The Hundred Roll of 1274-5

When Henry III died in November 1272, his son and successor Edward (thirty-three years old) was in Sicily, on the way home from fighting in the Seventh – and last – Crusade. A hardened warrior of many years experience, it wasn’t until the year 1274 that he finally reached England to take up his throne, with the coronation being held in Westminster Abbey on 19 August. He went on to subjugate Wales, invade Scotland (becoming known as “the Hammer of the Scots”) and generally impose his presence on all around him – his impressive height of 6’ 2” gaining him the nickname of “Longshanks”.

Not only was Edward I an effective and experienced soldier (reigning until July 1307), he was also an able administrator and one of the first things he did was to order a survey of the whole of England to ascertain just how much of the Royal Estate had been disposed of during his father’s long reign (which had begun in 1216, when he was a boy of nine years old) and how much the remainder was worth in terms of annual rent payments. The survey carried out by Edward’s commissioners during 1274-5 and 1279-80 has been referred to as a “Second Domesday” – but, although the extent of the enquiry was countrywide, its subject-matter was mainly limited to the size of land-holdings constituting the Royal Estate which were rented out, the names of the tenants and the size of the holdings themselves. 

Domesday (1086) had been far more widely ranging in the information gathered, to the point of an Anglo-Saxon commentator reputedly making the grudging remark that not a single pig had been missed in William I’s overview of the realm. But, by setting the data gathered there against that present in the Hundred Rolls (which covered all those administrative units of the English shires), it would have been possible to ascertain just how much of the Royal Estate had been disposed of by Henry III over the years – be it by sale, gift or other means. And, in addition to the recording of the remaining rental value, information was also gathered on the corrupt practices of hundredal officials responsible for collecting royal rents and fines – particularly bailiffs and coroners.

Other than the nature and extent of the material recorded, the other great difference between the Domesday Survey and the two Hundred Roll enquiries is the survival rate of the documentation, since a good deal of the latter has been lost during the centuries which followed. One important exception, for our own local area, is the Lothingland Roll of 1274-5, which was transcribed and translated from Latin by Lord John Hervey of Ickworth House and published in book form during 1902. A facsimile form of this is available in Kessinger Publishing’s Legacy Reprint Series and has proved invaluable to this writer in carrying out work on the Island’s seventeen communities – not the least of these being Lowestoft itself (pp. 2-5 & 8-11). And an interesting picture of the late 13th century community emerges.

The Hundred Roll document begins with a statement of how the Manor of Lothingland, with an annual rental value of £70, had passed from the hands of the King (Henry III) into those of Lady Dervorgille de Balliol in exchange for lands belonging to her in Cheshire – probably to assist royal control of the Welsh border area. This transaction had been carried out in December 1237 and the title remained in de Balliol family control until 1294, when it returned to Crown possession. After this introduction, a statement then follows that there were two townships in the manor, Gorleston and Lowestoft – referring to the largest and dominant communities – which perhaps gives a hint that Lowestoft had grown in importance from being a mere outlier to the hub manor, as recorded in Domesday. Something which is confirmed in the documentation (pp. 70-71) by reference to its having both gaol and stocks for offenders in tandem with Gorleston. Which looks very much as if Lothingland Half-hundred was primarily governed by the two biggest coastal settlements placed at its northern and southern extremities.

The main concentration of the Lowestoft township’s dwellingswas still situated in the original location, probably somewhere in what is now the north-eastern sector of the Normanston Drive-Rotterdam Road municipal cemetery, but its move to a cliff-side site was not far off, seeming to have begun round about 1300. At the time, in 1274, the small clustered collection of houses stood in what was the north-eastern part of the West South Field – one of the parish’s three communally held areas of cultivated land. A north-south track (now Rotterdam Road) placed it about midway between St. Margaret’s Church and Lake Lothing, while an east-west route (now St. Peter’s Street and Normanston Drive) crossed this at the point where the traffic roundabout now stands. Another track (perhaps even more ancient) – known as the Old Way – followed the same alignment from the eastern extremity of the former Frost’s Alley Score, along Milton Road East, Milton Road West and Love Road, crossing Rotterdam Road to the north of Kent Road and Barnard’s Meadow and continuing along below Field View Drive, Princes Walk and Normanston Park (to the north of Leathes Ham), down as far as Harbour Road. A route which is still walkable along most of its original length. 

