Danae Tankard
Figure 1.
The Boarhunt hall house, re-erected at the Museum.
The medieval
hall house from Boarhunt in Hampshire has been tentatively dated to the late
14th century on the basis of comparison with similar Hampshire houses that
have been dendro-dated (dated by tree-ring analysis) and the distinctive
seesaw marks that occur on all the timbers. When the house was rescued in
1971, in an advanced state of decay, it consisted of a timber-framed
structure containing two rooms: a two bay cruck hall, and a room – possibly
a service room – under the hipped end. It had brick walls, of several
different dates, and a thatched roof.
Figure 4.
Drawing showing the cruck arch of the Boarhunt hall house
as reconstructed
at the Museum.
An upper floor had been inserted over
the hall and a large brick chimney serving two ground floor hearths and a
bake oven had been built in the lower end of the hall. The service room was
still open to the roof, and the rafters and thatch battens were heavily sooted from the original open fire. Although only about 30% of the original
timbers survived, the reconstruction of the medieval hall house was
considered worthwhile since the building was small and simple and the
remains well distributed throughout the frame. Elements of the building as
it has been reconstructed remain speculative, however, notably the location
of the doors and windows and the dimensions of the room at the hall’s upper
end (usually described as the ‘chamber’ or ‘solar’).
Medieval
Boarhunt
Boarhunt
lies on the northern slope of Portsdown approximately four miles north of
Porchester (separated from it by the M27). It now forms two settlements,
North and
South Boarhunt, separated by the river Wallington.
North
Boarhunt, running northwards along
Trampers Lane,
is the more populous part. South Boarhunt consists of a few scattered farms, the
church of St
Nicholas and the former manor house (Manor Farm). During the medieval period
Boarhunt was divided into at least three manors,
West Boarhunt,
Boarhunt Herberd and Boarhunt Herbelyn, with a possible fourth manor of East
Boarhunt. West Boarhunt, which appears to have been roughly coterminous with
the parish of West Boarhunt, was the principal manor.
Figure 2.
Map showing Boarhunt parish and the position of the hall house (red
circle).
In around
1190 the manor was given to Southwick Priory, a house of Augustinian canons,
situated approximately two miles away. In 1369 the Priory also acquired the
neighbouring manors of Boarhunt Herberd and Herbelyn. The hall house was
situated a short distance from the church and manor house, in what is now
South Boarhunt but was previously the manor of
West Boarhunt. The area around Boarhunt is classic ‘woodland’ or
‘wood pasture’ landscape – meaning an area of land characterized by a
mixture of pasture, woods, arable and heaths, with some edged fields. ‘Woodland’
was distinct from ‘forest’, which referred to an area subject to forest law.
Forests, like the Forest of Bere, were reserved to the crown or its lessees
and were used for deer ranching, hunting and timber. Woodland settlements
tended to be dispersed rather than nucleated and this was the case in
medieval Boarhunt, with the population thinly distributed throughout the
parish. In this sense it was not a ‘village’ at all, but should be described
as a settlement or a community.
The
pre-Black Death Community
In the first
half of the 14th century the population of Boarhunt may have been in the
region of 160 to 180 people. The majority of these would have been villeins
or unfree tenants (also known as customary tenants or serfs). ‘Unfree’
refers both to personal status and to tenure. Unfree status was
inherited through the male line and unfree tenants were (in law, at least)
effectively chattels of their lord: they could be bought or sold along with
his other property and evicted from their land at will. In return for
holding land, unfree tenants were required to provide labour services, which
were meticulously set out in manorial surveys or custumals. Peasant holdings
were uniform in size: a virgate (usually c.30 acres but in Boarhunt probably
closer to 20), 1⁄2 virgate (c.10 acres), 1 farthingland (5 acres) or 4
acres.
Most peasant
holdings in Boarhunt consisted of five acres or less of land.
Farming
and the peasant economy
The arable
field system in
West Boarhunt
consisted of a combination of open common fields, and closes – enclosed
parcels of land bounded by ditches and hedges. Each tenant probably held a
mixture of land, some interspersed with other tenants’ lands in the common
fields and some enclosed. The crops on the demesne lands were wheat, barley
and oats grown in a three-course rotation – that is, the arable was divided
into three courses with each used in turn for winter and spring grains and
then fallowed. On the neighbouring manor of Boarhunt Herberd beans, peas and
vetch were also grown. The crops the tenants grew were much the same: 16th
century probate inventories record wheat, barley and oats, rye and peas.
