Lowestoft and Akethorp

Lowestoft 

The Domesday Survey details (1086) relating to these two communities have been presented and examined in another article, so there is nothing to be gained from repeating what was said there. What can be usefully done, by way of follow-up, is to look at what is known of their function during the centuries following on from William I’s great audit of his realm and reveal something of their manorial status and history. It was revealed in the piece which looked at Domesday that Akethorp seems to have been some kind of hamlet connected with Lowestoft - eventually becoming part of its ecclesiastical parish when that had taken its final form at some point after the Survey (exactly when, not known). The presence of a priest there, named Aethelmaer, reveals an existing local Christian congregation, but one without a church building and which probably met in the open on the high ground in what is now the Hollingsworth Road area. And this is likely to be the reason why a church dedicated to St. Margaret of Antioch (a popular religious figure among the Normans) was built where a later successor, seen today, was erected during the 14th and 15th centuries. 

Akethorp, of course, was a small to medium-sized manor at Domesday, with eighty acres of arable land, whereas Lowestoft was an outlier to the Lothingland Half-hundred manor centred on Gorleston, with 450 acres under cultivation. It was the largest of three named outliers, the other two being Belton (120 acres) and Lound (240 acres) - and there was also a further ninety-acre holding in Somerleyton subsidiary to the manor. By the year 1212, it is stated in a published source of transcribed Exchequer records - known as the Book of Fees (al. Liber Feodorum), p. 134 - that Lowestoft was a manor in its own right. The word “fees”, as used here, is a variant of fiefs, which were feudal estates of one kind or another held from the Crown for a variety of rents and services due to it. And it is possible that Lowestoft had received its enhanced status in 1211, when King John and his court were on progress around England and stayed in Norwich from 2nd May, for a period of some days, before moving on to Nottingham (104 miles distance) - arriving there on the 12th. This particular information derives from a fascinating Internet site called The Itinerary of King John, which gives the movement(s) of Monarch and Court at home and abroad throughout the length of his reign (May 1198-October 1216).

While in Norwich, he made the the grant of a market to the Lothingland Half-hundred manor, which was a Royal estate - but one which was leased out as a means of raising income. Its hub was the township of Gorleston, as recorded in the Domesday Survey (1086), with Lowestoft noted there as a substantial outlier element of it. Nothing has come to light concerning Lowestoft’s elevation to full manorial status, but it could well have been part of a local package which saw market status given to the half-hundred jurisdiction and the creation of a new manorial title within its area. Great Yarmouth was very much the dominant settlement on this part of the East Anglian coast and already well established as both a port and key defensive point - recognition of which had been given in March 1208 with the granting of a charter confirming its borough status and giving it specific trading privileges in the local area. Gorleston, by virtue of its proximity to Yarmouth, was very much in its commercial shadow and it is just possible that Lowestoft (with local lobbying of the Court while it was in Norwich) was made a manor in its own right as some kind of economic counter-balance for Lothingland as a whole.

Whatever the case, at some point (possibly, quite early on during the 13th century) the two titles became connected, so that they went in tandem with each other. Which meant that any grant of the Lothingland manor to a new lord carried Lowestoft with it. This is confirmed at the beginning of the 14th century, in November 1302, when Edward I gave his nephew John de Dreux (al. John of Britanny), Earl of Richmond, the manor of Lothingland - among a number of other titles - with 100 marks annual rental value (£66 13s 4d) placed upon it. This grant was confirmed in November 1306 and two years later, in November 1308, de Dreux was granted the right of a weekly market (Wednesday) in his manor of Lowestoft, as well as an annual eight-day fair in celebration of the town’s patron, St. Margaret of Antioch - to be held on her vigil (19 July), her feast day (20 July) and six days following. This shows that in being given the manor of Lothingland by his uncle, Edward I - followed by the Royal grant of a market and fair in Lowestoft by his cousin Edward II - the two titles were inter-connected. All of this information is to be found in Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward I, 1301-1307 (1898), pp. 97 & 471, and Calendar of Charter Rolls, Vol. III (1908), p. 123 - sources available on Internet Archive.

There is so much that could be written about the Lowestoft manor, but only bare outlines are possible here. Perhaps the most important thing of all is that being a royal manor for about the first hundred years of its life and then continuing (after its transfer to John de Dreux) in the hands of members of the aristocracy for another 350 years or more, it was held by absentee lords throughout a very important and formative period during its development. An absentee lord was usually advantageous to a community because as long as the manorial steward collected the rents due and things ran smoothly, then the lord would have been satisfied. In his (or her) absence, it was the chief tenants of the manor - the main holders of land from the lord (known as chievers, in Lowestoft’s case) - who became the people that effectively shaped and governed the community. And they had far more flexibility and freedom to act than they would have had with the lord of the manor living in the parish.

A good example of their influence is that they were probably the main instigators of the township moving from its earlier site, somewhere in the area of what is now the Lowestoft Cemetery, onto a clifftop location during the first half of the fourteenth century. And it was probably John de Dreux who allowed it to happen. The move was driven by the need for the townspeople to be nearer to the beach for fishing and other maritime activity and because an expanding population of the time could not grow outwards where it was located without building on productive arable land. And there was advantage, too, for the lord of the manor because an area of exposed coastal heath only provided small sums of money from the fines (fees) imposed for its various uses (mainly rough grazing of livestock), whereas sale of the land for building produced a capital sum of money and retention of it via an annual ground-rent imposed (known as lord’s rent) produced a further regular income. As did the entry fine payment charged every time a property changed hands.

The lord of the Lowestoft manor would still have had an area of land of his own, known as demesne (an Old French word deriving from the Latin dominus, meaning “lord”), and some of his tenants would have worked it for him. But probably not the wealthier members of the community, any longer. And, eventually, the nature of the lordship of the manor itself changed. During the tenure of Sir William Heveningham, who became lord after the death of his father, Sir John, in 1633 - both of them Sheriffs of Norfolk - things changed. Heveningham supported the cause of Parliament during the English Civil War period and acted as one of the judges at the trial of Charles I - but he refused to sign the death warrant. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, his life was spared (largely through the efforts of his wife’s family), but he was imprisoned in Windsor Castle in 1664 and remained there until his death ten years later. After confiscation of his estates (under an act of attainder of 28 September 1661), a trust was set up for his wife to retain these and enjoy the revenues they generated, and one of the results of this arrangement was that the manor of Lowestoft was sold on 17 August 1662 to Philip Haward of Carlton Colville for the sum of £525 - which brought the presence of the lord the nearest it had ever been to the manor itself.

