NEWSLETTER
6
WINTER
1973/4
Editor:
Joan Leese
WHITBOURNE’S
MEADOW GREEN
- Mildred Shepherd
Meadow
Green was probably always small and of a triangular shape, the apex starting at
approximately the Poplands Farm, and the base being just S.W. of the School
where the road ran past the Forge (now the Post Office) to the Live & Let
Live Inn, which I understand from a former licensee interested in such matters,
dates from the 15th century - she had found out from the brewery owners holding
the deeds. The old bui1ding, half
timbered, is at the back. The line
of the lane can be seen from the unusual angle of the Post Office to the present
road and ran past the cottage where the first schoolmasters lived until the
School House replaced it in the l870s; it ran under what is now part of the
school playground.
Map
of Whitbourne Farms 1839 . Based on Tithe Map (Click to enlarge)
From
"Whitbourne: A Bishop's Manor" by Phyllis Williams
In
medieval times the lane up from the Church lay over the Bishop’s little bridge
and up the ploughland (until lately orchards), to the left of the present road
known locally as the Church Bank. The existence of a well in the west side
of the track had been known for sometime where a cottage must have stood; and
another was found and filled in on the east side when ploughing was done two
years ago, indicating another. The lower one of these is probably the
cottage mentioned on p.13 of the Rev. A.T.L. Greer’s booklet on Whitbourne,
which he says he found in the Church archives that John Tedersterne (of Tedstone?),
the Bishop’s fisherman in 1433 was granted “… opposite the stone bridge in
the Manor of Whitbourne towards the south and also one acre of land in the field
called Crowenhulle (Crown Hill) …;” the garden of this cottage must have
been the cause of the sudden angle of the old track. This track continues
uphill, through a deep way towards the Poplands Farm and so to skirt Meadow
Green. Exploring this track this spring I found a pond and steep bank
blocking it. The marshy ground must have been banked up to form the pond
out of the spring forming the marsh, after the new road (the Church Bank) was
cut out of the hillside and the old road went out of use, for the old track
survives in a footpath behind the gardens of Meadow Green Cottages to a stile in
the hedge of the school field, (this last bit being used daily by the
schoolchildren of Knightwick last century until their School was built).
This footpath is shown in the 1887 ordnance map as continuing to the Live &
Let Live Inn, though in the 53 years I have known it it stopped at the stile.
There is a possibility that Meadow Green Cottages stood on the Green itself -
they are certainly long and narrow like wayside cottages though they are a
distance from the old track. It is just possible that once the land in
these gardens, the school field and the orchard below (now built on) may have
been part of Meadow Green skirted by the two roads mentioned. The house
called The Croft is shown in the Tithe Roll as Meadow Green Farm and the house
end-on to the road between Poplands Farm and The Croft is called Meadow Green.
I am indebted to Mrs. Phyllis Williams of Hamish Park, who first told me the
school had been built on the Green and who first pointed out to me that the
Poplands, Meadow Green Farm and Meadow Green Cottages originally had their
fronts facing away from the present road and facing the old track, which renewed
my desire to explore the track and trace the history of Meadow Green as far as
possible. There was a large pond on the N.W. side of the Green, now filled
in, but up to the 1960s cattle drank there on their way across the Green, until
it became contaminated.
Then
in 1856 the school was built on the Green and the children’s playground was
the Green itself. In 1875 when the school was extended to the S.W. there
was no longer room for the lane from the Forge and the playground, and the
school playground was joined to the garden of the schoolmaster’s new house and
the new road was made over the Green causing the rather odd hairpin bend we have
nowadays. There was very little Meadow Green left now, though in 1924 when
I first came to the village there were wide verges full of buttercups and other
flowers each side of the road from the Croft to the school on the S.E. side and
wider from the Croft to the pond on the N.W. side and a triangle of grass in the
centre of the road junction by the school. This is all shown in the 1887
ordnance map and hadn’t changed. Since about 1930 the road has been
frequently widened until by the 1970s there was only a narrow strip of Meadow
Green on the N.W side on which had been planted an oak to commemorate the
Coronation of King George V (by Mrs. Gwen Goulding, as a little girl) and
another for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (by Mrs. E.F.H. Evans,
Mrs.Goulding’s mother).