The overall three-field agricultural layout of the time consisted of two very large areas of cultivated land and one that was much smaller. The South Field basically occupied all the space now bounded by St. Peter’s Street and Denmark Road to north and south and by London Road North and Rotterdam Road to east and west. The equally sized West South Field lay between Normanston Drive and the tapering margins of Lake Lothing to north and south and by Rotterdam Road to the east. Further to the north, was the much smaller North Field, which merged into common land now largely occupied by Ormiston Denes Academy to the north and Church Road to the south, with the upper part of the High Street to the east and St. Margaret’s Churchyard to the west. Crossing it, as the central baulk giving access to the strips of cultivated land on either side, was the track which later became known as Church Way and, eventually, as St. Margaret’s Road.

Following on from the opening statement of the Hundred Roll comes a description of the demesne: arable land once held by Henry III as lord of the manor for his direct benefit, but now in the tenure of Devorgille de Balliol – and not worked for her by tenants of the manor in return for their own holdings, but leased to them by her at 6d per acre. There were 73 acres of demesne altogether in Lowestoft, arranged in twenty-five individual areas of varying size and with four of them shared each by two tenants. The annual rental value was £1 16s 6d [£1.83]. In addition to this part of the manor, there was a much larger area of productive land held by the tenants in villeinage – originally worked by them for their own benefit, in return for labour services on the demesne and for other required tasks, but now rented to them without encumbrance at a lower rate. There were 289¼ acres altogether, arranged into twenty-six holdings (none of them shared), in the hands of twenty-five tenants – with one of them working two units. The annual rental value was £1 0s 10d [£1.04], meaning that the land was far cheaper to hire than the demesne, working out at just under one penny per acre – the penny being, at the time, the standard day-wage for a labouring man. 

The Lowestoft total of arable land thus added up to 362¼ acres – a notable decrease in area from the 450 acres of Domesday (1086). Either the shortfall of nearly 90 acres had gone out of cultivation or the land had changed its type of tenure. A surviving Manor Roll of 1618 (a survey or extent of the estate, presented in fully detailed written form) shows that practically all of the farmland in the parish was freehold, so perhaps the process of conversion was already under way by 1274. Lowestoft’s villein lands were located in the parish’s three common fields, which were cultivated using the classic strip system of management. Fourteen of the twenty-six holdings were 12 acres in area (which is often found as the typical villein entitlement in lowland England), one was 24, two were 18, one was 15, one was 10, one was 8, three were 6, two were 4 and one was 2¼. The twelve departures from the norm had probably resulted from land exchanges at some point, with various deals being done between the tenants.

The number of these had increased considerably in number overall from the sixteen listed in Domesday (three villans, ten bordars and three slaves) and their status had changed also. Bordar (smallholder) and slave were terms no longer used and most of the peasantry was simply classified as being of villein status – this spelling of the word replacing the earlier version – with the term serf sometimes also used to describe them collectively. Levels of wealth and standing varied considerably among villeins, but one factor in their lives was constant: they were still tied to the manor on which they lived and were the chattels of their lord. The Lowestoft tenantry is named in the table following, showing the acreages of land held by the various individuals, in terms of the size of the different areas and distinguishing between the lord’s demesne and the villein tenements themselves.

