14. Domesday
In 1086 King William initiated a survey of the taxable assets of the entire country. Large cities such as London or Winchester were excluded.
The Domesday Book, concentrating on the rural farming areas, provides records of landowners, their tenants, the amount of land they owned,how many people occupied the land such as villagers, smallholders, freemen, and slaves. It also recorded the amount of woodland, meadow, ploughed land and other resources. It also was intended to record churches, castles, mills and salt houses. The end result was a valuation of the entire assets of the country, all for the purposes of levying taxes. King William died before the job was finished.
The approximate population of England at this time was 1 1/4 to 2million. In Roman times it was said to be 4 million. Many villages were razed by the conquering Norman armies especially in the north.
The following are notes with explanations, taken from the part of the Domesday Book which relates to Harley.
Shropshire SCIROPESCIRE
Harley HARLEGE
The Domesday Book states that Harley is now a Parish and that the village is in the Condover Hundred. Hundreds were administrative areas under Anglo Saxon rule and under Norman rule contained a number of manors.
It first notes that the Helgot interest in a single manor in Harley had been lost (it does not say how) and that the manor was now in the ownership of the Honour of Montgomery, and that the Lord of the Manor was Richard de Harley, who was a Knight, (according to the National Archives)
Domesday confirms that the Lord held 3 hides, which was probably about 120 acres capable of being ploughed to produce crops.
However, it goes on to state that Harley consists of 4 manors held by Edric, Wulfer, Almind and Edric.These were all Freemen who would have been free to leave the domain although very few Freemen, actually did.
There are 4 hides here, (about 160 acres), with land for 4 ½ ploughs, with enough woodland to fatten 100 pigs (Pannage) The area of woodland is not stated and elsewhere, it is said that where woodland existed it was often understated.
Domesday
Land for 1 ½ ploughs lay in the Lord’s demesne ( the figures are not consistent.
Domesday states that there were 3 slaves, 1 villager and 1 smallholder. The 4 manors were Harley, Domas, Rowley and Blakeway although these are not named in Domesday. The remark ‘he found it waste’ probably refers to a surrounding area in the process of being cleared of trees, but in a scrubby state not yet able to be ploughed and cultivated.
Note that all the land was owned by the Lord. Freemen rented their land from the Lord but did not work for the Lord. Cottars worked for the Lord and in return received a place to stay and a small share of the harvest. Villiers, the most numerous, worked the Lord’s land. They had to pay taxes to the Lord and to the church, and could not leave. Harvest was the most difficult period for them. They had to work their own land (which they did not own) and the Lord’s land (the demesne). In addition they had to fell trees, dig ditches, build and maintain palisades and fences.
Studies in Anglo Saxon Institutions suggests that in Mercia, a hide may have been fixed at 40 acres. Others maintain that ‘hides were of an uncertain size’. Some say that a hide was 120a but now it is thought that a hide was more a measure of value rather than area.
HM Chadwick
This is the extent of what Domesday recorded about Harley. There were only five households according to the Victoria County History (recent updated version). It was a very small village.
Each manor would have been a hamlet, a small cluster of log-built houses with thatched roofs, and with cultivated land surrounded by and contained within log palisades. Beyond there probably would have been more ploughed land and pasture/meadow land with areas beyond where trees were being grubbed up and the land prepared for the plough. There would also have been houses outside the cluster as separate farmsteads.
Each hamlet would have been of different size with Domas, next to the river, being the largest and the oldest. Domas could well have been the Saxon ‘mother village’ the head of the Saxon estate having been an established settlement before the Saxons arrived, that is during Roman times, and earlier, which has been suspected.
The Harley Manor would from early times have been a rather special place. It was and is on higher ground than Domas.
At some unknown date after the Conquest, a Manor House would have been built and it is very likely that this would have been located in Harley rather than in Domas. Where it was built is open to speculation (see later) but it should be noted that there was a very close and special relationship between the Lord and the Church. Lords would often fund the building of the church and it is obvious that the Lord and the Priest were in effect the village ‘elders’, heads and leaders in every way, psychologically, socially and economically
The layout of the Norman village followed the previous Anglo Saxon layout, but the layout of Harley is older than that, certain roads could well have been Neolithic tracks. For example Domas Lane. Domas the main village centre was connected by the river to a Water Mill and the two were connected by tracks to the Church, assuming that one existed. Other tracks would have led out to each of the three fields, the South field towards Rowley and Blakeway, the North field towards Wigwig (which is recorded in the Domesday Book) and the West field towards Kenley.
The Wigwig to Domas track may have been the original route to the village from the Severn flats. Speculatively, there could also have been a connecting track to Cressage.
Domesday notes
The Domesday Book gives the wrong impression of compact villages centred around a church and separated by open land. They were not.
Most in the late 11th C showed an ancient pattern of isolated farms, hamlets and tiny villages interspersed with cultivatable land.
As in the Iron Age, over time, settlements gradually shifted, or were abandoned or reclaimed. This would have been much the same in the Bronze Age and the Neolithic, perhaps even more so.
It is thought that the Domesday Book underestimates the amount of woodland. Partially cleared scruffy, overgrown woodland may not have been deemed worthy of a separate assessment.
A wood for 30 swine was 150 acres. 1 pig needed 5 acres. The number of pigs grew several fold for around 250 years after the Norman Conquest – probably up to the time of the plague.
It should be remembered that very little is known of Saxon Shropshire beyond the image preserved in the Conqueror’s survey of 1086, so most of what is written is conjecture based around what was known to be happening elsewhere, assuming that Shropshire was consistent with this.