Ten years later, in 1672, Lowestoft’s most famous naval commander, Sir Thomas Allin (on retiring from active service at sea) bought both the town’s manorial title and that of Somerleyton - living in the latter place as a country squire until his death in 1685. Both titles remained with this family group and near-relatives named Anguish until August 1844, when they were purchased by Samuel Morton Peto at the start of his twenty-year period of building and commercial activity in Lowestoft. In 1863, as a result of overstretching himself in railway construction projects, he sold off certain of his assets to meet his debts - and the Somerleyton estate was purchased by a member of the Crossley family of Halifax (carpet manfacturers). The Lowestoft manorial title was probably included as part of the transaction and, shortly afterwards, found its way into the hands of the Reeve family, solicitors in the town - one of whom, Robert, had been steward of the manor during the late 18th and early 19th century. During the year 1889, at least part of the title, relating to The Denes, was acquired by Lowestoft Borough Council as a means of enabling and enhancing its civic activities.

In the absence of borough status (until it was awarded in August 1885), and before Improvement Commissioners were introduced to the town in 1810, Lowestoft was largely governed by its manor courts - with an input also from the two parish churchwardens in matters relating to things with ecclesiastical connections. There were generally two main manor courts in operation during the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, in what was a countrywide system: court baron and court leet. The first of these dealt with manorial customs, disputes between lord and tenants, and property transfers, and was usually held at intervals of three to six weeks. The second one met annually and handled the election of officers and infringement of manorial law (which might vary slightly from place to place, depending on local circumstances and conditions).

Lowestoft has surviving manor court minutes, covering the years 1582-85 and 1616-c. 1930, and these give an insight into various aspects of life in the town from the late 16th to about the third quarter of the 18th century. As in other communities, the court baron became mainly involved with the transfer of property during the Early Modern period - usually attended by the steward, one chief tenant and two copyholder witnesses, from the mid-17th century onwards - and there was quite a lot of business for it to record since 80-85% of the residential property in the town was held by customary or copyhold tenure, and any change in tenancy (be it by sale, mortgage, gift or bequest) had to be entered in the court minute books. This was a necessary process in more than one way. It stood as a written record of transfer and it formed an evidential source of information should dispute ever arise as to occupancy.

Copyhold was a type of leasehold which varied in nature and sometimes had the period of tenure stipulated (sometimes known as copyhold for lives) - at the end of which the tenancy terminated and might well end up in other hands. But Lowestoft’s was not of this nature and gave good security to its tenants - as long as they observed the manorial rules and customs, as laid down in a document which (in theory at least) every tenant should have had a copy of. The main thing to take into consideration was that if anyone allowed his or her property to fall into a sufficiently bad state of repair, it could be repossessed by the lord of the manor and pass to a new occupant. Eventually, a series of Acts of Parliament in 1843, 1844, 1842, 1858, 1887 and 1894 - the last of these consolidating the earlier ones - progressively did away with copyhold tenure by allowing tenants to purchase the freehold or have the lease-period extended to 999 years. But, even though there was no longer any legal need to enter changes of tenure in court baron records, a diminishing number of Lowestoft  transactions were recorded right into the 1930s! 

The reason for the town having such a high proportion of customary tenure (as it was alternatively known) is to be found in its origins, when it relocated during the first half of the 14th century from its earlier inland site somewhere within the general area of the Lowestoft Cemetery (as it now is). As referred to six paragraphs earlier, sale of the cliff-top land - probably to the chief tenants of the manor - produced a capital sum for the lord of the manor of the time (John de Dreux, Earl of Richmond, who had probably acceded to the title in 1302) on land that had previously yielded a low income from an area used mainly to provide rough grazing. He then retained an element of control (and created further income) by imposing an annual ground-rent on the houses built (known as lord’s rent), as well as levying an entry fine payable by the new tenant every time a property changed hands. The remaining 15-20% of the town’s Late Medieval and Early Modern housing stock was freehold in nature and located in two specific areas: the western side of the High Street, from Mariners Street up to St. Margaret’s Road; and the lower end of the High Street (again, west side), from Artillery Way, merging into St. Peter’s Street and running along as far as Tennyson Road. 

And why were these locations freehold? Simply because, over the years, successive absentee lords of the manor had sold off parcels of agricultural land to their chief tenants in return for ready cash and freedom from having to see that large parts of the manor were being properly managed on their behalf. By about 1618, a Manor Roll of that year shows that the demesne (the lord’s personal estate) was only about sixty-eight acres in extent and a hundred years further on, in 1720, it had reduced further to about fifty-eight. With regard to the two areas of freehold land turned over to housing (which did not have to have their transfer from person to person recorded in the court baron records, as they no longer belonged to the lord of the manor), the first one referred to had once been part of the North Field on its eastern edge, while the second had been one small area located within the north-eastern sector of the South Field. One interesting feature surviving from the Lowestoft demesne is to be found in the presence of the Crown Meadow football ground, on Love Road, which is all that is left of a twenty-acre field known as the Lord’s Close [enclosure], which once ran through to St. Peter’s Street.

The annual court leet (often simply referred to as “the leet”) was held on the first Saturday in Lent - the date of which varied from year to year, depending on the date of Easter, but always fell in either February or March. It convened in one of the town’s premier inns, such as The Swan or The Crown, and was supposed to be attended by all of the manor’s chief tenants - or chief pledges, as they were sometimes called, in reference to their being sworn to uphold the manor’s customs and regulations. The business dealt with was the hearing of breaches of manorial ordinances and imposition of fines relating to these, the election of officers for the coming year, and the choice of chief tenant to be the collector of lord’s rent for the same period. The swearing of the homage by the chief tenants (an oath of allegiance to the lord of the manor) was actually done at the nearby village of Corton on the first Thursday in Lent, and this was followed on the Friday by a tour of the Lowestoft township itself to observe certain of the visible nuisances and breaches of manorial law and custom which would appear on the leet court’s agenda.

The overall nature of the offences considered by the chief tenants (acting as a jury) was a wide one - and all of them mainly concerned with maintaining harmony and good order in the local community. Thus, brawling, verbal abuse, spreading false gossip, gambling in taverns, excessive consumption of alcohol, dishonest trading practice (such as the short measure and under-weight of goods), fouling the streets and scores with household rubbish and human sewage, failing to keep fences in good repair, allowing drains to block, causing highway obstructions and hazards, allowing livestock to roam at large (especially pigs), and causing damage to any of the common greens by digging into them for sand or clay - all came before the leet. Even the chief tenants were not without fault in any number of these matters and were therefore sitting in judgement on themselves, as well as on their fellow, less elevated members of Lowestoft society.