Table 1: Lowestoft land-holders (Hundred Roll) – acreage occupied

• The total acreage of demesne land adds up to 71¾ acres, which is 1¼ short of the total of 73 stated in the Hundred Roll. This may be at least partly accounted for by the missing element in the sixth row of the table, where the tenant’s name is also incomplete.
• Two surnames (Eylefled-Eylested and Pipewell-Pissewell) were almost certainly one and the same. With variations in the original text (or misreading of it) being responsible for the differences. The tenant Richard Walter(s) is found listed with both forms of the surname used.
• The symbols s. and d. stand for son and daughter; the raised small ^s represents shared holdings.
• An asterisk indicates a tenant whose surname was still being used to identify a chief tenement over 300 years later (in fact, right into the early 19th century). There are sixteen examples to be seen. 

The Lowestoft tenantry shown in Table 1 has eight examples of people who held both demesne and villein-tenure land (Richard Dun, Richard Gode, Richard Pipewell, Richard Thomas, Richard Walters, Robert Bele, Robert Eylested and William Reynald), and the combined number of named land-holders in toto came to forty-one. If the great majority were residents, then the men among them may be tentatively treated as family-heads (they may not all have been married) and used to work out population numbers. This means removing three women from the Lowestoft demesnetenants and two male outsiders (the Prior of Bromholm and William of Weston), leaving a total of thirty-seven. However, using the multiplier of 4.75 (an approved demographic figure), the community would not have had a population size of c. 175 people, because the Hundred Roll reveals a substantial number of inhabitants who held tenements other than the stripslaid out in the common fields.

The total number of tenants, of one kind or another, referred to in the Hundred Roll, comes to sixty-eight. After seven women, two religious houses (Bromholm Priory and Langley Abbey), the Bailiff of Lothingland, the former County Sheriff of Suffolk (Roger de Coleville), the Vicar of Lowestoft (unmarried and celibate) and four outsiders (John Bonde, Thomas Thurkild, William of Weston, Alan de Wymendhale) are removed, the figure stands at 52. When multiplied by 4.75, this produces a total of about 250 people (c. 200 if a twenty per cent corrective reduction is applied). Either total is considerably higher than the seventy-five or so of Domesday – even if the outlier Akethorpe’s fourteen people are added on to bring the total up to about ninety. Thus Lowestoft had, at the very least, doubled its population during the intervening 200 years.

Further information as to the township’s topography and economy is contained in the Hundred Roll’s details relating to tenants other than the ones holding demesneand villeinage land. The great majority of these people were obviously residents of the community and their sundry, diverse holdings help to create a sense of the local environment and life at the time. The details relating to the great majority of them constitute the final section of the Hundred Roll data, which appears almost to have been an afterthought – a tidying-up exercise relating to material which should either have been included earlier in the account or which perhaps was not seen as being relevant at that particular stage. Whatever the case, the information revealed makes a valuable contribution to creating a picture of Lowestoft as it was at the time. The following table presents the facts.

Table 2 - Lowestoft land-holders (additional to demesne and villeinage)

• Use of an asterisk against a name indicates a tenant who also held either demesne or villeinage land, or both.
• The references to acreage alone apply to land that was under cultivation.
• All references to The King are retrospective, because Henry III had demised Lothingland Manor to Dervorgille de Balliol in 1237. There is sometimes specific statement that certain holdings had once been held of (from) The King, with such tenure implied on other occasions. The latter references are those bearing a question mark.
• The value of the rents of these holdings adds up to £1 16s 0½d [£1.80].

This assemblage of information contributes to an understanding of the developing Lowestoft community. First, it reveals a total of just over thirty-three acres of cultivated land situated somewhere in the common fields which, if added to the combined figure of 362¼ acres of demesneand villeinage soil, brings the total to 395¼ – which then has to be increased to 421 (closer to the Domesday total of 450), with the addition of 25¾ acres of glebe-land belonging to St. Margaret’s Church. Two of the very small pieces of land (the quarter-acre holdings) were probably blocked-up strips somewhere or other in the common fields and their rental value would seem to suggest, perhaps, a general payment of 4d per acre for agricultural use. However, this rental value is not seen to apply universally and a holding’s worth must sometimes have been assessed using criteria which may not be immediately obvious to the investigator of today. The highest value of all is that attached to Robert Weyn’s one-eighth acre piece, because the annual rent of 2d paid on it works out at 1s 4d per acre [7p]. This suggests that the land had been converted to domestic or trade use (or both combined, with house and workshop), with a much higher return for the lord deriving from the increased rental value.

