Medieval Adaptation, Settlement and Economy of a Coastal Wetland

The Evidence from Around Lydd, Romney Marsh, Kent

Luke Barber, Greg Priestley-Bell, Greg Priestley-Bell

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781782974635
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia europea medieval

Romney Marsh is the largest coastal lowland on the south coast of England. Since 1991 excavations in advance of gravel extraction around Lydd on Romney Marsh, have uncovered large areas of medieval landscape, one of the largest to be exposed in southern England. Features uncovered include 12th-13th century drainage ditches, ditched field systems and sea defences. Also of particular significance is the identification of a series of occupation sites and their enclosures. The excavation of dispersed settlements is particularly difficult, because of the scale of work required to produce meaningful results. In this case it has been possible to work on sufficiently large areas to allow significant conclusions to be drawn. The excavations at Lydd Quarry have shown how dispersed settlement existed alongside the nucleated market settlements on Romney Marsh. This extensive report details the archaeological investigations of the field systems and occupation sites, finds and environmental material. There is also a section by Sheila Sweetinburgh on the documentary evidence. Two final chapters set out broader conclusions from the evidence for the field systems, settlements, and economy, and set the area in its wider context. The research has provided an unprecedented opportunity to study reclamation, occupation and economy of a large tract of marginal landscape through a considerable period of time.

1

The Documentary Sources

by Sheila Sweetinburgh

ABSTRACT

Quarries, Manors and Sources

During the medieval period the land at Lydd Quarry primarily fell within the manor of Old Langport, which was held by the Archbishop of Canterbury. To the east was the land of Lydd manor, part of the archbishop’s bailiwick of Aldington. Also within the quarry site were the lands of two other manors: Scotney and New Langport. By the 1440s the former was held by All Souls College, Oxford; the latter in lay hands. The lands of the other two quarries were under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Caldicott was also in Old Langport manor and possibly Bilsington Priory’s holding of Belgar, while Denge fell within Battle Abbey’s Dengemarsh manor, part of the great manor of Wye.

Extant documentary sources for these manors vary tremendously from the very few scraps for New Langport to the relatively large archive for Dengemarsh. Furthermore, even though the sources are comparatively abundant, they are patchy and primarily cover the activities of the ecclesiastical institutions, not their tenant farmers. This is also true for the extensive collection of records from Canterbury Christchurch Priory, which also had extensive interests in the Romney Marshes. Consequently, the early 14th century taxation records for the Hundred of Newchurch are invaluable because they provide a window onto the farming practices of the peasantry.

Reclamation and Field Systems

Natural silting and the presence of shingle banks around Lydd allowed the land to be used for seasonal grazing during the late Anglo-Saxon period. Reclamation and permanent colonisation may have first occurred in the 11th century, such work being undertaken by peasant families as part of agreements with their institutional landlords. As a result, a number of embankments were constructed, with such features sometimes acting as property boundaries. Ditches were equally important; the aerial photographs of Caldicott and Lydd Quarries showing a pattern of small regular fields.

At Denge Quarry the field system generally followed the alignment of the shingle ridges and again the fields were often small. Reclamation here may have followed a similar chronology, but the absence of early manorial records means this cannot be verified. However, later records for Dengemarsh and those for Scotney highlight the need for constant vigilance against encroachment by the sea, the costs being borne by both the great ecclesiastical landlords and their tenant farmers.

Settlement Pattern

From at least the late Anglo-Saxon (8th to 10th century) period, the settlement at Lydd served a developing society based on agriculture, fishing and trading. In addition, there was a long-established seasonal fishing settlement of cabins at the Ness. For the local peasant farmers reclamation offered increasing opportunities, giving rise to a landscape characterised by numerous dispersed farmsteads, often clustered along trackways and embankments, close to sources of fresh water and/or on the periphery of the monastic farm. These farms were small (some no more than a few acres) and even these might comprise several plots scattered across one or more manors. Interestingly, the crises of the 14th century do not appear to have produced significant changes to this settlement pattern during the following century, but by the end of that century the first signs of change were evident. The rise of the butcher-grazier and the increasing importance of absentee lay landlords (though not a new phenomenon) led to a decline in the number of farmsteads across the Marshes during the 16th century.

The Local Economy

Lydd provided a valuable gateway for the local population of farmers, fishermen and other producers and traders. Farming and fishing were the primary industries, with salt and timber production also important, though the former had declined significantly by the later Middle Ages due to foreign competition. The latter too may have been hit by imports, though in this case from the Weald; the growing shortage of local wood by the 16th century a consequence, perhaps, of changing farming practices and the decline in the number of rural farmsteads (elm, in particular, was often grown close by). Like their landlords, the local peasantry appear to have adopted a mixed farming regime during most of the medieval period. Oats and wheat were the major cereals, the former grown principally for home consumption, the latter for the market. Sheep and pigs were ubiquitous, and in addition cattle and horses were fairly common.

