FIELD SYSTEMS AND PLACE NAMES
OF OLD KNOTTINGLEY
SOME FACTS AND THEORIES
by TERRY SPENCER B.A.(Hons), Ph D.
INTRODUCTION : BEGINNINGS :
DOMESDAY : PORT OF KNOTTINGLEY :
MANORIAL RE-ORGANISATION :
GAZETTEER
DOMESDAY, KNOTTINGLEY:
The entry in the Domesday Book
refers to the manorial vill as Notingeleia or Notingelai which prior to
the Norman Conquest twenty years earlier, was under the lordship of an
influential Saxon, Barthr, who also held several neighbouring manors. (11)
At the time of the survey the vill contained four carucates of taxable
land valued at £4.
A carucate was the amount of land a yoke
of eight oxen was capable of ploughing within the space of a single year. The
carucate, also known as a ploughland, had gradually replaced the hide as the
standard unit of land measurement throughout Yorkshire during the eleventh
century and became the unit of tax assessment in the post Conquest period. The
caracute was, however, of variable acreage according to the system of tillage
and could be as little as 80 or as large as 144 acres. (12) Nevertheless, a
formula of 10 acres per caracute appears to have been the norm and on this
basis the total area of arable land at Knottingley may be calculated as 320
acres with half that amount in use at any given season and an equal area lying
uncultivated or fallow. (13) The acreage is confirmed by the Domesday
reference to four ploughs in the pre Conquest period. However, a considerable
decline had occurred in the taxable value of the land during the two decades
following the Conquest and although it has been suggested that the vill may
have been spared the worst excesses of the harrowing of the North in 1070, the
Domesday Survey reveals that the monetary value of the land had fallen from
four pounds in the time of King Edward the Confessor to forty shillings. (14)
Not all the manorial land was entered
into the Domesday Book, merely that which was profitable and therefore
suitable for payment of tax. In addition to the areas of arable, woodland,
pasture and meadowland which were recorded, giving a total of 480 acres, were
further tracts of wasteland and common, making the vill about 1,481 acres in
extent. (15)
By 1086 the lordship of the honour of
Pontefract had been granted to Ilbert de Lacy, a liegeman of William the
Conquerer, who as the tenant in chief had replaced Barthr by one Rannulf
Grammaticus as the undertenant of the manor of Knottingley. (16) At the time
of the Survey the lord of the manor held a plough and a half with a further
plough and a half being owned collectively by the two bordars resident within
the manor. As a result the total area of cultivable land had reduced to 240
acres. (17)
Of the size of the local population the
Survey gives little indication, listing only the two bordars or smallholders
who held land of the manorial lord and undertook services in lieu of their
holdings, and six villains, virtual slaves, being mere chattels. On this
basis, Forrest adjudges that at Notingeleia there were only nine families
resident. However, not every member of the community held land in the common
fields, the allotment of which was dependant upon ownership of the component
part of an ox-gang. There was often a residual element of the manorial
population which was unrecorded in Domesday, being restricted to their crofts
and customary rights of grazing, pannage, turbary, etc., for subsistence. (18)
Terry Spencer
INTRODUCTION : BEGINNINGS :
DOMESDAY : PORT OF KNOTTINGLEY :
MANORIAL RE-ORGANISATION :
GAZETTEER
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