The half-acre held by Henry the Miller and his associate, William Gosenol, with its rent-payment of 6d, may well have been the plot of land on which the township’s windmill stood. This structure was located very close to the dwellings (being a stone’s throw due east of them), on a high-point which still has its distinctive topographical form today – even though completely built over with houses. The modern road which traverses it is known as Hill Road and its elevated nature provided a suitable site for a post-mill to operate successfully, being roughly in the middle of the three-field system and sufficiently raised to catch even light winds. It was a location which was eventually to cause its downfall (literally!), because it was completely wrecked in a gale during the year 1608 and not replaced – the centre of population having moved away to a cliff-top site over 250 years before. In case any thought arises as to what may seem to be oversized piece of land to hold a windmill, it was customary to have a generous space around such a facility for the movement of carts, for the placing of ancillary buildings and even for the miller to grow crops of his own. The mill itself may well have been a demesne asset originally, with payment made to the lord for its use, but its operation seems to have passed into private hands at some point for a fixed annual rent.

In the five references to the acre of land which had once been held by The King, it is also revealed that the parcelling-up of this particular piece of soil had been carried out by John de Balliol’s bailiff – de Balliol perhaps having assumed control of his wife’s estates or simply being given precedence by the Hundred Roll jurors. The ground must have been situated close to the township (probably as part of the cultivated area of the South-West Field) and its subsequent uses suggest a very modest extension of it. Robert le Shirreve, presumably carried on cropping his quarter-acre with its rent-equivalent of 4d an acre, and Robert Weyn’s one-eighth acre holding has already been commented on. The other three components, however, relate to dwellings, with two modest units (the cots) and a more substantial one: the Vicar of Lowestoft’s house (so termed in the Hundred Roll), which seems to have pre-dated a later dwelling located next to St. Margaret’s Church itself. The rental values of 1½d, 2d and 6d give not only a sense of the relative size of the living-space, but perhaps of plot-size as well, with the clergyman’s messuage possibly being about three-eighths of an acre in area compared with an eighth or so for each of the other two. The total rental value of 1s 0½d [5p] per annum clearly shows, even in the late thirteenth century, that developed land yielded a higher financial return than that devoted to agriculture alone.

The other four dwellings referred to (all cottages) would also have been of comparatively modest proportions – and mainly located in the township. Although the name of at least one of the tenants, Lena of the Lone House, is interesting in suggesting a woman who lived in a dwelling of some kind that was removed from the main concentration of houses and was distinctive by its isolation. The rent of 1d suggests that it may have been a larger structure that that of Alice Rustert, whose home carried half that annual value – as did the two cottages belonging to Thomas, nephew of the Dean – but the difference in payment was probably due to the size of plot on which the buildings stood. The society of the time was founded on the holding of land and the money which was generated from rents, and therefore the size of a house-plot was probably more important than the building which stood on it.

Thomas’s name is an interesting one, because it has nothing to do with an uncle who was a high-ranking churchman. The word dean, in this case, derives from the medieval Latin word decanus (rooted in the classical Latin decem), meaning ten, and it originally referred to a man known as a headborough: someone who had been of standing in an Anglo-Saxon community and was the man held responsible for the good behaviour of his tithing-group. The system of frankpledge, as it was known, arranged all males over the age of twelve years into groups of ten (and occasionally twelve), with each member of a group being responsible for the good behaviour of the others. The designated head of each group had to account for its conduct at the annual hundred court held by the county sheriff, and it was a system of social control adopted by the Normans (following the Conquest of 1066) which carried on right through the Late Medieval period into the Early Modern one, with manorial leet courts – held annually – increasingly used to review standards of good conduct.