The late 15th and early 16th centuries, however, brought significant changes, in part a product of the shift from direct farming to leasing of the demesne lands by the ecclesiastical landlords. Although arable farming did not disappear, the emphasis was on stock production, which in time led to the consolidation of holdings, the amalgamation of small plots of land, and the disappearance of some farmsteads. For a few local families this was a golden age of rising expectations, but for others it meant an increasing reliance on by-employment to survive. Fishing may have offered some opportunities, yet even for the well-established fishing families the industry was precarious and most combined such activities with other forms of employment. Thus for a significant minority in Lydd and its hinterland, the early modern period was a time of dearth as they sought to eke out a living, while others travelled north to seek a better life in the booming industrial towns of the Weald.

INTRODUCTION

By drawing on the documentary sources for the Romney Marshes, this section seeks to complement the archaeological report which forms the majority of this publication. For the pre-Conquest period, charters are valuable records, especially when they include boundary clauses, and compared to many places the survival of such materials for the Lydd area is relatively good. Documentary sources for the 12th and 13th centuries are similarly relatively abundant — the records being a product of the scattered ecclesiastical estates on the Romney Marshes. From the late 14th century these records become more plentiful, though the fullest series of materials for the medieval period date from the 15th century. Early modern (‘post-medieval’) sources are even better, both in quality and quantity, and where advantageous these have also been studied. Consequently, in seeking to piece together the history of reclamation, land use and rural settlement for the medieval countryside around the marshland town of Lydd, a wide range of archival materials have been used to compile this report. In part this was due to the fragmentary nature of the extant sources - documentary records for Lydd’s hinterland being used alongside those covering Romney, Walland and Denge Marshes. Having employed a comparable approach, it seems advisable to provide a brief assessment of these primary sources to highlight their advantages and weaknesses before examining the results.

THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE

During the Middle Ages in the Romney Marsh region as a whole only a small proportion of the land was held by the laity, but locally such landlords might be important figures. Instead, ecclesiastical lords were the dominant landholders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the great monastic houses of Canterbury Christchurch Priory, St Augustine’s Abbey at Canterbury and Battle Abbey (Brooks 1988, 90; Smith 1943, 172). Other religious establishments were also significant landlords, for example St Mary’s Hospital, Dover, Bilsington Priory and Dover Priory. Small houses, like the Hospital of St Stephen and St Thomas at Romney, had estates locally, and in the late 15th century the foundation of several colleges at Oxford produced a wave of new institutional landlords in the Romney Marshes. One result of this ecclesiastical dominance is the relatively good survival of estate documentation, particularly from the 15th century onwards. However, this differs considerably among the various institutions, in part a reflection of their fate at the Dissolution. For example, the holdings of Christchurch Priory were primarily transferred to the Dean and Chapter at Canterbury, whereas those of St Mary’s Hospital were sold off, but in some cases such estates remained largely intact in the hands of wealthy lay families.¹ As a result medieval documents sometimes survived; their preservation a matter of good fortune or the need to provide evidence of ownership. Similar estate records were presumably produced by lay holders of marshland manors, but such records are extremely limited, as they are for Kent generally.² Thus, the surviving materials primarily provide evidence about institutional estate management, not the peasantry.

The excavation sites under review here are located to the west, north and south-east of Lydd, of which the most important are the Lydd Quarry site at Burnthouse Wall (part of the manorial lands of Old Langport, with Scotney manor to the west and Lydd manor in the bailiwick of Aldington to the east); and Denge Quarry on Denge Marsh (part of Dengemarsh manor, the quarry abutting Denge Marsh sewer and the lands of Lydd manor). The holder of another, smaller quarry, Caldicott Farm to the north of Lydd, is more uncertain but the quarry site was apparently also part of the manor of Old Langport, though Bilsington Priory’s estate at Belgar included land in this area. Consequently, the documentary sources that cover these sites or neighbouring areas are All Souls College records for Scotney, the archive of Battle Abbey for its manor of Dengemarsh, the archiepiscopal records for Aldington and its sub-manors of Old and New Langport, and the materials for Belgar. Each of these sources have been examined in the past. Gill Draper (1998, 113-28) continues to work on the All Souls archive, Mark Gardiner (1995c, 127-37; 1998, 129-45) and Spencer Dimmock (2001, 5-24) have used the Dengemarsh and Aldington records on several occasions, and Eleanor Vollens (1995, 118-26) has looked at salt-working at Belgar. Other manors in the area, especially those of Christchurch Priory, have also been studied by historians, including R.A.L. Smith (1943), Anthony Gross and Andrew Butcher (1995, 107-17) and Sheila Sweetinburgh (2000, 6-9). This essay draws on their published and unpublished work (see Bibliography) to demonstrate the nature of the various archives, and tries to answer a number of different, though related, questions regarding peasant society in the Lydd area.

Scotney and Bletching

During the 1440s All Souls College, Archbishop Chichele’s foundation, acquired several holdings in Walland Marsh and Romney Marsh. These included the manor of Scotney (and Ocholt), and the associated lordship of Bletching, which were often grouped together, though the manor and lordship were farmed separately (Trice Martin 1877). The accounts for Bletching were the responsibility of the ‘collector or beadle’, who collected annually a small sum from the seigniorial court, and rents totalling £6 7s. 7.5d.³ Scotney was leased out, the lessee paying over £56 per year in the 1450s, though this had fallen to £49 in 1504 (Draper 1998, 117). The college was responsible for the maintenance of the marsh and its sea defences, as well as repairs to the manorial buildings - items which were recorded annually in the rent ro...