In the 1890s Mr. Bickerton Evans’ son gave a piece of the meadow beyond the
pond for a Reading Room for men and boys, and after the 1914-18 War Captain
E.F.H. Evans gave the adjoining piece of meadow for the Ex-Servicemen’s Hut to
be put up in the early 1920s. This served as a Village Hall until the new
Coronation Hall was built and opened in 1964. Before this dances and whist
drives had been held in the large schoolroom. The land for the new Hall
was given by Captain E.S.F. Evans from part of the same large meadow skirting
the N.W. of the Green. So three generations of the family gave land for
village amenities. At the end of the 1960s the Reading Room and Hut, which
had outlived their use, were taken down. The land on which they stood was
given by the ex-servicemen to be made into a children’s playground and added
to the diminished Meadow Green. In the early 1970s this was rotovated and
seeded and some silver birches, etc. planted, and chain-link and post fence put
along the roadside. In 1973, tree planting year, more trees were added.
A triangle of land is in the ownership of the Coronation Hall, from the back of
the pond site to the M. H. corner, the rest is now Meadow Green and administered
by the Parish Council. By now all the elms have gone. At the end of
the 19th century a row of elms extended from behind the pond, along the edge of
the Green almost to the Poplands Farm and on the S.W. side four large elms stood
until the 1950s, and one until elm disease took it in 1972. Mr. Jack Meek
remembered the elms as a boy in the 1890s.
The village pound was just off Meadow Green to the W and now contains the
electric transformer for the housing estate known as Acreage (called after the
half-timbered cottage of that name on the opposite corner). It was quite
small and must of course have been flat, but when the road past Acreage was cut
out (probably at the time the hairpin bend was made round the school), the soil
was dumped in the long-disused pound making it slope sharply, and elm trees grew
up in it most of which succumbed to elm disease in the 1970s’ outbreak.
Mrs. E.F.H. Evans, now in her 90th year, tells me she remembers grey stone walls
round the pound when she was a child, but by 1924 when I first saw it hedges had
replaced these.
..................................................................................................................
THE
NINETEENTH-CENTURY TITHE SURVEYS
-
‘The
rural landscape of England and Wales in the 1840s is depicted exactly in the
field-by-field surveys carried out by the Tithe Commissioners. Their
enquiries covered about three-quarters of the country. The maps drawn for
each parish show the boundaries of fields, woods, roads, and streams, and the
position of buildings, while the accompanying schedules give the names of their
owners and occupiers, their state of cultivation and their area. The
amount of detailed information they provide about 1and tenure, field systems,
and land use is unequalled in any other series of documents. Their
accuracy is sufficient to warrant their continued use as evidence in courts of
law on matters not directly connected with the payment of tithe. Their
uniformity and comprehensiveness are surpassed only by the Land Utilisations
Survey of the 1930s. Indeed they rank as the most complete record of the
agrarian landscape at any period.’
The above is quoted from an article by H.C Prince in the Agricultural
History Review, VII (1959). Our Society’s research group is making
extensive use of the tithe surveys in their studies of the history of the rural
areas around Bromyard. Group members are writing, for each of the parishes
studied, a short statement of the situation as shown by the tithe survey and
these will be published from time to time in the Newsletter. The following
condensed version of the article by Prince may be helpful to the understanding
of the parish statements to follow.
The
Nature of Tithes
Tithes customarily represented a tenth of the annual increase of the produce of
the soil and were of three kinds: predial tithes, payable on the
fruits of the earth, such as corn, hay, wood, fruit and other crops; mixed or
agistment tithes, payable on animal products, such as colts, lambs, calves,
wool, milk, eggs and honey; and personal tithes, payable on the clear gains of a
man’s labour and industry, generally levied on the profits of milling and
fishing. By common law, tithes were not payable on minerals or anything
that formed part of the freehold. Deer, rabbits, partridges, pheasants,
wildfowl and fish were tithable by special custom only.