There are five other surnames (the modern term, used for convenience) in the previous table which may also assist an understanding of the Lowestoft community, as it was developing during the second half of the 13th century. Robert the Smith made tools and accessories for a range of activities (particularly agricultural ones) and carried out essential repairs where needed, and Robert Weyn [wain] may have been involved in making carts. Roger of the Bridge supervised the crossing of the causeway at the meeting point of Lake Lothing and Oulton’s mere (long known as Mutford Bridge), giving assistance where necessary, and may well have lived in a house close by. He would have levied a charge for his services and some of the income generated went to paying the lord of the manor an annual rentof 4s for the privilege of operation. Alice Rustert may have been engaged in harvesting heath materials (such as gorse and bracken) for fuel or other purposes – an occupation noted as one carried out by women. Margaret of the Stonegate must have lived somewhere in the south-western extremity of the parish, at the bottom end (east side) of what is now called Gorleston Road – a stretch of highway formerly known as Steyngate Way and (on the evidence of its name) once part of a Roman road. 

Table 1 also contains names that have either occupational or topographical significance. Taken alphabetically by forename (the manner in which both tables are arranged), the first to be noted is Alan Kadiman. The first element of his surname derives from the Middle English word cade, meaning “cask”, so he may possibly have been a cooper by trade. Wooden barrels would have been used both to store and transport fish, as well as a large range of wet and dry goods, so a specialist tradesman (as with the smith) would have been required for both manufacture and repair. Seman Carpenter is another artisan whose name reveals his calling and, in a world where wood was used for the construction of houses and boats, for the making of agricultural equipment and tools and also for the production of domestic artifacts, his skills would have been in constant demand.

Henry Justice may have been some kind of local legal officer (or was descended from a man, or men, who had exercised such a function), but what his duties may have been cannot be guessed at. John the Deacon and Seman the Deacon give no such problems of identification, as deacon was a variant of the word dean (noted three paragraphs above) and the two men were therefore also headboroughsof the manor. Three topographical references remain. Jordan of the Moor may well have been one of the minority of people living outside the township, because the chief tenement named after him was (according to the 1618 Manor Roll) situated on arable land located on the northern edge of the South-West Field, in the area now occupied by a recreational skate-park and a large traffic roundabout linking Normanston Drive, Peto Way and Fir Lane. This had once been part of the extensive area of heath known as Skamacre – and moor is, of course, a word deriving from OE mōr, meaning “waste land” or “marsh”.

Richard of the Woodhouse’s dwelling is unable to be as readily located – though the chieftenement bearing his name was situated in the northern half of the North Field, next to the roadway which divided it (Church Way, later renamed St. Margaret’s Road) and not far from the parish church. His surname is unlikely to have specifically referred to the build of his residence, because nearly all the houses of the peasantry were constructed of timber and wattle-and-daub. It is more likely to have been a description of its location, close to an area of woodland. Lowestoft had very little of this particular resource and it was almost solely located in the extreme north-western sector of the parish, on the higher, heavier land adjacent to (and including part of) the manor of Akethorpe and in the area now occupied by the northern part of the Pound Farm Estate and the area north of Somerleyton Road. Thomas of the Cliff is somewhat easier to locate. He seems to have given his name to Clifton’s Half-chieve, which stood in the built-up area of the later medieval township, after it had moved from the earlier original site, and was located on land to the north of West Lane (later Swan Lane, andtoday’s Mariners Street). His dwelling was probably located there as well (another of the parish’s outlying homesteads) and its approximate position today would be adjacent to (or even underneath!) Jubilee Way. 

Before leaving the commentary deriving from Tables 1 and 2, it is necessary to consider the six types of land referred to in the latter, other than that devoted to agriculture. Taken collectively, they have a good deal to say about the rural economy of the time – especially the keeping of livestock and its general management. Meadowwas mainly reserved for the growing of hay (fed to horses), with livestock being turned out to graze on the aftermath after the grass had been cut and dried. The King’s Meadow, as it is referred to, had once been part of the demesne, and its relatively high rental value of 3s 4d [16p] suggests land of good quality – perhaps capable, even at that period in history, of producing two tons of hay from the two-acre area. Alan de Wymendhale’s quarter-acre holding, on the other hand, may well have been of lower quality, which would account for the much lower rental-charge.

