Institute for Name-Studies, School of English

The abundant documentation of the 13th-14th century manor has long been considered central to the reconstruction of the socio-economic world of lords and peasants. But historians have rarely questioned the validity of the seigneurial view of the manorial environment that survives through surveys and extents, despite this being the observation of frequently absent elites. Using the Huntingdonshire manor of Elton as a case-study, comparing these documents with literary texts alongside surveys outlining lands closer to the aristocratic heart, like forests and chases, it is evident that there was a deliberate seigneurial distancing from manorial land, which was increasingly seen dispassionately in fiscal terms in the post-Conquest period. Peasant naming strategies – personal and environmental – emphasise the local environment as an intimately known place, closer to modern ideas of landscape as opposed to the arid lordly descriptions of mere land. Indeed, looking at the manorial environment through the eyes of resident peasants it is clear that our understanding of how local landscapes were seen has hitherto been one-dimensional. The innovation in this study lies in drawing together different scholarly disciplines and diverse documentary sources, from agricultural treatises to scientific manuals, in order to reconsider afresh the medieval peasant landscape. Lords traditionally associated peasants with the soil they tilled, but there is evidence that free tenants attempted to sever this connection, preferring to emulate elites in viewing the natural world as symbolic. Peasant furlong names sustain the seigneurial convictions, but when assessed alongside the manorial documentation, the negative connotations are called into question and it is possible to detect evidence of scientific knowledge and close observation of the natural world amongst a group almost exclusively portrayed as uneducated and ignorant. Reconsidering the manorial documentation from the peasants’ perspective reveals multiple conceptual environments, each having equal if not greater validity than the dominant but distant seigneurial view.

Our current understanding of the medieval rural environment is largely based on scholarly writings focusing on the landscape policies pursued by the social elite. This study re-examines manorial sources from the perspective of local peasants to reconstruct the physical—and in some respects, metaphorical—environment of the lower orders in two contrasting English villages between 1086-1348, and to determine how this led to the development of the local economic strategies that can be pieced together from the records of the medieval manor. Maintaining soil quality was fundamentally important since peasants’ survival was closely linked to their agricultural success. Local peasants clearly understood that the land needed nourishment, but they also had to decide where and how best to deploy their limited fertiliser stocks, and this required a thorough understanding of the land they worked. Nothing emphasises this more than the wide variety of local field-names, coined by the peasants themselves. Many field-names were selected and retained over a long period, and describe the specific qualities of individual cropping units. This paper argues that some of the most enduring field-names survived as part of a collective mnemonic system used by local farmers in conjunction with commonly held scientific ideas, from which they determined how best to treat their fields. It suggests that, although uneducated in any formal sense, some peasants nevertheless had a strong grasp of contemporary scientific thought, and there is evidence to suggest that elemental and humoral scientific theory informed their approach to the sustainability of soil quality.

Assessing medieval peasant mentalities has been acknowledged as a difficult pursuit. Nevertheless, an important set of peasant data exists within the written records of the late medieval manor: the names they bestowed upon each other, and on the landscape they occupied. Using a sociological framework, and case studies from the Midlands, East Anglia and the North West, this paper examines and seeks to explain the phenomenon that topographical bynames were largely bestowed on servile peasants.

In recent years, it has largely been the domain of the
landscape archaeologist to uncover and analyse the physical
terrain of the late medieval manor. This has provided
much material for the examination of ideas of rural
power, control and social organisation. Considering the
morphology of the settlement and adjacent fieldscape, it is
rare, however, to reflect upon the views of the peasantry,
who would after all have made up the majority of the
population of rural communities. Using evidence gathered
from fourteenth-century manorial court rolls, this study
examines peasant attitudes to the rural landscape from an
historical perspective through the analysis of incidences of
trespass on demesne and peasant land in the Suffolk vill
of Walsham-le-Willows. Unusually, these documentary
sources frequently make reference to the specific location of
peasant trespass allowing for a quantitative investigation
that reveals something of the motivation behind these
seemingly petty and notionally accidental incidents.
Traditionally, cases of trespassing on neighbouring land
have been considered only fleetingly by historians, since it
is generally believed that many incidents were the result of
accidental damage by wandering livestock, or that manorial
officials used court fines as a means of licensing access. This
study shows that the reality was far more complex, and that
there was a range of motivational stimuli for these acts.
Landscape History, 36:2 (2015)
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RpKH2CK3EtHeaPqMaTnu/full
http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy3.lib.le.ac.uk/toc/rlsh20/36/2

