SETTLEMENT AND WASTE IN THE
A RESEARCH PROJECT FUNDED BY THE ESRC
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Hetton le Hill Wood and other
woodland fragments
(Pittington and Haswell)
Between 2000 and 2003, two
research associates, Dr. Helen Dunsford and Dr. Simon Harris, were in post in
the University of Durham, the former attached to the Department of Geography
and the latter to the Department of History, for a three-year E.S.R.C. project
on Settlement and Waste in the Palatinate of Durham
under the supervision of Professor Brian Roberts and Professor Richard
Britnell.
The perception, extent and
use of moorland, rough pasture, woodland and 'waste', is a topic that raises
many historical questions and may be approached from numerous angles. Recent
research has effectively questioned the extent to which the 'waste' (vastum)
of medieval records may be regarded as an absolute term. Lands described as
waste in the twelfth century had often been cultivated in earlier times, so
that nothing very definite may be assumed about either their quality or past
history. Moreover when land was described as waste, it was not necessarily
lying idle. The evidence of charters and estate documents was deployed to
assess the extent of moorland in the period 1150-1550, the rights that various
groups exercised over it, the uses to which it was put, and the processes by
which it was converted to other uses. Archaeological and place-name evidence
was used to provide longer-term perspective, and to assess the evidence for
earlier settlement and cultivation within the medieval waste.
The former Palatinate of
Durham constitutes a territory in which excellent results could be expected
from such research, partly because of the vast extent of the moorland it
contained throughout the Middle Ages, and partly because of the exceptional
quality of the written record, from the twelfth century to the present day, in
the archives of Durham Priory and of the Bishopric of Durham. It is unusual
anywhere in Europe, for such an extensive area of waste to be so well
documented, and this gives the research a truly international appeal.
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The Origins of Flemingfield Farm In 1283 Robert of Holy Island, bishop of Durham, granted to John the Fleming of Newcastle and his wife Isabel a parcel of the episcopal moor of Shotton and Easington with stated bounds: 'from the road leading from Castle Eden to Haswell (as it) crosses Goreburne and up along that road as far as the bounds of Ludworth to the north, as enclosed by a ditch, and then down along the bounds of Ludworth through the middle of Wydeker as far as Goreburne to the south, and then eastward down along Goreburn(e) as far as the said road leading from Castle Eden to Haswell'. (Durham University Library, Dean and Chapter Muniments, Miscellaneous Charters 6158, 7083). The bounds correspond to those mapped on a deed of 1894 (Durham University Library, CC Bpric 315/267222). |
The historical dimension
Simon
Harris worked chiefly in the Durham University Library archive collections on
records relating to the bishopric and priory estates. He (a) analysed evidence
relating to rights over waste as expressed in estate documentation, (b)
identified from these documents the ways in which waste was used and their
institutional forms, (c) studied the charter evidence relating to the
chronology and location of grants of land from the waste and the creation of
new farmsteads (d) investigated the social context of clearance from the waste
and the social standing of those permitted to create new holdings, (e) assessed
the significance of the findings for the broader history of economic and social
institutions. This work supplied a documentary basis for the discussion of
rights over the waste and the expansion of farming between the twelfth and
sixteenth centuries. The documentation in question includes a large collection
of charters (numbering in all over 10,000).
The geographical dimension
Dr Helen
Dunsford approached the problems from more recent cartographic and
archaeological data. She used GIS techniques to map settlement patterns,
township boundaries and the distribution of waste for the whole of the
Co-ordination
The two
researchers each had a clear independent brief, and worked with a good deal of
independence from each other, but a strong element of interaction is necessary
for the success of the project. The documentary side of the research was
supervised by Professor Britnell and the more geographical and archaeological
side by Professor Roberts. The project was closely identified with the Centre
for North-Eastern England History (NEEHI), under its Landscape and Settlement
research
Summary of research results
The project’s objectives were to examine the
relations between settlement and waste in the Palatinate of Durham during the
period 1150-1550 with a view to establishing (1) the perception, extent and use
of waste, (2) the relationship between
waste and settlement patterns, taking account of both nucleated settlements and
more dispersed forms, (3) the extent of individual and shared rights over
waste, and in particular the balance between common rights and the authority of
the bishop of Durham and other estate owners, and finally (4) the manner in
which waste was taken into cultivation during this period, with particular
attention to the extent to which the expansion of cultivation was associated
with a more dispersed pattern of settlement. The geographical component of the
project depended on an advanced cartographic study using a GIS system to establish a reliable
indication of the extent of
The
cartographic exercise demonstrated the extent of the commons in about 1600,
before the bulk of early modern enclosures by Chancery Decree Award. The
result reveals for the first time the enormous extent of open moorland in the
region before the agricultural revolution; we expected to find extensive
moorlands in the western regions of the
The chronology of
grants of waste did not conform to our expectations. In line with current
thinking we had expected the bulge of new grants to come in the period
c.1180-1260. Instead the evidence suggests two distinct periods of
colonization. The first, between 1153 and 1208, was followed by a hiatus
lasting some forty years. A new phase ran from 1249 to 1316. There may be some
distortion in the evidence, especially in favour of later decades. We have
undoubtedly lost many grants of waste; many of the moorland farms recorded in
the Hatfield Survey are noted as being held by episcopal charter, though no
charter is extant. However, even if the inexplicable hiatus of 1208-49 is an
archival illusion, the clearance of moorlands to create new farms continued
vigorously much longer than we had expected. This finding supports our
conclusion that colonizable wastelands remained exceptionally extensive in
We know little about
the relative importance of arable and pasture in the new farms that were
created from the waste. Many of the
later fourteenth and fifteenth century inquisitions post mortem suggest
a mixture of improved pasture and arable, but we have little earlier
description. Our best evidence for the widespread importance of
expansion for arable occurs, as it happens, in a less precise source of
information, in general, than the grants of waste we have been examining. Such
grants, though numerous, and providing us with our sharpest focus on the
location and chronology of enclosure, may only have accounted for a fraction of
the amount of land broken during these centuries. Most colonization of the
wastes in
Over and beyond
the undoubted historical gains, there remains our cartography. Every portion of
Publications resulting
H.
M. Dunsford and S. J. Harris, ‘Colonization of the Wasteland in
R.
H. Britnell, ‘Fields, Farms and Sun-Division in a Moorland Region, 1100-1400’, Agricultural History Review, 52 (2004), 20-37
S.
J. Harris, ‘Wastes, the Margins, and the Abandonment of Land: the Bishop of
Durham’s Estates, 1350-1480’, in C. D. Liddy and R. H. Britnell, eds, North-Eastern England in the Later Middle
Ages (
B.
K. Roberts, H. Dunsford and S. J. Harris, ‘Framing Medieval Landscapes: Region
and Place in
S.
J. Harris, ‘Changing Land
Use in a Moorland Region: Spennymoor in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries’, in B. Dodds and R. H. Britnell, eds, Agriculture and Rural Society after the Black Death: Common Themes and Regional
Variations (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire
Press, 2008), 168-78
Between Durham and the Sea, 1100-1500
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