William Reynald’s two acres of herbage (“herbagium”, in the Hundred Roll document’s use of Latin) would have been grassland, but of a type intended primarily for direct grazing rather the growing of hay. Even so, its value in sustaining livestock is reflected in the relatively high rent of 6d per annum [2½p] and it may well have been used for feeding horses. Reynald held thirty-one acres of land altogether (three demesne, twenty-four villeinage, two herbage and two marsh), which made him the most substantial occupier of the time – a man who would almost certainly have kept horses. The reference to the herbage having once been held of the King would, again, seem to suggest that it was former demesne which had been disposed of at some point. Reynald’s two acres of marsh(yet again, apparently once part of the lord’s personal estate) would also have been used for grazing – primarily during the spring, summer and autumn – and it was not the only piece of such land in use.

Adam the Deacon (yet another headborough in the community) and Henry Adams each held an acre of marsh. But whereas Reynald paid only a halfpenny per acre in rent, they paid 4d. This was either because their areas of marsh were of better grazing quality or, more likely, because they were still under the lord’s control. Land of any kind that had been demisedinto private ownership, having been disposed of for a capital sum, then usually carried a lesser rental value. The total area of the four acres of marsh would have been situated in the area known later as Smithmarsh (an extension of Drake’s Heath): what today forms the southern section of Rotterdam Road (with land situated to the eastern side of it), from the Norwich Road junction down to where it joins Denmark Road and Peto Way, with the Third Crossing’s road links and railway land lying next to it. This particular part of Lowestoft was only just above sea-level and boggy in character for a very long time. Any scrutiny of the area by OS map or aerial photograph enables the reader to see that it was, in fact, the vestigial remains of the Lake Lothing inlet or “arm” in which Lowestoft’s first Anglo-Saxon settlers may have berthed their boats on first arriving. As a specific comment on the rents recorded in the previous table, it is worth saying that these were a much more convenient form of income for a manorial lord (especially an absentee) than labour services and gave the tenants greater flexibility and freedom of action in managing their holdings as they wanted.

The last type of grazing land referred to in the second table is heath (or common). Often referred to in old documentation as “waste”, it was anything but – having a wide variety of uses. Lowestoft had seven areas of it (six of them large and one small), which the 1618 Manor Roll identifies as the Common Denes, the North Common, Goose (or Fair) Green, Church Green, Skamacre Heath, Drake’s Heath and the South Common. Leaving out The Denes, which constituted the scrub-grown beach area above high-water mark, there were c. 205 acres of heathland above cliff-level out of a total 1,275. This represents about 16% of the land, and it would have been more extensive three hundred years before – perhaps as much as 30% or more. The Manor Roll records about 600 acres of arable land, which is 150 more than the Domesday total and approaching 200 more than the figure based on Hundred Roll data previously cited. Much of this “new” land would have been converted from areas previously given over to heath. And another factor to be taken into consideration is the land on which the relocated township itself grew up: around 60 acres in area and once mainly part of the manorial waste itself – a word deriving from the Latin vastus, meaning “empty” or “unoccupied” and mainly applied to ground not suitable for agriculture. But, most certainly, with other productive uses. 

There is still a traditional prevailing view, perhaps, that animals were allowed to roam unchecked over heath. This was not always the case; the grazing was sometimes controlled by being set out in strips, with marker-posts, and with the individual holders fencing their sheep with wattles or tethering larger animals such as cattle. Such practice produced a type of managed heathland known as bruery. This kind of use was in common practice by the time of the Lowestoft Manor Roll (1618), with the whole of the Drake’s Heath area parcelled up in strips and with Skamacre arranged in much larger sections, but there is no obvious indication in the Hundred Roll of how the Lowestoft heathland was used. It is simply referred to as a type of usable ground and left at that. One of the two references, however – William Gode’s quarter-acre of common – may, because of the small size of the area held, be referring to a strip or piece(the latter being of square or rectangular shape, but not elongated). Hulteshill, held by Roger de Coleville is even described as a “piece”and was perhaps located on the higher ground above Drake’s Heath and Smithmarsh, merging into the West South Field in the area occupied today by Norfolk Street and Kent Road. And its acquisition by the man named may not have been legal.

