Post by Daniel Silk on Mar 22, 2011 15:16:37 GMT
history.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getconcise.php?id=161
The three tithings into which the medieval parish was divided are all described in Domesday Book. Poulton (‘the farm by the pool’) and Mildenhall itself, whose territories both lay north of the Kennet, were assessed at ten hides each, although already by the eleventh century Mildenhall was much more populous than Poulton, and probably (as later) controlled a larger area. Stitchcombe (‘the valley of gnats’), south of the Kennet, was a very small Domesday estate, and then lay in the hundred of its neighbours to the south, Kinwardstone, rather than Selkley, to which it later belonged. Always heavily wooded, it fell within the jurisdiction of the medieval Savernake Forest until its bounds were redrawn in 1244.
Like its neighbours Mildenhall is a chalkland parish, overlain in places by superficial deposits of clays and clay-with-flints, and with alluvium and gravels in the river valley and coombes. Each tithing had its own sheep-and-corn regime, with its own common fields on the lower ground and pasture on the hills. Additionally, Stitchcombe appears to have had a fulling industry, since a fuller there is mentioned in 1349, and as late as 1843 a field near the river was known as Little Rack Field (tentering racks were used for drying and finishing cloth). In recent years Stitchcombe has become well known for its vineyard, although this has now closed. Mildenhall tithing had a large rabbit warren on the northern edge of its territory, in use from at least the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. In the later middle ages Mildenhall’s upland pasture was enclosed and new holdings created. Woodlands Farm and Mere Farm can be traced to this period, and cropmarks seen on aerial photographs have revealed the site of a substantial Tudor manor house (demolished in the eighteenth century) and courtyard at Woodlands. It used to be thought that a medieval chapel-of-ease associated with the Knights Templars and called ‘Selk’ existed at Woodlands, which gave its name to Selkley hundred, but this cannot be substantiated. The name of a nearby wood, ‘St John’s Throp’, is more likely to refer to the holding in Mildenhall of St John’s Hospital, Marlborough, the later grammar school.
The three tithings into which the medieval parish was divided are all described in Domesday Book. Poulton (‘the farm by the pool’) and Mildenhall itself, whose territories both lay north of the Kennet, were assessed at ten hides each, although already by the eleventh century Mildenhall was much more populous than Poulton, and probably (as later) controlled a larger area. Stitchcombe (‘the valley of gnats’), south of the Kennet, was a very small Domesday estate, and then lay in the hundred of its neighbours to the south, Kinwardstone, rather than Selkley, to which it later belonged. Always heavily wooded, it fell within the jurisdiction of the medieval Savernake Forest until its bounds were redrawn in 1244.
Like its neighbours Mildenhall is a chalkland parish, overlain in places by superficial deposits of clays and clay-with-flints, and with alluvium and gravels in the river valley and coombes. Each tithing had its own sheep-and-corn regime, with its own common fields on the lower ground and pasture on the hills. Additionally, Stitchcombe appears to have had a fulling industry, since a fuller there is mentioned in 1349, and as late as 1843 a field near the river was known as Little Rack Field (tentering racks were used for drying and finishing cloth). In recent years Stitchcombe has become well known for its vineyard, although this has now closed. Mildenhall tithing had a large rabbit warren on the northern edge of its territory, in use from at least the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. In the later middle ages Mildenhall’s upland pasture was enclosed and new holdings created. Woodlands Farm and Mere Farm can be traced to this period, and cropmarks seen on aerial photographs have revealed the site of a substantial Tudor manor house (demolished in the eighteenth century) and courtyard at Woodlands. It used to be thought that a medieval chapel-of-ease associated with the Knights Templars and called ‘Selk’ existed at Woodlands, which gave its name to Selkley hundred, but this cannot be substantiated. The name of a nearby wood, ‘St John’s Throp’, is more likely to refer to the holding in Mildenhall of St John’s Hospital, Marlborough, the later grammar school.