In the first instance tithes were paid to the rector of a parish, who might be a
resident incumbent or a bishop, prior or college. An absentee rector
normally appointed a vicar to perform his parochial services and allotted him a
portion of the revenue of the benefice, usually the small tithes These
included all tithes except those on grain, hay and wood, which constituted the
great tithes. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, rectories
and tithes belonging to the dissolved houses were vested in the Crown, and most
were subsequently sold to laymen. Lay impropriators still hold nearly a
quarter of the nett annual value of all tithes at the time of commutation.
The payment of tithes in kind was a cause of endless disputes between farmers
and tithe owners. Very costly proceedings were entered upon to determine
which courts should hear such suits, who was liable to pay, how payments should
be assessed, and how they should be paid. Frequently disputes arose
concerning the nature of tithable produce It was once decided that
partridges were ‘ferae naturae’ and therefore exempt from tithe as were
turkeys On another occasion wild cherries and fallen apples were
adjudged to be subject to tithe. The most difficult cases of all were
those involving the produce of woodland. In some areas all woodlands were
exempt; in others only certain trees; in yet others the trunks and branches were
exempt, but acorns, mast and even charcoal were tithable.
Tithes were an imposition which bore most heavily on progressive farmers whose
yields were great but whose expenditure was also large. In areas where the
profit to be gained from improvement was likely to be small, potential investors
were undoubtedly deterred from venturing their capital because of the incidence
of tithes.
The Board of Agriculture reports at the beginning of the nineteenth century
unanimously condemned the payment of tithes in kind but they noted that other
forms of payment were common in most countries. Tithes were converted to
other forms of payment by two different methods; either by a formal agreement
between the tithe owners and farmers, or alternatively under the terms of a
parliamentary enclosure award. The first method often resulted in tithes
being converted for a fixed annual money payment known as a modus or
composition. But a fixed sum of money was not strictly equivalent to a
tithe payment which varied from year to year according to the amount and value
of farm produce For this reason some agreements stipulated that a
fixed sum be paid for an agreed number of years, some provided for a periodic
revision of the payment, while others specified that the sum should fluctuate
from year to year with the price of some commodity, usually wheat When
tithes were dealt with under a parliamentary enclosure act, they were generally
extinguished in return for allotments of land. There were marked regional
as well as social differences in the manner of commuting tithes under
parliamentary acts. In some areas, they were invariably extinguished; in
others, moduses and compositions prevailed.
The
Tithe Commutation Act of 1836
In 1836 an act was passed to commute all tithes in kind and substitute a
fluctuating money payment known as a corn rent adjusted each year on the basis
of the seven year average price of wheat, barley and oats. The amount of
corn rent-charge was to be obtained by dividing £100 of tithe into three equal
portions and calculating how much wheat, barley and oats could be bought with
each and multiplying these quantities by the average price in succeeding years.
In 1836 the septennial average price of wheat was 7s.0½d. per bushel, of barley
3s.ll½d. per bushel, of oats 2s.9d. per bushel At these prices £33.6s.8d.
bought 94.96 bushels of wheat, or 168.42 bushels of barley, or 242.42 bushels of
oats. Each succeeding year the corn rent-charge on £100 of tithe was to
be the sum of the septennial average prices of these quantities of grain.
In this way the purchasing power of the money payment was preserved.
The first task was to establish the boundaries of every district in which tithes
were paid separately. This was known as a tithe district to distinguish it
from a parish. What was frequently disputed was not the existence of a
parish, but the exact extent of its boundaries. This was particularly
important for someone who was .a tithe owner in one parish and a tithe payer
elsewhere. Again, the tithe payments themselves differed from parish to
parish both in their nature and amount, so that a particular piece of land might
carry a higher rent charge if it were included in one parish rather than in
another.