Women reaping. From the Luttrell Psalter. England, before 1340
Reproduced by permission of The British Library, further reproduction
prohibited.
The
seigneurial sheep flocks were pastured together with the tenants’ sheep on
the downland on the north side of Portsdown. In 1421 John Borewell was
presented in the manorial court for killing a sheep worth 14d with his cart
on ‘Portesdon’. In the mid 15th century the priory was maintaining a flock
of approximately 300-350 sheep in
West Boarhunt
– a small flock in comparison with those on the manors of the Bishop of
Winchester, which could number up to 2000. In 1450-1 the Priory also had 12
oxen, 12 cows and 12 bullocks. The number of oxen suggests that the canons
were still using oxen for ploughing, and possibly for hauling as well. The
cows were probably used for milk, which was used to make cheese and butter.
The tenants would have kept a variety of livestock, depending on their
wealth and the size of their holdings. They paid pannage for the right to
let their pigs forage in the woodland, the amount determined by the age of
the pig: 2d for a one-year old pig down to 1⁄2d for a weaned piglet.
Shepherds. Smithfield Decretals.
England early 14th century
Reproduced by permission of The British Library, further reproduction
prohibited.
It has been
suggested that this part of Hampshire was a consuming rather than a
producing region, meaning that it had little surplus produce to export and
external trade links were weak. Tenants holding less than 10 acres (the
amount of land needed to feed a peasant family of five) can only have
survived by hiring themselves out as wage labourers and most tenants
probably supplemented their income with by-employment such as brewing,
baking, dairying, and small-scale industrial activities such as potting. The
overall impression of Boarhunt in the late medieval period is of a poor,
woodland area with a relatively weak rural economy and little rural
industry.
The
Black Death and its Aftermath
Hampshire
was one of the earliest points of entry for the Black Death in the summer of
1348. It was at its most virulent during the first six months of 1349, after
which plague mortality abated. Nationally it is thought that the Black Death
killed between 40% and 70% of the population, and some communities were
wiped out altogether. In so far as it is possible to ascertain, Black Death
mortality in Boarhunt may have been relatively low, at 25%. The population
of Boarhunt seems to have recovered fairly quickly so that by the end of the
14th century it was almost the same as it had been before the Black Death.
The century and a half after 1350 was a difficult time for landlords. Faced
with a shortage of tenants, increased tenant mobility and agricultural
depression, they were forced to try to make customary tenancies more
attractive, by ‘improving’ holdings (for example, by adding more land),
lowering entry fines and reducing or removing labour services.
This period
witnessed the gradual decline and ultimate disappearance of villeinage both
as a form of unfree tenure and as unfree personal status.
In Boarhunt
by the end of the 14th century traditional villein labour
services had been commuted to cash rents and by the early 15th century the
majority of tenants were personally free, although some land was still held
by villein tenure. The standard peasant holdings of the pre-Black Death
period disappeared as peasants took advantage of the reduced population to
acquire vacant holdings.
The ready
availability of land meant that tenants abandoned less desirable holdings
and allowed the buildings that were surplus to their requirements to fall
into ruin. The new mobility of the population is reflected in the fact that
much of the population increase in Boarhunt in the late 14th
century was the result of inward migration.
All of these
changes presented Southwick Priory with ongoing problems, as they sought to
enforce traditional custom through the manorial court.
To
illustrate some of these problems, we can look at the activities of John and
Simon Roche, a father and son, as they are recorded in successive court
rolls from 1413 to 1420. John Roche or his father may have been a
post-plague migrant to Boarhunt. Roche’s opportunism meant that he was able
to acquire a mixture of customary and free land in different parts of the
manor. In 1396 he is described as holding three (customary) cottages, for
which he paid 2s 3d every quarter year. At the time of his death he was
holding a messuage (a house) and three acres of villein (or customary) land
from the Priory in joint tenancy with his son, Simon, and a tenement (a
complete peasant holding, with house, land and any outbuildings) in free
tenure from Richard Russell, which may have been where he lived.
