambled their wealth” at the Court of King Charles I & sold two-thirds of the Parish by 1650:
central manor & Old Farm to John Southby (JP, MP, Encloures Commissioner) who rebuilt the manor house (Manor Farm)
Berton (Burton Grove Farm) to the Dowe family
SM Farm, Longleaze & Dorothie Munday’s to James family?
1700s chalk & cheese• North Wiltshire Cheese boom & the Marlborough
factors selling to London, new A420 turnpike road & Old Vicarage Lane post-1700 & 1600 acres of pasture by 1840!
• landed gentry of Southby, Dowe, James & Goddards joined by Hippisley, Freke & Warneford: rents increase, farms renovated & new ones built (most of those we see today)
• yeomen farmers pay higher rents for farms of more than 100 acres & displace many self-sufficient husbandsmen who now become landless employees, the agricultural labourers
The worn out agricultural labourer• 1801 Census: 151 agricultural workers out of c.190
adults in 252 population (only the gentry 3% vote)• canal, railway, industrial & agricultural revolutions alter
appearance of village & way of life• Alfred Bell’s brick & slate villas with allotments replace
stone, wattle & daub, thatch & meadow• 1840 Tithe Map, Censuses & 1918 Auction name
people & their houses & trace change• Alfred Williams & Nelus – farming, “medieval” harvest-
home feast, soldiers, railway factory• 20th Century owner-occupation of freehold land in
small house plots (320 in SM, Sevenhampton 40)• farm land becomes recreational countryside (C Forest)
Our landscape shows us
• field shapes & names evidencing 1,000 years of reclamation, occupation, ownership & Enclosure, traceable in deeds
• the central channels – drainage or irrigation?
• road development at expense of field tracks
• features - medieval holloways, platforms, headland, wells, ponds & Parish boundaries
Our archaeology may show us• dinosaurs
• a Roman villa estate & dispersed Saxon farms
• our lost roads (Roman Rowborough & Lotmead N-S)
• the medieval planned village, manor & windmill
• burials of plague victims & the death of Wick
• the remains of Wynnings, the Elizabethan mansion
New development
How important to you
is the preservation of our
landscape & archaeology?