Our current understanding of the medieval rural environment is largely based on scholarly writings focusing on the landscape policies pursued by the social elite. This study re-examines manorial sources from the perspective of local peasants to reconstruct the physical—and in some respects, metaphorical—environment of the lower orders in two contrasting English villages between 1086-1348, and to determine how this led to the development of the local economic strategies that can be pieced together from the records of the medieval manor. Maintaining soil quality was fundamentally important since peasants’ survival was closely linked to their agricultural success. Local peasants clearly understood that the land needed nourishment, but they also had to decide where and how best to deploy their limited fertiliser stocks, and this required a thorough understanding of the land they worked. Nothing emphasises this more than the wide variety of local field-names, coined by the peasants themselves. Many field-names were selected and retained over a long period, and describe the specific qualities of individual cropping units. This paper argues that some of the most enduring field-names survived as part of a collective mnemonic system used by local farmers in conjunction with commonly held scientific ideas, from which they determined how best to treat their fields. It suggests that, although uneducated in any formal sense, some peasants nevertheless had a strong grasp of contemporary scientific thought, and there is evidence to suggest that elemental and humoral scientific theory informed their approach to the sustainability of soil quality.

Our current understanding of the medieval rural environment is largely based on scholarly writings focusing on the landscape policies pursued by the social elite. This study re-examines manorial sources from the perspective of local peasants to reconstruct the physical—and in some respects, metaphorical—environment of the lower orders in two contrasting English villages between 1086-1348, and to determine how this led to the development of the local economic strategies that can be pieced together from the records of the medieval manor. Maintaining soil quality was fundamentally important since peasants’ survival was closely linked to their agricultural success. Local peasants clearly understood that the land needed nourishment, but they also had to decide where and how best to deploy their limited fertiliser stocks, and this required a thorough understanding of the land they worked. Nothing emphasises this more than the wide variety of local field-names, coined by the peasants themselves. Many field-names were selected and retained over a long period, and describe the specific qualities of individual cropping units. This paper argues that some of the most enduring field-names survived as part of a collective mnemonic system used by local farmers in conjunction with commonly held scientific ideas, from which they determined how best to treat their fields. It suggests that, although uneducated in any formal sense, some peasants nevertheless had a strong grasp of contemporary scientific thought, and there is evidence to suggest that elemental and humoral scientific theory informed their approach to the sustainability of soil quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=555VYvW3HTg

Early field-names and minor landscape names are beginning to be recognised by scholars as an important source for the reconstruction of both medieval landscapes and medieval communities’ perceptions of their environment. This study is situated within this emerging scholarly context and assesses microtoponyms alongside additional documentary sources to develop a clear sense of how the inhabitants of Flintham in Nottinghamshire observed their surroundings, and to understand which landscape features were considered foremost. Flintham is located within the catchment of three rivers: the Trent, the Devon and the Smite, and extant material from a range of texts emphasises that flooding was a persistent problem from at least the fourteenth century, continuing into the modern period. The survival of a large quantity of medieval field-names leaves us in no doubt that water loomed large within the collective consciousness of the community of peasants that named this landscape. A large percentage of these names relate to water, and this suggests that localised flooding and problems with excessive water more generally predated the Norman Conquest. A lack of suitable etymological evidence at settlement level has led onomasts to define Flintham as OE hām – ‘homestead’, rather than OE hamm – ‘land hemmed in by water or marsh’. However, mapping the settlement’s watery minor landscape names in conjunction with an assessment of those parts of the landscape designated as most likely to flood strongly supports a reinterpretation weighted in favour of hamm.