Another holding whose occupation may also have resulted from malpractice of some kind (to be elaborated upon later) was the nine acres of wood held by John Bonde. The relatively high rent of more than 1s [5p] an acre reflects the value of woodland in the medieval rural economy, simply because the material was needed for such a wide variety of uses. The area recorded in the Hundred Roll was almost certainly located in the extreme north-western sector of the parish, referred to in connection with the dwelling-place of Richard of the Woodhouse six paragraphs above, and in it is not inconceivable that this man was the custodian of the resource and responsible for its management (which would have included the practice of coppicing). The species growing there would have been native hardwoods, such as oak, beech, ash, hornbeam and hazel, with different qualities in them and with specific uses for both the standard trees and the underwood. It may well have been the predecessor of the twelve-acre wood belonging to the Akethorpe estate (owned by Magdalen College, Oxford), referred to in the 1618 Manor Roll and located in the area where the Benjamin Britten Academy of Music & Mathematics now stands. 

The final type of land featuring in Table 2 to be considered is turbary: an area given over to the digging of peat. The five acres referred to are still identifiable, because the land eventually flooded and became known as Leathes Ham (Kells Ham, in the 1618 Manor Roll) after the family which once lived in a big house on the adjoining land. It is the stretch of water north of the railway line (which had to be embanked in order to cross it), at the bottom of Normanston Park – a mere that acts as an extension of Lake Lothing, almost, and which is an important haven for water-birds of all kinds. Its medieval origins serve to create further understanding of community activity at the time, as peat was widely used as a domestic fuel and the location of this particular facility was only half a mile or so away from the main area of settlement itself.

It is possible that the Abbot of Langley (head of a Premonstratensian house, about twelve miles distance away in South Norfolk, near Loddon) took a proportion of the turves dug for use in his own establishment, but the passage by road via Beccles would have been longer and more time-consuming than a crow’s-flight distance, and there must have been deposits of peat, given the neighbouring marshland environment, much closer to the abbey itself. The likelihood is (considering the way that religious houses invested in land located at some distance from where they were situated) that the institution had acquired a stake in the Lowestoftturbary, to make money from the sale of its end-product. Whether or not it was an original stake-holder (to use a term of today) cannot be known, nor can the length of time Thomas Thurkild had been involved, but it was obviously profitable for both parties to share the relatively high annual rent of 5s [25p] and make money from exploitation of the resource. Thurkild’s surname would seem to indicate that his ancestors were of Scandinavian origins, because its two elements derive from the Old Norse Thor (god of thunder) and ketill meaning “a cauldron” or “cooking vessel”. A relative, Richard, held twelve acres of villeinageland which, along with the turbary interest, might seem to suggest that the family was among the more substantial ones in Lowestoft at the time.

Thomas Thurkild, however, may not have had a direct residential connection with Lowestoft. A man of that name had been a Great Yarmouth port bailiff in 1269 and he might possibly have been the same person as the one holding the turbary rights referred to above. A study of the Lothingland Hundred Roll as a whole shows that a number of people belonging to families in the upper echelons of local society had property interests in diverse places throughout the Island, and Thurkild could have been one of them. Furthermore, there was a great deal of dispute, lasting for practically the whole of the thirteenth century, between Great Yarmouth and the leading land-holders in Lothingland concerning trading-rights – the former wishing to maintain its dominance in both herring fishing and general maritime traffic and the latter trying to assert their own legitimate interests. It is noticeable that a handful of the Yarmouth governing elite had holdings in Lothingland that were too small to have been of any economic significance (Thurkild’s was not one of them) and one possible reason for holding them may have been to give the occupiers an insider’s view of economic activity on the Island which might have been prejudicial to Yarmouth’s own interests.