Among the officers elected for the ensuing twelve-month period were the four parish constables, who (although this is not stated anywhere) probably served a three-month period of office rather than acting concurrently for the whole year. They were chosen from the more affluent, upper levels of local society (including master-craftsmen, master-mariners, leading retailers, brewers and merchants) and a three-month term of duty was probably manageable at the time in a community which numbered about 1,500 people in 1590 and had reached 1,800 or so by 1720. The earliest surviving leet records (1582-85) show two constables being elected each year, but by 1616 it had increased to four - presumably because there was the perceived need to make the office less onerous for those elected to serve. It wouldn’t have been down to any increase in population, because Lowestoft had lost over 300 of its inhabitants in a particularly bad outbreak of plague during the year 1603. Nor would it have been because the townspeople had suddenly become less well ordered than they had been previously.

Following the election of parish constables came that of the two ale-tasters, or ale-founders - men whose task it was to make sure that the beer or ale brewed in town (the former having hops added, to act as a preservative mainly) was of the required strength and quality and also that it wasn’t watered down in the places which sold it - or sold there in “small cans less than a pint”, to use the terminology of the time! Again, it was men of higher social standing who fulfilled this role - but never brewers themselves, nor innkeepers! Beer and ale were the staple beverages of the time, for everyone (even children) and were usually brewed to around 2-3% alcohol content. Nobody drank water from wells (unless boiled). because it was usually contaminated and potentially lethal, and nearly all of the milk produced was used to make butter and cheese. A stronger brew, known as “fishing beer” (perhaps 5-6% alcoholic strength) was produced for use on board ship and was also probably sold in most of the larger inns.

Just as anyone connected with the brewing trade or the retailing of beer and ale was not allowed to serve as an ale-taster, the opposite was true of the two elected searchers-and -sealers of leather. The two men elected to this post were always tanners or cordwainers (a term for shoemakers, deriving from the Spanish city of Cordova - renowned for the quality of its leather), because they needed to be in the trade to know whether or not the product was up to standard. The search element of the name referred to the scrutiny of hides, to ensure that the curing process had been properly carried out, while the seal part was connected to an impressed mark of some kind made on them to authenticate satisfactory  quality. Leather was a very important commodity in pre-industrial times - and not just for footwear. It was used for heavy-duty gloves and various kinds of workwear and headgear (including detachable sleeves), for utensils such as buckets, jugs and tankards, for hinges of different kinds, and for various uses on board ship connected with ropes and rigging. Lowestoft had two or three tanneries in operation during the 17th and 18th centuries (in the Sparrow’s Nest-Lighthouse Score area and leather production was an important element of its overall economy.

Other manorial offices mentioned in the Leet Court minutes (though not with the same length of time and regularity as that of constable, ale-taster and searcher-and-sealer of leather) are afferator (two), swine/hog reeve (two) and fen reeve (two). The afferators were the men who set the level of fines paid for the various misdemeanours - which didn’t really vary a great deal over the length of the late 16th century and the whole of the 17th and the early 18th - and they first appear during the 1680s, without further mention after 1709. In which case, perhaps, their function wasn’t really necessary.  The appointment of swine reeves is referred to specifically in the year 1620, with an order made for townspeople to have their animals’ snouts ringed to prevent them from rooting up the ground, and with a fine of 3d per pig imposed if this wasn’t done. By the 1640s, the term hog reeves was used - which might refer to pigs in general or refer specifically to castrated males being reared for meat. The last reference to this post is found in 1667, with that of fen reeve replacing it thereafter, which suggests that pigs were less of a problem than had previously been the case. The main task of the fen reeves was probably originally to monitor livestock grazing activity which took place on the marshy ground present along practically the whole of the northern margins of Lake Lothing - but it grew eventually into seeing that hedges and fences generally were kept in good order.

Further manorial posts which were part of the governing process, but which carry no specific details of who was appointed were the court bailiff (whose main task was to inform offenders of their breach(es) of manorial custom or law and require their presence at the leet court) and the collector of the annual lord’s rent payable on all copyhold property. This person was always one of the manor’s chievers, or chief tenants, and the appointment was made on a rotational basis so that what was quite an onerous task did not fall too often on the same person. During the late 16th century, and earlier, there had also been a pinder - a man who rounded up stray livestock and dogs, placed them in the parish pound and released them to the owners on payment of a small fine. Pounds dating from the 18th century survive, as round brick-built enclosures, at Beccles, Wrentham, Blundeston and Somerleyton - but earlier ones may well have been constructed of timber. Lowestoft’s stood at what is now the junction of Factory Street with Thurston Road - which, at the time, was part of the smallest and closest of Lowestoft’s seven areas of common land, known as Goose Green.

Arguably, the key person in the whole process of manorial local government (for that is what it was) - in the absence of a resident lord - was the steward, who acted as both secretary and general manager (to use appropriate modern terms) for the estate. Often of gentry status, with the requisite literary skills, and usually trained in some aspects of law, he held the whole administrative process together and kept a written record of all proceedings. A sequence of the men who held what must have been a salaried position for much of the 17th century and for the earlier decades of the 18th is discernible - but without revealing a great deal about them. First is John Randall (1616-53), with a gap of fifteen years following without a name being traceable. Then comes Thomas Plumstead (1668-79), Thomas Godfrey (1680-1704), Robert Lulman (1704-09), Robert Lowde (1709-25) and Richard Allin (1726 onwards) - the writer of this article not having gone any further forward in the documentation. None of them lived in Lowestoft, though they can’t have resided at too great a distance from the town in order to have functioned efficiently, and must therefore have been within daily travelling distance on horseback or by carriage. Overnight stays in one of the better-class inns, if required, would not have proved unduly inconvenient. 

Robert Lulman lived in Great Yarmouth and Richard Allin may well have been a member of the family which held title to the manors of both Somerleyton and Lowestoft - based in the former parish’s Jacobean mansion and living in elevated style. Reference was made earlier as to how Lowestoft’s most eminent naval commander, Sir Thomas Allin, had acquired both titles in 1672 on retiring from combat duties. Following his death in 1685, his son Thomas succeeded him - but on his own death, without heirs, in 1696, the baronetcy devolved upon a cousin named Richard Anguish. This man was the son of the first Sir Thomas’s sister, Alice, and he took the name of Allin in order to ensure some kind of continuity in the title - although it did eventually revert to Anguish further down the line in 1794.

As well as the manorial element in local government of the time, it should also be mentioned that the parish church had a hand in things, via the annual vestry meeting, which had to be held before 31 May in any given year and which often took place at Easter. This elected the two churchwardens, who were responsible for maintaining the fabric of the nave and tower of the church itself (the chancel was the vicar’s concern) and also for the management of Church Green - a large area given over to the grazing of cattle, located between the town and the church itself. They were also charged with keeping the scores in good, passable condition, which was not always easy because of the rubbish deposited there by people who lived close by, and for maintaining the parish almshouses. A further task which fell to them was to appoint four commissioners of thepoor each year for the collection of money from those who could afford it and make disbursements to those in need. Surviving accounts for the years 1656-1712 show the system in operation, in great detail - with each of the four elected commissioners carrying out his duties for a period of three months, before handing the task on to his successor. 

