Turner Sam - Medieval Devon and Cornwall

MEDIEVAL DEVON AND CORNWALL

Shaping an Ancient Countryside

Edited by Sam Turner

Windgather Press is an imprint of Oxbow Books

Published in the United Kingdom in 2006

Reprinted in 2017 by

OXBOW BOOKS

The Old Music Hall, 106108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE

and in the United States by

OXBOW BOOKS

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Windgather Press 2006

Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-90511-907-3

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-91118-827-8

Mobi Edition: ISBN 978-1-91118-828-5

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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Front cover image: Castle Hill view, Torrington, Devon ( Shutterstock.com ).

Many people have helped in the production of this book. The editor is grateful to Oscar Aldred, Peter Child, Anne Dick, Harold Fox, Martin Gillard, Faye Glover, Frances Griffith, Debbie Griffiths, Peter Herring, Bill Horner, Anne Richards and Steve Rippon for many insights and discussions on the medieval landscape of south-west England. Sincere thanks are also due to the referees who read and commented on all the papers prior to publication. The editor owes most to the authors of each of the chapters, who all replied to queries and suggestions with great speed and good humour.

Bodmin Moor (Cornwall) in snow, looking south-east across the fields of Tresellern towards Trewortha Tor

Coombe, Lifton (Devon), looking south-east

Rough grazing on the north Cornish coast

The incorporation of pollen into peatland systems

The location of pollen sites within mid-Devon and Exmoor

Selected summary pollen diagrams from the mid-Devon lowland to Exmoor upland transect

The relationship between the pollen sites in mid-Devon around Rackenford and the historic landscape

The later medieval field system and settlement pattern on Molland Common, southern Exmoor

The inscribed stone at St Samsons, South Hill (Cornwall).

Tintagel Island, viewed from Glebe Cliff below St Matherianas church (Cornwall)

Early medieval settlements around the probable early monastery of St Keverne (Cornwall)

The cross-shaft fragments at Dolton (Devon)

King Donierts Stone and the Other Half Stone, St Cleer (Cornwall)

A medieval wayside cross: Long Tom, St Cleer (Cornwall)

Fourhole Cross, St Neot (Cornwall)

The inscribed stone at Cardinham

The Cardinham Cross (Cornwall)

Wydeyeat Cross, Cardinham (Cornwall)

A simplified representation of the later medieval Cornish landscape as derived from the 1994 Historic Landscape Characterisation

A typical area of Anciently Enclosed Land in Lanreath parish

Surviving enclosed strip-field patterns in Cornwall and Devon

Zennor churchtown

Extract from the 1841 Tithe Apportionment Map for Zennor parish showing the ribbon shaped townland of Treen

Metherell in Calstock manor and parish as mapped in the 1880s

Kilkhampton, an early fourteenth-century town

The surviving unenclosed strip field system on Forrabury Common

Extract from the 1839 Blisland parish Tithe Apportionment Map

Extract from the 1840 Altarnun parish Tithe Apportionment Map

Extract from the 1841 Advent parish Tithe Apportionment Map

Godolphin in Breage as mapped in the later nineteenth century

Trevarrian in St Mawgan, in Pydar parish

Marsland and Cory in Morwenstow parish

A reconstruction of Lanhydrock churchtown and fields in the fifteenth century

Brick-shaped later prehistoric fields at Bosigran in Zennor 72

Brown Willy from the south-west

The western fields of Brown Willy in the mid thirteenth century and around 1800

A reconstruction of the mid thirteenth-century hamlet at Brown Willy

Typical stony bank separating medieval strips in the NE Field of Brown Willy

The full extent of the medieval longhouse hamlet at Brown Willy

The medieval field system on Garrow Tor

A portion of the medieval NE Field at Brown Willy showing narrow ridge and furrow or lazy-beds

Lazy-beds within medieval strip fields at Trezibbett, Altarnun

Brown Willy townland

Pasture boundaries on the eastern side of Brown Willy

Medieval herds shelter, in the form of a beehive hut, on the eastern side of Brown Willy

Distribution map of castles and other medieval fortified sites in Devon and Cornwall

Bushy Knap and Buckerell Knap

Holwell Castle, Parracombe

Okehampton Castle

Restormel Castle, showing the parapet walk of the thirteenth-century shell-keep

Restormel Castle, showing the level terrace around the shell-keep

Lydford, showing the tower of the castle/prison apparently surmounting a motte

Launceston, showing the donjon with its famous triple-tiered appearance

The location of Dartmoor

Simplified earthwork survey of Beckamoor Combe tin streamwork (northern section)

Simplified map of the upper Plym valley showing the extent of streamworks and pitworks within the watershed

Oblique aerial photograph of streamworks along the River Swincombe near Fox Tor

The central upland of southern Dartmoor showing the extent of tinworking on the major rivers and their tributaries

Simplified map based on RCHME/EH survey of the Birch Tor area

Part of the RCHME/EH 1:2500 earthwork survey of Birch Tor showing the complexity of the site

Oblique aerial photograph of the Birch Tor area

Map of part of Whitchurch Common showing Barn Hill and the southern half of Beckamoor Combe streamwork (i.e. south of the B3357)

The Pixies Revenge by K.Hablot Browne

Early medieval souterrain at Rathkeel (Co. Antrim)

The Norman font in St Marys Church, Luppitt (Devon)

Excerpt from the nineteenth-century Tithe Survey showing the existence of folkloric elements in the placenames at Gatehouse, Dawlish (Devon)

Looking south across the Blackdown Hills to Dumpdon Hillfort (Devon)

For Maggsie and Mondo
a souvenir

It gives me great pleasure to welcome this book because it reports on so many recent advances in interpretations of the landscape history of Devon and Cornwall. I began research into this subject in an intellectual tradition which had been laid down in a few formative years between 1952 and 1954. It is worthwhile to look back upon that advance, to ask how well the ideas which it contained have fared and to mention a little of the new work undertaken since the 1950s, culminating in this book.

In 1954 W.G.V.Balchin published his Cornwall: An Illustrated Essay on the History of the Landscape , part of a series edited by W.G.Hoskins. Balchin acknowledged that between the fifth century and the eleventh some developments took place in the Cornish landscape, in the darkness of this period, but considered that they had only a small impact. Then comes the remarkable statement that, in 1086, Cornwall ... had fewer than 20,000 people all told fewer than either Penzance or St Austell today. It followed from this that much in the landscape was thought to be later: between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries a remarkable number of new farms came into existence, as in Devon (Balchin 1954, 3440). Two years earlier Hoskins had published his long, magisterial essay on The making of the agrarian landscape of Devon, arguing that approximately 12,500 new farms were created between 1086 and around 1350, and that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the most formative years in the making of the rural landscape (Hoskins 1952, 31621). He thus minimised the pre-Saxon contribution (though later he wisely changed his mind, as in Hoskins 1968, 6) and stressed a relatively brief episode after the Norman Conquest. When I began my research, the only available overviews were those of Hoskins and Balchin but I did not then have the competence to query them. They are still treasures of mine which I turn to frequently, and the period when I first read them is one to which I look back now with unclouded affection.