In 1413 he
was fined in the manorial court for allowing his ‘tenement’ to fall into
ruin and ordered to repair it before the next court. In this and subsequent
entries it is likely that the ‘tenement’ that is being referred to is the
messuage with its three acres. The fact that he was failing to maintain it
suggests that it was the land attached to the holding he was interested in,
and not the house itself, which he did not need. In 1414 he was fined 3d for
allowing the ditch (in front of his tenement) to overflow onto the highway
and was again ordered to repair his tenement before the next court. In 1416
John Roche died and the court roll recorded a fine of 6d against him because
his tenement (i.e. his messuage) was in ruins. In 1418 Simon
Roche was
fined 3d for failing to repair his tenement, and ordered to repair it before
the next court on pain of a 20s fine. The same court roll records that he
surrendered a cottage with five acres of customary land lying uncultivated
into the lord’s hands. In 1420 and 1421 Simon Roche was again fined for
failing to repair his tenement. After this the court roll series ends so he
disappears from view.
Across the
country the combination of falling grain prices and rising labour costs
meant that many manorial landlords abandoned direct cultivation of the
demesne in the late 14th century.
Southwick
Priory kept the manorial demesne and its mill in hand for as long as
possible but it was unable to resist the economic pressures of the post
plague years and by c.1450 both were being leased to farmers.
Mills were vital in
early communities for producing flour for breadmaking.
Medieval
housing
The greater
survival of peasant houses from the period after 1350 reflects the rising
wealth of the peasant class in the post plague period. Although documentary
evidence for medieval peasant housing on the manor of West Boarhunt is
relatively sparse such evidence as does exist is consistent with what we
know about peasant housing on the better documented manors of Titchfield
Abbey, most of which lay within a few miles of Boarhunt. Peasant houses on
the Titchfield manors were of two or three bays, divided internally into a
hall, a chamber or solar at the upper end and (for three bay houses) a
service room at the lower end. Many dwellings had a barn, usually a detached
building, and they might also have a detached bake house.
In probate
inventories that survive for Boarhunt from the late 16th century the room
described as the ‘kitchen’ was clearly the service room at the lower end of
the hall, and it was used for storage and possibly for food preparation
(including dairying). Cooking and eating took place in the hall. The chamber
or solar was where the family slept, and stored their linen, clothing and
valuables.
The relative
poverty of Boarhunt is reflected in the fact that in the second half of the
16th century tenants were still living in traditional two or three bay
houses, like the Boarhunt hall house.
Sawing Wood.
Smithfield Decretals.
England early 14th century
Reproduced by permission of The British Library, further reproduction
prohibited.
Who
lived in the Boarhunt hall house?
The short
answer to this is that it has not been possible to identify any of the
occupants of the hall house. The documentary sources surviving for the
medieval period only identify peasant holdings by the name of a previous
tenant. In a minority of cases the tenant’s name has survived in a modern
place name but in most cases, including that of the hall house, it has not.
Later records are similarly unhelpful.
Although the
hall house is numbered on the 1839 tithe map, it has no corresponding entry
in the accompanying schedule. This is because it formed part of a large
parcel of lands owned by Thomas Thistlethwaite for which tithe payments had
at some previous date been merged. Moreover, as patron of the church,
Thistlethwaite owned all the tithes. The omission of the house from the 1841
census (which listed all residential dwellings) would suggest that at this
date it was not being used as a domestic residence.
However,
whilst the medieval occupants remain unknown, it is possible to say with
reasonable confidence that they were likely to have been customary tenants,
probably men like John and Simon Roche, who had benefited from the
post-Black Death conditions and acquired a number of holdings, which could
have included a mixture of free and customary land.
Figure 3.
Hall house prior to dismantling in 1971. The lower part to the right is the
medieval section.
Figure 5.
The house photographed just after the First World War.
The medieval portion
re-erected at the Museum is at the far end.
Select
Bibliography
Dyer, C.,
Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of
Britain 850-1520
(London, 2003).
Roberts, E.,
The Hall House from Boarhunt (report commissioned by the WDOAM, 2000).
Roberts, E.,
Hampshire Houses 1250-1700: Their Dating & Development (Southampton,
2003).
Watts, G.,
Medieval tenant housing on the Titchfield estates, Hampshire Studies 57
(2002), 53-58.