The churchwardens would also have had a hand (in co-operation with the vicar) in appointing someone to the post of parish clerk, who helped with the process of recording baptisms, burials and marriages and did other paperwork connected with church matters - as well as reading out public notices at Sunday morning service. And they would also have had a hand in hiring the sexton, who dug graves and attended to general churchyard maintenance. Finally, they would have organised the appointment of “two honest persons” (as the First Statute of Highways, of 1555, worded it) to take responsibility for the state of the parish’s roads and to organise four days in the year when all able-bodied people (children of suitable age included) turned out to involve themselves in road repair and maintenance. Each of the men chosen would have carried the title of surveyor off highways.

In creating this overview of local government in Lowestoft during the Early Modern period, a return is necessary to the manor’s medieval roots in order to understand how some of the administrative mechanisms had begun. It was stated in the fifth paragraph of this piece how an absentee lord of the manor effectively placed control in the hands of the estate’s chief tenants - under the scrutiny of the steward - and it is now time to look at how this particular body arose in the first place. It was obviously a development of the post-Domesday period and seems to have become set in place before the Hundred Roll Survey of 1274-5 - this being a countrywide investigation ordered by Edward I to ascertain the value of the Royal Estate and establish just how much of it had been sold off by his father, Henry III. Among the things revealed, concerning Lowestoft, is that a number of the manor’s villan tenants had risen in status compared with their counterparts of two centuries earlier and (because of having an absentee lord) were holding areas of land which had been hived off from the demesne into private occupation - with a few of them renting demesne land also. At Domesday (1086), in the hierarchy of the workforce bound (tied) to a manor, the villans were topmost (often occupying twelve-acre holdings), with bordars (smallholders) placed below them, and with slaves forming the lowest level of all.

It was the villan class which had had become the chief tenants of the manor, at some stage, and the Hundred Roll names twenty-six of them, holding just over 289 acres of land (exclusive of any demesne rented): one with twenty-four acres, two with eighteen, one with fifteen, fourteen of them with twelve, one with ten, one with eight, three with six, two with four and one with two-and-a-quarter. By the time of the 1618 Manor Roll, the chief tenements themselves (rather than being substantial areas of land) had diminished to anything between one-eighth of an acre to about half an acre in area and were dispersed around the parish at large - though with certain concentrations in two or three particular parts. They had become known as chieves(hence, chievers) and had also increased in number to thirty-five - with fourteen of them (referred to as half-chieves) arranged in pairs as a way of making an alternative overall number of twenty-eight. No guesses can be made as to this particular arrangement, nor as to the land-deals or swaps which had taken place to create it.

What is of real interest, and worthy of comment, is that fifteen to sixteen of the names of these chieves are the surnames of the Hundred Roll villan tenants, with another four detectable in the Lay Subsidy of 1327 - this being a national tax levied by Edward III to finance a war with Scotland. The rest of them, presumably, belong to later tenants as the land was further divided and parcelled up. By the mid-late sixteen century, the ownership of a chief tenement, or chieve, had become a status symbol - and it is noticeable that a number of merchants, particularly, who had little or no direct interest in agriculture, were purchasing them and sometimes holding more than one. And the other point to be made, of course, is that civic standing and influence came with possession of a chief tenement because it carried with it the privilege of becoming part of the governing system of court baron and court leet. By the middle of the 17th century, local members of the gentry had become a noticeable presence among the chief tenants, with the lands they held being usually rented out to the people who farmed them. Towards the end of the 17th century, women begin to be found as chief tenants (a feature which continued throughout out the 18th and into the 19th),  but without them serving in either court baron or court leet.

The last leet court recorded in the Lowestoft documentation was held on 3 March 1770, having been for some considerable time a shadow of its former self - especially after the town was granted the right to hold legal sessions. The grant of Quarter Sessions was made in 1748 (Gillingwater says 1756) and probably included Petty Sessions also. The former dealt with crime below the serious level dealt with at the Assizes (these being murder, highway robbery, theft of anything over the value of one shilling, arson, rape, counterfeiting and forgery) - things such as lesser theft and criminal damage, as well as Poor Law matters, the maintenance of highways, the licensing of public houses and organisation of Petty Sessions themselves. Which left the last named responsible for minor theft and assault, persistent drunkenness, cases of bastardy and certain apprenticeship matters, and the hiring of servants. Assizes were held twice a year, Quarter Sessions four times (Epiphany/Hilary, Easter, Midsummer and Michaelmas) and Petty Sessions every fortnight or so. Lowestoft becoming part of Suffolk County’s legal provision is evidence of its upward socio-economic movement during the 18th century and the venue for holding both Petty and Quarter Sessions was a large dwelling at the western end of Swan Lane (Mariners Street), once owned by Sir Thomas Allin and listed in the 1674 Hearth Tax Return as having eleven hearths inside - by far the largest number recorded in the town. Once in use as a court premises, it became known as the Shire House. And it remained functional into the 19th century.

Before ending this account of the Lowestoft Manor and its governing mechanisms, something further needs to be said regarding its relationship to the Lothingland Half-hundred Manor and its own coastal location. By the 16th century - and without any indication of when this structure had begun - Lothingland’s parishes (and the manors they contained) had been arranged in zones for the purposes of holding annual Half-hundred leet courts. The East Leet consisted of Lowestoft, Gunton, Corton, Hopton and Gorleston (the whole  of the maritime fringe), with the court convening in Corton. The West Leet was formed from Herringfleet, Ashby and Somerleyton, with the court held in Blundeston. The South Leet was made up of Oulton, Flixton, Blundeston and Lound, and also met in Blundeston. Finally, the North Leet contained Fritton, Belton (with Browston) and Bradwell, meeting in Belton. Burgh Castle isn’t mentioned, because as a former royal serjeanty (a fief held in return for military service of some kind) it had its own individual leet court. Lowestoft’s presence in East Leet explains why its chief tenants swore the oath of loyalty to the Half-hundred’s manorial lord at Corton - who was, of course, also lord of the town’s manor. The reason why Lowestoft had its own individual leet probably arose from its becoming the largest and most important community in Lothingland, which necessitated - at some point - it having a separate forum to deal with the amount of business generated by the size of its population.