Of the other identifiable outsider tenants holding land of one kind or another in Lowestoft, two in Table 1 have gone without comment. The first is the Prior of Bromholm, head of a Cluniac establishment at Bacton in North-east Norfolk (which purported to have a fragment of Christ’s cross as its main object of veneration for visiting pilgrims) and with a firm local connection. It held the lesser of the two manors in nearby Carlton Colville, with the estate being named after it as Bromholm, and it may have added to the holding by acquiring a small portion of the Lowestoft demesne. Manorial lands were often widely dispersed beyond the core-area and add greatly to the challenge of studying the structure of seigneurial estates. William of Weston would appear to have been from the township of that name, near Beccles, and his connection with Lowestoft may have derived from the fact that at Domesday (1086) there seem to have been outlying lands to Lowestoft located in Ellough and Willingham – both places located near Weston. Ellough is also referred to in the Hundred Roll in the same context, and so is Shadingfield – which is also close by.

Other outside presences are also recorded in Table 2: those of Alan de Wymendale, the Bailiff of Lothingland (Richard Foxton), John Bonde and Roger de Coleville. The first named was lord of the manor of Kirkley, whose name derived from the small Domesday settlement of Wimundhall which was absorbed by Kirkley during the 12th century. His holding was a very small one (a quarter-acre of meadow), but it would have given him a toe-hold interest in the Lowestoft manor and its regulation. Richard Foxton, the Half-hundred bailiff, would have been responsible for the collection of rents due to the Crown throughout the whole jurisdiction, but is not recorded as holding Crown land (present or past) anywhere else other than his Lowestoft plot. He is mentioned in the Hundred Roll (pp. 76-7 & 82-3), in evidence given by local tenants, of various misdemeanours in office – specifically, taking bribes from people indicted for criminal acts themselves (enabling them to escape justice) and for the forced distraint of a pig belonging to a Lothingland tenant and the owner’s false imprisonment at Gorleston.

John Bonde was a former bailiff of Lothingland (probably the one preceding Foxton) who seems to have been based in Gorleston, if the amount of property he held there is anything to go by. He, too, had used his period of office as a means of self-advancement and had a number of allegations made against him by Lothingland residents (pp. 80-3 & 86-7), including taking bribes to enable evasion of legal penalties for crime(s) committed and for exempting people from jury duty at assize sessions, as well as failing to hand into the Exchequer rent-money owing for the tenancy of Crown lands. He seems to have been a real “fixer” in his activities and his acquisition of the nine-acre woodland in Lowestoft (a valuable asset) may well have resulted from nefarious activity of some kind.

Roger de Coleville was lord of the local manor of Carlton Hall, which his family seem to

have acquired round about the year 1220 and held until the middle of the 14th century – its long tenancy leading to the parish becoming known as Carlton Colville. He had been Sheriff of Suffolk for 1266-7 and one of his duties during this time was to secure provisions (along with the Abbot of Bury St. Edmunds) for Henry III’s court, which stayed at the Abbey 7-18 February 1267 while engaged on one of its periodic circuits of the realm. Large quantities of barley and malt – for the making of bread and brewing of beer – were requisitioned from fifty-three Lothingland inhabitants (fifty-two men and one woman) and 34,000 cured herrings from nine others (all men). And it was attested that de Colville had yet to pay any of these people for the goods taken (pp. 78-81), though Exchequer records do show that he had been given funds for compensating those who had been forced to contribute stock in trade to help feed the Royal Court. Again, as with Alan de Wymendhale’s minimal land-holding in Lowestoft, de Colville’s piece of heath would have given him just a small legal interest in the manor’s conduct and operation.

On which note, this account of “Hundred Roll Lowestoft” must end.

CREDIT: David Butcher