Medieval Farming
Medieval rural lives
Medieval
Farming
After the
Norman Conquest a new landed elite resettled the landscape with freeholders,
villeins and cottagers. The bondsmen were settled as unfree men, sometimes
referred to as serfs or villeins. The Norman, Fleming and Breton landowners
formed a new ruling class of manor lords. Freemen were sometimes created in
return for service. Roger de Mowbray
settled freeholds near Thirsk on his butler, usher, cook, baker and musicians.
The Norman
conquest broke the continuity of ploughing for a period, but then there was a
recovery and the old fields were quickly restored.
At this time
settlements of bondsmen and villeins worked two or three adjoining fields,
which were each sub divided into a dozen or so furlongs. Each furlong was a
section of the larger field usually about 5 to 10 yards wide. The fields were
cultivated collectively, but each strip was cropped by the tenant. Two oxgangs
were quite commonly held by a villein.
The villages
may well have been laid anew by the Normans. Often the lord’s manor house was
at the end. Nearer to the moors, large greens with ponds, provided a source for
watering stock, as at Fadmoor.
Some land
was not included within the system of oxgangs and new thwaites or clearings
appeared including at Duvansthwaite in Farndale. Sometimes fringe land
near the main fields was cleared, often called of names.
Significant
land grants were given to the monasteries. Rievaulx soon had a significant
swathe of properties, throughout Ryedale and stretching to Teesmouth
and Filey. The monasteries tended to site their granges away from villages.
Monastic farms were a separate economic force. The sheep grange was dominant in
Yorkshire with many examples, including in Farndale,
of donations of rights to pasture a fixed number of sheep.
Our family’s
recorded history began with the clearing of the land in Farndale by about 1230.
There was pastureland in Farndale by at least 1225.
With the
recovery of agriculture, manors started to invest in mills to grind grain.
These were a major investment, but were a means for a lord to gain an income
from their lands.
Even by 1280
there were folk such as William the
Smith of Farndale who specialised in supportive trades. By 1363, Johannis de
Farndale had moved to York
and was working as a saddler in an urban setting, and his family would stay
there for generations, his grandson
being a butcher.
Agricultural
land was sometimes connected by the King’s Highways, which fell under legal
protection and generally linked to the market towns. There were a few long
distance routes, often called great ways or magna vias. A magna via
through Huttons Ambo led to York. Routes across the high moors were sometimes
called riggways. There were a small number of
bridges generally on lower ground, for instance at Kirkham. More local routes
often formed a start of routes in the immediate neighbourhood, whose pattern
changed between summer and winter. There were few signs or markers, but
occasionally crosses would mark a junction, such as Whinny cross on Yearsley
moor.
Tolls may
have been taken, though locally they were not often recorded and might have not
been worth it for the lack of traffic. Gatelaw
was a road tax levied in Pickering Forest.
Early rural
industry was focused on corn milling. Some castles and monasteries had more
specialised industries and most of them had bakehouses and breweries. There is
some evidence of medieval pottery, for instance pottergates
of Pickering and Gilling.
Corn mills
inevitably belonged to the manor. A water corn mill was a substantial
investment, but provided a lord with a steady source of income. Occasionally
windmills were found on low flat lands. Village fulling mills were sited on
streams, including at Farndale.
The number
of village blacksmiths suggests the extraction of ironstone at some scale.
Barned arrow rents suggest than iron was readily available in Farndale.
Villein
woman milking a cow, mid Thirteenth Century
The Commons
Act in 1236 was part of the
Statute of Merton, the first written law agreed by the Lords in Parliament,
during the reign of Henry III. It set principles of land law and allowed
manorial lords to enclose common land for their own use.
John
the shepherd of Farndale was a herdsman in Farndale by about 1270.
By 1276
there was perhaps 545 acres of cultivated land in Farndale. By
1282 there was perhaps 768 acres in cultivation in Farndale.
By this time
there were some 800,000 oxen and 400,000 horses in England, which enhanced the
power of labour some six or seven times.
Wool was the
most significant export, with some 12 million fleeces exported each year.
As the
population spread into less settled regions, with poorer soils needing more
labour, a collective open field system spread. Each vill
was divided into two or three huge open fields. One field was left fallow. The
fields were ploughed in a ridge and farrow pattern, with the undulations often
still visible today, as at Kilton and
around Kirkdale church.
Households would own strips of land in each field, but the use of the fields
was well controlled. This open field system reached its peak in the fourteenth
century.
Most people
lived in a village, worshipped in a parish and worked in a manor. A lord might
possess many manors, or one. A manor operated as a large collective.
Senior
villagers held offices, such as constable or church warden.
About two
thirds of manorial tenants were not free in 1200, but were villeins or serfs.
Villeins usually paid part of their rent in labour. Strictly, they could not
leave the manor without permission. They could be sold.
The common
law gradually extended to all free men and even unfree men had certain rights
and could even pass on their land to their heirs.
At a local
level, the Lord was the pinnacle of local society and the political, cultural
and economic focal point.
Norman
feudalism only lasted in a purer form for about a century and it was replaced
by a primitive system of land tenure. Over time this was increasingly paid for
by money rather than service. Villeins were replaced by husbandmen who paid
rents. The lord provided land, justice and protection. In return the lord
expected obedience and deference; support to profit from the land; and military
assistance when necessary.
By the 1300s
there were some 20,000 individuals and 1,000 institutions who made up the
landowners in the country.
In the
second half of the thirteenth century there was a disastrous fall in global
temperatures, which led to a succession of storms, frosts and droughts. The
Great Strom of 1289 ruined harvests across the country. Real wages fell by
about 20% between 1290 and 1350. Wars in Asia Minor from the 1250s and war with
France disrupted trade.
By
1301, there was a sizeable agricultural community in Farndale, with 39 names
associated with the place and the identification of farmed settlements which
can still be identified today.
The Thames
froze in 1309 to 1310. In 1315 to 1316, two years of continual rain ruined
harvests. A great famine across Europe lasted for 7 years. These were years of
perhaps the worst economic disaster that Britain has faced. Half a million
people died of hunger and disease. Water levels rose in the lowlands and the
banks at Rillington were raised in 1342 by the monks
of Byland Abbey. The tidal rivers of the Humber rose 4 feet above average in
1356.
In 1349 came
the Black Death. Indeed the plague
attacked the population four times in thirty years and became endemic for three
centuries. The reduced population eased the demand on arable crops, but the
market still sought mutton and beef, wool and hides. In sizeable estates, fields
could be allocated for rearing and fattening. Agriculture became more complex.
Many of the
folk living in a late medieval village would have had a one room house. The
villagers provided most of what they needed for themselves and their daily
routine was governed by the seasons.
Reconstruction
from the Ryedale Folk Museum
The family
lived at one end of the building and the animals, kept for milk, meat and wool,
at the other. The hearth, where the meals were cooked, was the centre of the
home. The smoke would escape through the thatch.
The cottage
was also used to store tools and those used for raking, hoeing, scything and
chopping varied little over centuries. Hay and grain, needed over winter, were
stored in the loft and salted meats hung from the roof beams.
The most
precious possessions were stored in wooden chests. All the furniture could be
easily moved to allow the room to be used for other purposes.
Economic
growth meant that peasant families could manage their small holdings and earn
some funds on the side, by spinning or brewing ale etc. This meant that they
could marry earlier and they started to buy furniture, clothes, utensils,
pottery etc and to eat puddings and pies and drink ale.
People of
this period tended to be taller than at the start of the nineteenth century.
There is no sign that girls were undervalued at this time.