The town’s lord of the manor also had the right of claiming wreck of the sea (al. right of foreshore) within the parish boundaries, whereby anything washed or driven ashore during storms - be it parts of vessels, their equipment or their cargoes - had half of its saleable value go to the lord and the other half to the finder(s). As lord of the Half-hundred manor also, he (or she) had the same rights stretching from Gunton up to Gorleston - with a fifty-fifty split in the value of anything salvaged there. Burgh Castle also, like Lowestoft, had individual right of foreshore along its frontage with the estuarine, tidal reaches of Breydon Water - which, again, must have had something to do with its one-time status as a serjeanty - a designation probably going back to before Domesday (1086), when lord of the manor, Ralph the Crossbowman, held his estate in return for his military expertise. Matters of wreck were dealt with mainly in the annual East Leet court, but are also sometimes found in the proceedings of the Lowestoft and Gorleston individual leets (when the latter was also granted the privilege of having one) - as well as those of a general court for the Half-hundred, held three times a year at Gorleston, Lound and Mutford Bridge.   

Further manorial income in Lowestoft deriving from its coastal location related to use of the beach and denes area for activities associated with fishing (especially the autumn herring season) and for maritime trade. Before the building of the harbour during 1827-30, the Denes served as a large open-air wharf for both the exporting and importing of goods, with vessels anchoring offshore in the shallows and everything being conveyed to and from them by ferry boats. Among the charges made by the manor to non-residents during the later part of the 16th century (referred to in a Court of Chancery bill of 1579-80) were 4d per cart crossing the Denes and a ha’penny per person on foot; beaching of a foreign ship (for maintenance or repair) 1s 4d, of an English vessel 8d, and any small boat 4d. Further information is to be found in a leet court record of 1631 (repeated in a court baron entry of 1672), where it is revealed that a charge of 2s 8d was made to foreign fishermen for drying nets on the Denes, with half the cost of 1s 4d (as with beached vessels) being applied to visiting English fishermen. This almost certainly refers to the autumn herring season, when the drift-nets used would have been soaked in a preservative mixture of oak or ash bark - also used for tanning leather - at the end of the voyage (loosely, lasting from October to early December in extent) and then spread out on any of the scrub vegetation found growing. Foreign fishermen would have consisted of some Dutch mariners and possibly northern French ones, while “English Strangers” (as they are termed) would have been from other East Anglian fishing stations and also from the coastal area of Kent and Sussex.

Other manorial charges, of a non-maritime nature, are also revealed in the two court entries of 1631 and 1672. The first is a charge called grindage imposed (on top of what the miller would have required for his services) on the conversion of corn into flour or meal - whereby a wagon of full size paid a fee of 4d and a smaller cart 2d. Then there was the fine imposed on people whose stray livestock or dogs had been rounded up and impounded, which was simply known as poundage: 4d per animal for people from outside the parish and 1d for residents. And,  finally, there is reference made to something connected with the weekly Wednesday market, which is referred to as the “market show” and cost the sum of 1d. This presumably refers to the display of goods for sale and was therefore a charge made on the individual stall-holders for being allowed to trade. 

In conclusion, with regard to the manor of Lowestoft, a further sense of its governing capacity and influence during the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods (in addition to what has already been revealed) is to be found in information revealed in a Manorial Survey of 1610, p. 55 (Suffolk Archives ref. no. 194/A10/72). Quite a lot of this refers to maritime rights of foreshore, which have already been looked at in some detail, but other matters were also referred to. One was a reference from a manor court record of 1510-11, which hasn’t survived (or hasn’t been discovered) and which stated that Sir Edward and Lady Mary Jernegan (lords of the time) were granted the right to enter into possession of the goods and cattle of any felon, fugitive, condemned criminal and suicide within the manor bounds - the word cattle, here, not necessarily referring to livestock, but more likely having the earlier meaning of “personal property”. Further records of 1525-26 and 1527-28 - again, not extant - stated that the lord of the manor (Sir John Heveningham and wife lords, then) was/were entitled to all abandoned goods found within its bounds.

Most interesting of all, perhaps, is a statement regarding the Manor of Lothingland Half-hundred itself, going back to twelfth year of the reign of Edward I (1283-84) - the  monarch who gifted this manor and that of Lowestoft to his nephew, John de Dreux in 1302. Rights appertaining to the Half-hundred title were confirmed, as follows: right of market, with tolls etc.; freedom of trade during fishing-time [i.e. the autumn herring season] as far as the port of Great Yarmouth; the right of imprisoning criminals; the right of impounding waifs and strays [ownerless property and goods, as well as animals on the loose]; the right to claim wreck of the sea; the right of free warren [licence to hunt over half-hundred land]; exemption from portage [freedom from paying freight-charges on the carriage of goods]; and the freedom to construct and operate beacons at fishing-time. The last of these privileges would have related to the construction of braziers of some kind (probably wood-burning), elevated to some degree for visibility out at sea and both placed in alignment with each other on the beach to give vessels safe passage through the channels separating the offshore sandbanks during the hours of darkness or at times of poor daylight visibility. It probably related particularly to Lowestoft, with regard to the Stanford Channel which lay between the Newcome Shoal (to the south) and the Holm Sand (to the north).

Akethorp

From pre-Norman Conquest times, up until the mid-15th century, the small outlying settlement of Akethorp (sometimes found spelled with a final -e), situated to the north-west of the original township of Lowestoft - mainly and loosely in the area now occupied by much of the Gunton Estate and by later housing beyond - had separate manorial status of its own. The Domesday Survey (1086) shows this to have been an estate of eighty acres of arable land (held by a freeman priest named Aethelmaer, assisted by three smallholders), with an acre of meadow and an area of woodland of about five acres in extent. Further details can be found elsewhere in LO&N’s History Section, in the article entitled The Domesday Survey, so nothing further need be said here. Such documentation as has survived, relating to the settlement, is very small in comparison with that connected with Lowestoft - which has copious material dating from the late sixteenth century right through to the late 18th showing various aspects of the administration and running of the manor. What few early records remain for Akethorp date mainly from the first half of the 15th century (concerned with land-holdings, sitting tenants and valuations within the manor) and are held in the archives of Magdalen College, Oxford - which came into ownership of the estate in 1479, as will be explained later.

Certain references to Akethorpe are to be found during the 13th century for the years 1205-6, 1227-8 and 1274-5. The first two are to be found in A Calendar of the Feet of Fines for Suffolk (1900), pp. 13 & 27 - a record of property transactions between people, edited by the well known antiquarian Walter Rye. These had started off as disputes as to ownership of land in the late 12th century, with the querent (“enquirer”) named first and the deforciant (“wrongful/illegal occupant”) named second - terms which soon came to mean purchaser(s) and seller(s) of real estate. The first of the transactions shows Agnes, Margaret and Wulviva, daughters of Selida (a widow?), acquiring land from Stephen, son of Benedict; the second, some twenty years or so later, does the same for Geoffrey son of Osbert and his wife Edith making a purchase from Stephen de Steingat - who might just have been the same vendor as the one referred to previously.