Once an agreement or award had been confirmed by the Commissioners the rent had
to be apportioned among the lands of the parish. This was done according
to principles agreed upon by the landowners, or if no principles were agreed
upon according to the average tithable produce and productive quality of the
lands It was inevitably difficult to apportion the rent-charge
equitably among lands of differing quality and differing utilisation, not
because the actual use of the land was difficult to determine but because its
tithable produce was likely to change from time to time. Previously, it
had been possible to reduce the amount of tithes by converting arable or meadow
to pasture, thereby substituting a mixed tithe for a predial tithe of corn or
hay; or to avoid payment altogether by fallowing arable land, etc. On the
other hand, the tithe owner was entitled to benefit from an increase in
productivity resulting from land reclamation, artificial drainage or other
improvement. In fixing the apportionment of an area of marsh pasture
capable of producing normal crops with the aid of artificial drainage, it was
decided in an early test case that ‘regard was to be had to the probability of
the lands being converted from one species of culture to another.’ But
in practice there was no way of assessing the probability of lands being
converted to other uses, and the only alternative to rating all lands alike at
the same valuation was to differentiate them on the basis of their observed
state of cultivation.
Apart
from making provision for the change of culture of hop ground and market
gardens, the act did nothing to prevent the temporary value of land being made
the basis of a permanent change. Indeed the method of apportionment
authorised under the act was that based on an accurate field survey. The
essential purpose of the survey was to make an accurate measurement of the
acreage of each parcel of land, or tithe area, and to record its observed state
of cultivation. For the purpose of valuation the state of cultivation was
recorded as ‘arable’, ‘grass’, ‘meadow’ or ‘pasture’,
‘common’, ‘wood’, ‘coppice’, ‘plantation’, ‘orchard’, ‘hop
ground’ or ‘market garden’. In general, the most important
distinction was between arable, regularly ploughed and cropped, whose tithes
amounted to about one-fifth of the value of the rent, and permanent grassland,
whose tithes represented less than one-eighth of the rent. In the West of
England, and probably in Wales, the arable appears to have included all ley
grasses. In many parishes no distinction was drawn between meadow that was
mown for hay once a year or more, and pasture that was normally used exclusively
for grazing, yet the assessment of an acre of meadowland might be as much as
eight times that of pasture. Woods, coppices, and plantations were not
always separately distinguished. Lands devoted to orchards, hop grounds,
or market gardens were usually classified according to their actual state of
cultivation, but they might be rated as arable or grass and charged with a
supplementary or extraordinary rent-charge.
A special problem confronted the Commissioners in apportioning the rent-charge
of Lammas lands and commons. These were owned in severality for only a
part of the year; from Lammas to Candlemas they lay open to common grazing.
A further difficulty arose in apportioning the rent-charge where part of the
lands of a parish were exempt from tithe.
The
Tithe Maps and Apportionments
The Tithe Commissioners succeeded in resolving many of the complex problems
which had previously embittered relations between the tithe payers and tithe
owners. In a majority of parishes they were able to secure an agreement,
in the remainder they imposed an award. Throughout the country they
carried out their task with speed and thoroughness. We are lucky that in
our district, because enclosure had been at an early date, tithe surveys were
carried out in every parish. Similar but less extensive information is
also available for the three extra parochial areas of Brockhampton, Grendon
Warren and Saltmarshe in the form of Deeds of Merger of Tithes made by virtue of
the act of l836.
The details of the survey for most parishes are set down in two documents,
namely, a map and an apportionment. The map or plan is usually drawn at a
scale of three chains to an inch, approximately 26.7 inches to a mile. All
maps show the boundaries of the tithe areas within a parish. The tithe
areas usually correspond with fields. The amount of detail on the maps
varies considerably. Most maps mark the course of streams, etc. the
outlines of fields, lakes, ponds, and the line of roads and footpaths
Many of them use distinctive tree symbols to show coniferous and
deciduous woodland.
The apportionment contains the articles of agreement or statement of award,
giving the names of the Commissioners, surveyors and tithe owners, and the date
of confirmation. Also given are the area of the parish, the area subject
to tithes, etc. The most important section is the schedule of
apportionment in which each tithe area, numbered on the accompanying plan, is
listed under the name of both its owner and its occupier. Whereas in the
majority of cases the tithe area is a field and the field name is recorded;
where it is not it is described, for example, as a ‘house and garden’ or a
‘piece of water’. Its state of cultivation is entered for the purposes
of valuation according to the local practice. The statute acreage and the
value of the rent-charge apportioned to it are stated, and a final column is
left for remarks.
