Southern Exmoor and the Domesday Survey
Domesday book is a comprehensive survey of manorial assets in England between 1066 and 1086. The survey records taxable wealth, landownership, and the lord’s meadow, pasture, wood, or mill. Arable land, ploughteams, serfs, and tenants are recorded and the entry usually ends with a valuation. The copy known as the Exon or Exeter Domesday often has additional information.
The Domesday survey tells us a great deal about the agricultural estates of southern Exmoor. One of these was Almsworthy, which had been held by Edric in 1066 but by 1086 had come into the hands of Roger de Courcelles. Roger would have installed a reeve, a manorial official, or a tenant farmer to run the estate. Almsworthy was assessed at one virgate for tax. A virgate was a quarter of a hide (c. 120 a.), the measure of arable used for taxation. The assessment was less that the real size of the estate, which was said to have land for six ploughs. A ploughland was the amount of land an eight-oxen ploughteam could cultivate in a season and is often estimated at 100—120 a. In the hill country a team would plough less but even so six ploughlands is a lot of arable. However, some may have been uncultivated as there were only four ploughteams. The demesne was Roger’s home farm and comprised half the tax measure of arable, with one ploughteam and two serfs to cultivate it, 8 a. of meadow and 30 a. of underwood. The tenants’ meadow is not recorded. The two leagues by two leagues of pasture, probably Almsworthy Common, and would have been grazed not only by Roger’s eight oxen, horse, six cattle, 47 sheep, and 27 nanny goats but also by the tenants’ stock, which is not listed, except for the 24 oxen, which made up their three ploughteams. As goats are browsers and would not be welcome in the woodland, there may have been plenty of scrub in the valleys to support them. The estate was said to have been waste in 1066, reason unknown, perhaps its owner had abandoned it, but it had recovered sufficiently to support at least 15 households and be worth 25s. (£1.25p). The six villeins implies the existence of six farmsteads as well as the smallholdings of the nine bordars. The Almsworthy estate probably covered the north-west of Exford parish including the valleys of the Allcombe, Greenland and Swincombe waters.[1]
The Domesday survey records heads of households but nothing about family members or servants. Other missing people include non-landholding clergy and craftsmen, and landless paupers. Some estates have no recorded population such as Doda’s holding which may be in Hawkridge, one of the Exford estates, and Pixton in Dulverton. Stone was waste in 1086 and so possibly no-one lived there. Apart from the tiny manors of Pulham and Praunsley, the rest of Twitchen’s farms and cottages were hidden in the figures for North Molton manor. Estimates of average household size are usually given as 4 or 5. Allowing for missing households or large manorial complexes such as Winsford or Molland, we might use the upper figure for southern Exmoor. That indicates a total population of perhaps 1,780, excluding lords and their households. The density of population was lower than on the lowlands, but at least a third of the area was uninhabited forest and moor.[2] Dulverton, Molland, and Winsford have the largest populations but no evidence of urban functions. Withypool’s population appears to be similar to that of 1801, reflecting substantial settlement by 1086.
People would have lived in hamlets as well as isolated farmsteads. There must have been centres of population on the royal estates. Cultivating land with teams of oxen required farms to be grouped together. Few farmers on Exmoor could afford or accommodate the eight oxen required for a ploughteam and the Domesday survey implied that such ploughteams were shared by tenant farmers. Ringcombe in West Anstey had two villein tenants with half a ploughteam, possibly on the farms now known as East and West Ringcombe. Possibly they combined their half ploughteam with that of a close neighbour such as the farmer of Brimblecombe in Molland. At Broford in Dulverton, described as a hamlet in 1298, four farmers shared a ploughteam. Exmoor hamlets were not open-field nucleated settlements but were usually dispersed along a lane like West, Middle, and East Lee in Molland. Each farm had its own enclosed fields and presumably took it in turns to use the ploughteam.
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Mary SuiratPage 1 Exmoor Reference
[1] For an analysis of Domesday statistics and terms see Darby, H C, The Domesday Geography of South-West England (Cambridge, 1967); for a study of one manor, Pinbury in Gloucestershire, with the help of a survey that was taken only 34 years later see Dyer, Making a Living, 90—4.
[2] Darby, H C, Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977), 90—3.