Two of the names in the latter record are of interest, topographically - beginning with that of Akethorp itself, which is rendered as Hacketorp. Then there is Stephen de Steingat, bearing a surname relating in some way to what is now known as Gorleston Road - but for centuries called Steyngate Way, in reference to it being part of a former Roman highway linking the shore fort of Gariannonum (located at what later became known as Burgh Castle) to places further south in what was eventually to become the county of Suffolk. Steingate or Steyngate, meaning “Stone Street”, is to be found in various other places, too, and the surname in Lowestoft is found as late as 1524-25, when a Richard Steyngate features in the Lay Subsidy of the time paying 6d tax on goods worth £1 - which identifies him as craftsman or small trader of some kind.

The other Akethorp personal names mentioned, being first or Christian ones, show a mixture of origins which reflect something of the Norman Conquest’s effect, with ones introduced from abroad mixing with those deriving from the English language of Anglo-Saxon times. The mother called Selida shows the latter influence, as does her daughter Wulviva - but the other two siblings, Agnes and Margaret, have continental roots (Old French, deriving from Greek and Latin/Greek, respectively). The person they acquired land from, Stephen son of Benedict, also shows Classical origins in evidence, with Greek and Latin again being the sources - the former name being that of the man venerated as the first Christian martyr (Acts 7. 54-60) and the latter as the 6th century founder of Western Monasticism. Finally, there is Geoffrey son of Osbert and Edith - an example, it would seem, of parents having English names giving their offspring one of Old French origins.

The references relating to the years 1274-5 are to be found in the Lothingland Hundred Roll of the time - part of a national survey ordered by Edward I to ascertain the taxable value of the Royal Estate, the extent to which this had been affected by his father Henry III’s sale of parts of it during his long reign, and the degree of malfeasance carried out by public officials during the years closest to its creation. Survival of this particular enquiry’s records has not been good in terms of national coverage, but Lothingland is fortunate in having its details not only extant but translated from the Latin and available in published form (1902) - thanks to Lord John Hervey of Ickworth House, near Bury St. Edmunds. The information relating to Akethorp is not extensive because of its comparatively small size, but it is still capable of revealing certain things about the manor in the three references made regarding it. 

The first is that, during the return of Richard I (1189-99), it was still a Royal manor and held by William of Akethorp, at an an annual rental value of 10s 4d - a case of the tenant assuming the name of the property he held and still paying only 4d more than the estate had been valued at in the Domesday Survey of 1086. A descendant of William, named Robert of Akethorp - together with his mother Amabel - were the tenants in 1274-5, holding twenty acres of arable land and forty acres of separated pieces of heathland and still paying an annual sum of 10s 4d. But what had happened to the eighty cultivated acres of Domesday? All that the first of these three Akethorp entries tells us, in addition, is that the Prior of Herringfleet [St. Olaves] - presumably as a sub-tenant - held a further seven acres of arable land and that “others” (alii, in the Latin text) held the rest of the rest of the estate, also as sub-tenants. Therefore, all that can be vouched for in connection with the manor is that something in excess of twenty-seven acres of cultivated land and forty acres of heathland constituted the estate. In which case, had land gone out of cultivation since Domesday and reverted to heath? Or was a sizeable area held by the unnamed sub-tenants still under the plough?

The second Hundred Roll reference mentions an estate of some kind located in both Akethorp and Corton, of which Robert le Poer (son of Nicholas) held two acres himself - with the rest of the land rented out to unnamed “others” (alii). The annual rent payable was 4s 4d. “Split lands” (as they may be conveniently termed), in different communities or parishes, were a common feature of Late Medieval manors and led to overall complexity of lordship, as well as an understanding of it for the student of today - particularly where the records are fragmentary and incomplete (as they often are). The third, and last, holding referred to is of unstated size and held by Henry Seman at an annual rental of 2s 8d. And that is as much as can be said in the matter. Which is somewhat frustrating, overall, because the picture created by the Hundred Roll data is far from complete. And if an attempt is made to fathom out any possible connection with the two earlier Feet of Fines records, the only conclusion which can be reached is a tentative one presuming that the land(s) changing hands there were connected with either of the two non-seigneurial estates and not with the manor itself. 

Further 13th century documentation relating to the main Akethorp estate is also to be found in the Arts and Humanities Council’s Online research facility, Henry III Fine Rolls Project. A man named Robert of Akethorp (possibly the one referred to, two paragraphs above) was involved in a dispute with his brother Richard (a younger sibling?) over land which the latter thought he had been deprived of - though rightfully his, by inheritance. Records of July 1254 and March 1256 - C60/51 (724) and C60/53 (362, 363 & 364) show this process in action. Fourteen years later, in further records of January and July 1270 - C60/67 (140, 141 & 1006) - a Robert of Akethorp (who must, surely, be the person referred to in the Hundred Roll) is shown as seeking recovery of possession from two tenants whose occupancy had exceeded the term agreed. He is named as “son of Richard” - so, was he the son of the plaintiff referred to above (who was therefore making a rightful claim)? Or was there - as so often happens - use of the same Christian names within a family group so that exact identification becomes difficult, if not impossible?

Little or no information as to the manor then presents itself until that contained in  documentation lodged in the Magdalen College archives is accessed. This is of a fragmentary nature, but two particular items - an account roll and a rental of 1438-9 (ref. nos. 73/4 & 151/9) - give quite a detailed account of the structure of the manor as it existed at the time. No one is referred to as lord, but the bailiff (or steward, as the term became later) Robert Andrew is named, as are nine occupying tenants - all of them seemingly in the second year of seven-year leases. Named, in order, they are as follows: Simon Bochere [Butcher], Richard Key, Simon Russell. William Leverych, Henry Steyngate, William Veyse, John Steyngate, Edmund Boyton and John Parkyn. The appearance of two members of the Steyngate family is interesting, in that it harks back to the earlier Feet of Fines reference of 1227-8 and perhaps suggests some long-term connection on its part with this particular area of Lowestoft.

Simon Bochere held the largest part of the individual pieces of the leased-out manor, occupying “the site of the manor of Akethorpehalle” [sic], together with two adjacent enclosures seven acres in size - with barn and granary built thereon - and two others (called Akethorpe Close and Stys Close) of thirty-and-a-half and three-and-a-half acres - all of which carried an annual rent of 55s 4d. Next came a trio of co-tenants - Richard Key, Simon Russell and William Leverych - who had an enclosure called Yelvertons (no size given) and five acres of heath located in Gunton, with the rental value of 43s 4d meaning that the enclosure must have been quite a large one. Henry Steyngate occupied a piece of arable land to the south of this, seven acres in area, paying 8s per annum for it, while William Veyse held two pieces located to the east of Akethorpe Close two-and-threequarters in size for the sum of 2s 6d. John Steyngate had a sixteen acre enclosure called Dunnes (seven acres of which were located in Oulton), paying 40s for it, while Edmund Boyton had small one-acre piece named Brownes Pightle costing 2s. Finally, John Parkyn held an area of alder carr - again, one acre in size - for which he paid 4s 8d. The fields called Yelvertons, Dunnes and Brownes most likely bore the names of previous, possibly long-term, tenants and the aggregated rental value of the lands referred to came to £7 15s 10d [£7.76].

