Promoting awareness of the archaeology and history of north Devon
Promoting awareness of the archaeology and history of north Devon
The Saxon Boundaries of Hartland Hundred -Stephen Hobbs (Newsletter No 12 2006)
Is it possible, on the basis of documents and features of the landscape, to suggest the boundaries of early land-holdings within Hartland Hundred?
The Hundred of Hartland extended from the north and west coasts of the present parish east as far as Bucks Mills, then south to include Woolfardisworthy,Welcombe, Meddon and Southole. There was also the satellite area of Yarnscombe in the farther south east, which will be excluded from this discussion.
There are few known Saxon charters for this region of North Devon, the closest to Hartland being that for Newton St Petroc, though there are indirect indications of charters for Worthygate, Annery, Orleigh, Thornbury and Braunton. Early reliable evidence of a Hartland charter comes from the will of King Alfred, c.AD 881, in which he bequeathed land identified as Trig (Stratton, Cornwall) and Hartland, amongst other land gifts, to his elder son Edward.
Domesday Book indicates the existence of independent manorial holdings at Meddon, (South) Hole and Milford. These can still be identified within modern land tenures by the claims on the commons and wastes of the manors, and so we can be confident that Meddon, (South) Hole and Milford were always outside the greater land mass of Hartland Manor. It might be argued in addition, that Stoke (St Nectan) was a separate manor, since Gytha, wife of Earl Godwin, was recorded as having granted her manor of Stoke for the support of a group of secular canons.
After 1066 Hartland was a Royal manor, passing subsequently to the Dinham Family. The date at which the manor was transferred to the Dinhams is unknown. It is known however, that between 1160 and 1189 the brothers Geoffrey and Oliver Dinham gave land at Stoke and within the manor of Hartland for the foundation of a new Augustinian abbey. This act establishes that the Dinhams had control of what can be identified as the Hartland landmass and that such control extended over the lands at Stoke St Nectan. Whether this power of overlord extended to the other manors within Hartland is not known. At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Hartland monastic holding passed intact into the ownership of the Abbot family and has remained a private estate until recent times. During the approximate 300 years that the Dinhams held Hartland it was their largest and most important Devon manor in terms of income and supply of produce into the Dinham household housed at Kingskerswill and later Nutwell, both in south Devon.
The Dinham estate papers are interesting in establishing the form of administration used within Hartland. From these it is clear that the Hartland manor was sub-divided into three units: Butterbury, ‘Castel’ (sic) and Hind-Harton plus the separate Borough of Harton (established c.1290). These three divisions were each administered by a reeve, responsible to a travelling bailiff acting for the Dinham family. As to location, suffice it to indicate that Butterbury was at the south western corner of Hartland, abutting the (South) Hole manor grounds; here aerial photographs indicate a possible habitation and field-system perhaps centred on what is today the hamlet of Hardisworthy. Castel (sic) is the north of the parish from possibly Blegberry in the west past Highford to the east. Although there is some indication of field systems at Blegberry there is no obvious location, as at Hardisworthy, for an administrative centre. The existence of a number of fields with the suffix ‘castel’ along the central ridge of this area was taken by Chope to suggest the existence of a castle. This remains an open question, as is the location of a primary residence within Hartland for the travelling Dinham household.
Identifying the administrative divisions of Hartland may not seem important until comparison is made with documents relating to the ‘Governors of the Church Goods’ (1597- c1660) and a system for the collection of money known as ‘the Gathers’. There existed three collectors of the Gathers within regions identified as North,West and Middle. It is possible to plot the areas covered by each of these collection units from the books of account of the collectors (see Fig. 1). It is clear from the plot that each Gather essentially used the main river valleys as a boundary, thus we have the Abbey river dividing North and Middle while the Spekes river does the same for West and Middle. The area covered by the Dinham Borough of Harton can similarly be defined as an area running approximately from the present Hartland Mill to Harton Cross and as a ribbon of strip fields along the modern main road.
If the Gathers are to be identified with the Dinham administrative areas, then the division can be projected back into the 12th century.We now have to ask whether pre-Dinham there were areas termed the East Gather and the South Gather. If this was the case, then we might propose that Clovelly and possibly Bucks Mills formed an East Gather and Woolfardisworthy the South Gather, thus encompassing the ‘compact’ Hundred of Hartland.Welcombe may have been integral to the West Gather as it was not separated from the ecclesiastical parish until later. If that were to be accepted then the identification of these as independent but collective administrative areas could well indicate that they originated as early Saxon charter areas.
Is there support for this in the landscape?
Certainly the use of rivers as a boundary element is not uncommon. The
work of Della Hook on pre- Conquest charter-bounds of Devon and Cornwall
indicates that rivers are the most common form of boundary, the largest
of which is the Tamar separating Devon and Cornwall. From Fig 1, it can
be seen that the small boundary lengths that are not formed by rivers
are indeed minor and may have been marked by springs or other features.
Within Hartland it is certainly possible to identify a number of features
that are relics of boundaries to such as the Deerpark, The Warren, and
to some extent individual hamlets and farmsteads. Similarly the pattern
of fields taken from the tithe map, when used in conjunction with aerial
photography, is allowing a further reassessment of the area’s development.