Three statutory copies of these documents were prepared. The original is
with the Tithe Redemption Commission The second copy should be in
the parish chest and the third in the diocesan registry. Those copies have
often been lost or damaged or transferred to a county records office.
The
Surveys as a Source for the Geography of England and Wales
Not surprisingly, Prince says that if the geography of England and Wales in 1840
is to be written, full use will have to be made of the tithe surveys. He
itemizes the different kinds of information that they give and, long though the
list is, it could be made even longer. He then makes suggestions as to how
the tithe surveys can be used in combination with other sources, such as the
1841 census returns and enumerators books, private estate accounts, farm leases,
etc.
.............................................................................................................
‘A
VILLAGE CONSERVATIVE CO-OPERATIVE COMPANY’
The
following letter, which was published in The Worcestershire Chronicle on 25th
March 1882, under our heading, was found among the Barneby Papers in the County
Records Office. Perhaps it was written by an indignant Liberal. It
shows the error of assuming that 19th-century landowners went their ways
uncriticised publicly by the rest of the community. Evidently they were,
at least behind the protection of a pseudonym.
“Sir,
I noticed in your evening issue of Tuesday last, which is much appreciated here
at Bromyard, a paragraph in the Petty Sessions report which stated that ‘A
temporary transfer of the licence of the New Inn was granted from Mr. David
Knight to H.J. Bailey, Esq., of Rowden Abbey.’
Well,
Sir, I learnt that the public-house in question is the New Inn, Wacton, situate
about four miles from our town. The owner of the property is Mr. W.H.
Barneby, (a magistrate), and the tenant from whom the licence has been
transferred is Mr. David Knight, who is leaving because he cannot obtain a
reduction of rent, the figure at which it stood being too high to enable him to
carry on the business with sufficient profit to himself. (I may here
mention that there is a Butcher’s shop and a grocery store in connection with
the public house). As would appear from the report in the paper, H.J.
Bailey, Esq., is now to become the general provider for the villagers, but this
I find is not the case. The gentleman in question has been or is to be
joined in the business by the Hon. B St. John, W.H. Barneby, Esq ,and
Captain Enderby (all Conservative Magistrates for the Bromyard Division) who are
jointly to carry on the ‘store’ and retail beer, beef and ‘baccy’ to the
inhabitants. Presumably they will put someone in to represent them
But does it not seem singular that while gentlemen who are connected
with a certain trade as brewers, distillers and the like, are disqualified from
being appointed Magistrates, others who have been raised to the Bench should
concern themselves with said trade? You may take it for granted that these
gentlemen will do their best to ensure the proper conduct of the house, but
accidents, you know, do unfortunately occur in the best regulated families, and
should such a thing as a breach of the law occur at the New Inn, Wacton, would
not Robert the Blue find himself rather awkwardly situated in laying information
against his Magisterial masters? Hodge you may know, will get drunk
occasionally and when in a devil-may-care mood his conduct becomes what the
police call disorderly. How funny, but at the same time how unlikely, to
find the holder of the licence, H.J Bailey, Esq., summoned or in any way
made amenable to the law as other landlords are! What a curious
predicament the village policeman will find himself in.
I was musing over the state of things thus brought about when my informant
volunteered the information that there were two other licensed houses in the
district, but that both were likely to be closed, thus leaving the Conservative
Co-operative Company in sole possession of the ground. ‘How is that?’
I asked. I was then told that the occupier of one had lately been
fined £10 by the Bromyard Bench on a charge of receiving straw which had been
stolen from H.J. Bailey, Esq. The man has since prosecuted the witness
upon whose evidence he was convicted on a charge of perjury and though the Bench
declined to commit her for trial she is to be indicted at the next Assizes.
Meanwhile the man is not allowed to sell. In the face of the conviction
this may be perfectly legal, but pending the trial of the witness it seems
rather harsh. The other licence holder having been convicted (his first
offence) for selling during prohibited hours, has received notice that the
renewal of his licence will be opposed.
Sir, these facts seemed to me so peculiar that I thought it would be a pity not
to let the public know of them. There may be other county squires (and
Magistrates) who would like to start a Conservative Public-House Company in the
division where they administer the law.
Yours
obediently, LOOKER-ON
Bromyard, March 22”