The known total area of land arrived at from adding up all of the stated sizes (minus the seven acres located in Oulton parish) is sixty-and-threequarters acres - which would obviously have been a good deal more than this with the addition of the unknown size of the Yelvertons enclosure added. The Lowestoft Manor Roll of 1618 shows ninety-nine acres being held by the “Master and Fellows of Oxford” (mgr & sodales de Oxon, with the first word being an abbreviation of magister), so the two respective sizes may not have been a great deal different from each other. The rental rate per acre for arable soil in the 1438-39 document, which is what most of the land was used for, seems to have been 1s or more - so, on that reckoning, with the three tenants paying a rent of 43s 4d (and with their five acres of Gunton heathland not carrying a high value), the Yelvertons field could have been around thirty acres in area - which would bring the overall size of the manor up to ninety acres or so.

The use of the ground was almost entirely for agriculture, with the references to land and pieces referring to this in both the account roll and the rental document - and with the latter word of the two indicating areas that were not fenced, even though located within an overall environment of enclosure. However, grassland was obviously present in a minor way, since the account roll reveals that Akethorpe Close contained a meadowand that the Dunnes enclosure had some pasture within it. In neither case is any indication given as to the size, but there are two different kinds of use referred to. Meadow was a permanent area of high-quality grass, grown to produce a crop of hay and then have livestock turned out to graze on the aftermath, whereas pasture was grass sown onto arable land for a relatively short period of time (agriculturally speaking) to allow it to recover fertility after being cropped, with the animals turned out onto it browsing the vegetation growing there and manuring the soil at the same time.

A single acre of meadow was recorded in the Domesday Survey, of course, but no connection probably existed between it and what was referred to in 1438-9. An area of woodland sufficient to sustain five pigs was also noted in 1086 (five acres or more in size, if the notional one acre plus per animal is applied), but the only type of tree growth noted three and a half centuries later was one acre of alder carr carrying a comparatively high annual rent of 4s. 8d. The term is one applied to any area of boggy ground, where alder trees proliferated and, if not managed in the correct way, would eventually lead to the land drying out. Alders (Alnus glutinosa) not only like a wet environment, their timber is water-resistant and useful in a number of ways where such a characteristic was required. It also made very fine-quality charcoal for use in smelting and forging iron and in making gunpowder. The last referred-to may not have been of significance in 15th century Lowestoft, but the other two would have been. A much later, indirect reference to this particular feature appears in the Lowestoft Manor Roll of 1618, where a two-acre, enclosed piece of pasture belonging to Magdalen College is described as abutting onto the Alder Carr Meadow of John Utber (a leading townsman) to the west - thereby suggesting eventual drying out of the land and conversion to another use. 

The main physical characteristic of Akethorp revealed in Domesday is its eighty acres of arable land. And there may be a possible connection between this and the two, large, thirty-acre enclosures referred to in the Magdalen College documentation. No exact fix is given regarding their respective locations in relation to each other, but there is at least the possibility of their being a residual presence surviving from an earlier time - perhaps even the vestiges of a former two-field system, stripped up for use by Aethelmaer the Priest and his three smallholder tenants. The Manor Roll of 1618 includes the Akethorpe estate within the overall compass of its own seigneurial area (which shows that the smaller unit had surrendered its independence of title on becoming the property of Magdalen College in 1479) and gives both the size and (indirectly) the location of one of the large enclosures. Referred to as the Thirty Acre Close, it is mentioned twice: once in its own right and again in relation to a smaller arable field which lay to the south of it and abutted onto Oxemere Lane (now Oulton Road). This latter piece of information enables the field to be placed in the present-day Pembrooke Way-Breckland Way-Lulworth Close area. Its former companion (obviously subdivided into smaller arable enclosures by 1618) could easily have occupied land to the east of it.

One of the most interesting details deriving from the Magdalen College account roll and rental are the references made to Simon Bochere leasing the site of the manor of Akethorpehalle (roll) and the site of the manor of Akethorpp (rental). Both also mention the two adjacent arable enclosures, with the former including the presence there of a barn and granary. Many of the English medieval manors included the word hall as part of their name, as this represented the presence of a manor house itself. So, was one still in existence in 1438-9 or does use of the word site suggest that it was no longer there? This writer is inclined to favour the latter interpretation, with the dwelling itself no longer present but with two key ancillary buildings still standing. There are, however, further clues as to the location of the manor house which are to be found in the 1618 Manor Roll.

Reference is made there to certain field names which suggest the former presence of a manor house, which would have been that of Akethorp, rather than Lowestoft, since the latter had never had a resident lord and therefore had no need of one. Indeed, the aristocratic holders of the Lowestoft estate would have held many, many more titles in various parts of the country and would have a main dwelling such as a castle or crenellated mansion as their place of residence. Three of the names in question belonged to enclosed arable spaces which lay to the west of what is now the northern part of Rotterdam Road, running from its junction with Church Road-Oulton Road down to the traffic roundabout where it meets St. Peter’s Street and Normanston Drive. Beginning at the northern end and proceeding southwards the fields were named as Park Close, The Park and Park Field - the last of these consisting of vestigial medieval strips each one acre in size, on an east-west alignment, and ploughed in this manner to counter soil-creep created by the land sloping from north to south. All of the area referred to is now occupied by housing development in the Marham Road-Evergreen Road-Broom Road-Larch Road area and the name “Park” itself is suggestive of an enclosed space of some kind, fenced off to provide  the surrounds of a manor house.

This is backed up by the Manor Roll also naming another enclosed area of arable land called Dovehouse Close - revealing it to have been ten acres in size and leased from the Manor of Oulton. A dovehouse (al. dovecote) was a building often located in close proximity to a manor house, providing it with a source of fresh meat especially during the winter months. The young pigeons (known as squabs) had their legs broken at the fledging stage so that they were not able to fly and therefore had to remain on the interior nesting alcoves, where they would fatten more quickly because of their immobility. They were then culled for the kitchen. The reference to the field bearing the dovehouse name belonging to the manor of Oulton shows that it was situated in the present-day area of Olive Court-June Avenue. Oulton had two manors during the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods - those of Oulton Hall and Houghton Hall, with the latter being the larger and the more likely in terms of location to have been the one referred to here. There had obviously been an exchange of land at some point, but this area seems likely to have been the former site of the Akethorp manor house. And so, with the great majority of the estate located to the north-west of St. Margaret’s Church and to the north of Oxemere Lane (Oulton Road), the lord’s residence at some stage (most likely during the 14th century - and perhaps earlier) had been in an enclave of its own to the south of this highway.

