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Domesday Water Mills

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Margaret T. Hodgen
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Extract

The staple food crops of Saxon and Norman England included rye, barley, oats, millet, beans, and peas. Wheat also was not unknown. In fact, a few carbonized grains have been found upon Neolithic sites. But, even as late as the thirteenth century, wheaten bread in more than one region of England was a luxury food, enjoyed by the mass of the agricultural population only on boon days or religious festivals. The porridges and cereal soups, or flat-baked cakes and small loaves, which accompanied the peasants’ daily cheese, sausages or herring, were usually made from a coarse meal composed of rye, or rye mingled in some proportion with wheat, barley, oats or beans.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 13 , Issue 51 , September 1939 , pp. 261 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1939

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References

1 John Percival, Wheat in Great Britain, (1934), 9–16; Google Scholar Seebohm, M.E. Evolution of the English Farm (1912), passim.Google Scholar

2 Sir William, Ashley The bread of our forefathers: an inquiry in economic history, (1928),126 and passim.Google Scholar

3 Bennett, Richard and Elton, John History of Cornmilling, (1899),2, 96–7.Google Scholar

4 The earliest reliable allusion to the existence of a corn mill in England occurs for the year 762 in a charter granted by Ethelbert of Kent to the owners of a monastic mill situated east of Dover (Bennett and Elton, op. cit., 11, 96)

5 Lindet, L. ‘Les origines du moulin à grains’ Revue archéologique, (1899),2et (1900), 1.1;Google Scholar Marc Bloch, ‘Avenement et conquetes du moulin a eau’ Annates d’histoire economique et sociale, septième année (1935), 538–63.Google Scholar

6 Bennett, and Elton, op. cit., 2, 6–30;Google Scholar Joseph P., O’Reilly, –Some further notes on ancient horizontal watermills, native and foreign’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 26, Section c (1902–04),55–84;Google Scholar Cecil Curwen, E. ‘The Hebrides: a cultural backwater’, Antiquity, vol.12,no. 47 (1938), 284.Google Scholar

7 The mills in the Shetland Islands are described as ‘ being designed for a race of pygmies ’, while those existing in Scotland in 1814, of which there were more than 500, ‘ were enclosed in a hovel about the size of a pigstye, … and incapable of grinding more than a sack at a time ’. (O’Reilly, op. cit., 62–4.)

8 James Tait, Domesday survey of Cheshire, (1916), 2– 3.Google Scholar

9 Victoria History of Berkshire, ed. by P.H. Ditchfield: William, Page(1906), 1 345 Google Scholar

10 Victoria History of the County of Norfolk, ed. by William, Page(1906), 2 63 Google Scholar

11 Rent was occasionally paid in iron, a fact which suggests that water power may have been used for purposes other than corn grinding.

12 Sir Henry, Ellis General introduction to Domesday Book, (1833), 1 41n. 1Google Scholar

13 Due largely to the admirable work of the English Place–Name Society

14 These translations appear in the Victoria Histories of the Counties of England for Bedford, Berks., Buckingham, Cornwall, Derby, Devon, Essex, Hampshire, Hertford, Hereford, Huntingdon, Kent, Leicester, Norfolk, Northampton, Nottingham, Rutland, Shropshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwick, Worcester, Yorkshire

A recent translation for Cheshire is inDomesday survey of Cheshire by James Tait (1916);Google Scholar for Lincolnshire in The Lincolnshire Domesday andLindsey survey ranslated and edited by Foster, C.W. and Longley, Thomas Lincoln Record Society, 1924, vol.19.Google Scholar

15 Eyton, R.W.M. Key to Domesday (1878)Google Scholar

16 Jones, W.H. Domesday for Wiltshire (1865)Google Scholar

17 Bennett, and Elton, op.cit. 147–162;Google Scholar Skeat, W.W., Place–names of Cambridgeshire (1901);Google Scholar Alexander, H., Place–names of Oxfordshire (1912;Google Scholar Baddeley, W.St.C. Place-names of Gloucestershire (1913);Google Scholar Duignan, W.H. Staffordshire place–names (1902).Google Scholar

18 The existence of fractional or jointly owned mills is discussed by Maitland in Domesday Book and beyond (144) as a possible evidence of communal ownership in eleventh-century England. (For a somewhat opposing view see Thévenin, Marcel ‘Etudes sur la propriété au moyen àge; la « propriété « et la «justice « des moulins et fours’ Revue historique (1886, 31, 241–58). Google ScholarOn the other hand, fractional holdings in mills, like fractional holdings in fields and peasants, may be ascribed to division by inheritance.(Coulton, G.G., Medieval village, 1923, 40,45.)Google ScholarSuch mills are usually mentioned as being divided between two holders or in halves. Less frequently three or four holders are indicated by the mention of a third of a mill or a fourth of a mill. In Lincoln, Norfolk, Sussex, and Surrey however a few mills are divided among five, six, seven or even eight holders. Norfolk, Lincoln, Wiltshire, Suffolk, Kent and Hampshire are the counties in which the greater number of fractional mills occurred and, according to Maitland, the counties in which joint mill ownership was most frequent. In Norfolk 87 manors are mentioned as sites of fractional mills; in Lincoln 38; Wiltshire 23; Suffolk 15; Kent 13; Hampshire 11; Somerset 9; Oxford 7; Berkshire, Essex and Cambridge 6; Northampton, Sussex, Surrey and Nottingham 5; and the remaining counties less than 5.

19 Fox, Sir Cyril The personality of Britain: its influence on inhabitant and invader in prehistoric and early historic times (1933),69.Google Scholar

20 Thurlow Leeds, E. Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon settlements (1913),18.Google Scholar

21 A number of mills are mentioned as existing on manors which now seem to be unwatered. It has been suggested that these may have been operated by horse power. It is more likely that changes in rainfall have occurred leading to the drying up of formerly water-filled valleys. Meyer, G.M. ‘ Early water mills in relation to changes in rainfall in East Kent’ Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meterorological Society (1927), 53, 407–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Pearse Chope, R. ‘Domesday mills in Devon and Cornwall’ Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries (1922), 12, 21–23.Google Scholar

23 23 In Scotland, where a similar type of mill abounded, no fewer than fifty-one were enumerated within a radius of about eight miles (O’Reilly, op. cit., 82).

24 Stenton, F.M. William the Conqueror and the rule of the Normans (1908), 489 Google Scholar

25 Round, J.H. ‘Domesday Book and other kindred records’ in the Victoria History of Devonshire (1906), 1, 399.Google Scholar

26 Gibbins, H. de B. Industry in England (1920), 70.Google Scholar

27 Adolphus Ballard, Domesday boroughs (1904), 9–.Google Scholar

28 Maitland, F.W. Domesday Book and beyond (1897), 17, 437.Google Scholar

29 Gibbins, , op. cit., 66.Google Scholar

30 Gibbins, , op. cit., 81 Google Scholar.and note 3. See also Maitland, op. cit., 17– 20.Google Scholar

* Ellis, Sir Henry, as cited in Gibbins, H.de B., Industry in England (1920), 67.Google Scholar