Most interesting of all in connection with all of this is the fact that the three field-name references all using the word “Park” do indeed refer not only to the surrounds of a manor house but to the one-time presence of a small deer park identified as being in existence in the year 1377 by Rosemary Hoppitt in her book Deer Parks of Suffolk 1086-1602 (2020) and previously in an article entitled ‘Deer Parks 1086-c.1602’ in An Historical Atlas of Suffolk, 3rd edition (1999). This had obviously ceased to exist by the time of the 15th century Magdalen College documentation and probably been converted to arable land by then - which was very largely its use in 1618, as recorded by the Manor Roll of that year. Using the road framework of today, the deer park was located between Oulton Road to the north and Normanston Drive to the south and between Rotterdam Road to the east and High Beech to the west. This area of about forty acres in size does not suggest one for the full-scale hunting of deer, so much as farming them for venison, and it had probably been created from what was originally part of Skamacre Heath - an area of rough grazing which stretched westwards across Fir Lane well into the Woods Loke area of Oulton. The deer themselves would probably have been either the small native roe (Capreolus capreolus) or the introduced fallow (Dama dama).

The surviving medieval Magdalen College documents consulted with regard to this particular article do not mention the name of any Akethorp lord, but do make reference in an account roll of 1433-34 (ref. no. 177/4) to the manor having been leased by John Fastolf Esq. of Oulton for the annual sum of £6 13s 4d - which looks very much as if he was the lessee preceding the nine men referred to in the two records of 1438-89, who had taken up their tenancies in 1437-38. Fastolf was lord of the Oulton manor of Houghton Hall (ob. 1445) and both kinsman of, and aid to, the famous soldier Sir John Fastolf of Caister who retired from around three decades of military service in France - during the latter part of the Hundred Years War - in c. 1440 (at about the age of sixty) and returned to his home at Caister (near Great Yarmouth) to fortify and crenellate the family manor house there. Once described as “the richest commoner in England” (his wealth deriving from long-established family trading activities in Yarmouth, from a judicious marriage into the aristocratic Tiptoft and Scrope families, and from money made out of warfare itself), he had also spent time earlier acquiring various manorial titles in his local area - including Lothingland Half-hundred, where he built up what would be described today as a property portfolio of considerable size. And it included Akethorp. 

A surviving 15th century valor (valuation) - Magdalen College Archives ref. no. 131/9 -   records the purchase of certain manors there and elsewhere, with Akethorp costing the sum of £136 (accompanying shillings and pence unreadable). But no date is given for this transaction or the six others accompanying it. However, there must be at least a chance of this record showing Fastolf’s acquisition of title - especially as it is part of an archive of material attaching to a bequest which was never intended for an Oxford University college but which nevertheless ended up there. An Oxford (Pembroke College) PhD thesis of 1982 by Anthony Smith - also published the same year - entitled ‘Aspects of the Career of Sir John Fastolf 1380-1459’, p. 7, Table 1, shows the man active in purchasing manors both locally and further afield between 1415 and 1439. Akethorp is shown as having been acquired in 1426 for the sum of £136 13s 4d. Exactly how it finished up in the hands of Magdalen College now needs to be explained.

Fastolf died in November 1459 - long widowed and childless - leaving his lawyer and relative-by-marriage John Paston and William Waynflete (Bishop of Winchester) as his executors. Among the bequests he made was the sale or rental of local manors to endow a chantry college for seven priests at his home, Caister Castle. There were many complications and ramifications in the execution of the will, which were still unresolved when John Paston died in 1466. Waynflete had founded an Oxford college called Magdalen Hall in 1448 and suppressed this ten years later in setting up Magdalen College itself. During 1478-9, he took the decision to divert the Caister chantry bequest to Magdalen College, using the rental income from manorial lands (particularly in Lothingland) to fund the education of seven scholars there in perpetuo. This legacy is still being used, indirectly, by the College, as a means of publicising the importance of bequests in helping to fund university education. Anyone making a gift by will is invited to join the Fastolf Society and attend an annual lunch in his and Waynflete’s memory.

This transfer of estate income from Fastolf’s bequest resulted in Akethorp losing its status as a manor in its own right, by due process of some kind, and becoming part of the overall Lowestoft title. Hence, its appearance in the Manor Roll of 1618, along with all the other real estate in the parish. It was obviously well managed by a series of local lessees over the next century and actually grew in size from the ninety-nine acres of 1618, to reach 123 acres by 1720 (as recorded in the Lowestoft parish Tithe Accounts book: Norfolk Record Office ref. no. 589/80), with a further forty acres of grazing dole-land situated along its northern boundary - twenty-three-and-a-half of which were located in Gunton. Over fifty years later, in 1777, this particular set of records shows the same-sized area being leased to John Jex (merchant), a prominent Lowestoft townsmen, who had then sub-let the holding to Samuel Aldred - who presumably farmed it. By 1843, at the time of the parish Tithe Apportionment (following the Commutation Act of 1836), it was being leased from Magdalen College by Richard Henry Reeve - a Lowestoft solicitor - whose grandfather Robert had been steward off the Lowestoft manor during the late 18th and early 19th century. The family’s office was located at No. 48 High Street, while R.H. Reeve himself lived at No. 6 The Esplanade. 

Magdalen College, Oxford, retained ownership of the Akethorp estate until 1955, when it sold the land to a local building company, Warnes Brothers (now Warnes & Sons Ltd.). A new farmhouse, named College Farm, had been built in the year 1892 and now serves as the firm’s headquarters, with a simplified version of the Magdalen armorial bearings clearly visible on a date-tablet placed below the middle first-floor window. The postal address is 94 Oulton Road. Standing further to the east along Oulton Road are two pairs of semi-detached farmworkers’ cottages, Nos. 62 & 64 and 32 & 34 - ancillary dwellings to the farmhouse itself. And that is not the only reminder of this part of Lowestoft’s historic past. Just a little further on, to the west of the Warnes & Sons HQ, an area of residential development named College Meadows, Fastolf Close, Magdalen Close and Akethorpe Way serves to act as a reminder of a long historic past by being built on land found named (in the years 1720 and 1777) as Foxboroughs/Foxburrows and Stonehouse/Stonehorse Pightle - with the latter of these fields once having served as a meadow where a stallion had been pastured, before undergoing later conversion to arable use.

So much of what is seen today overlying such rich and fascinating antecedents!   CREDIT:David Butcher