Historical

Notes from Steve Horne of the walk from Market Warsop to Clumber Park

Notes, thoughts and observations along the perambulation between Market Warsop and Clumber Park

2 paces      A kind lady takes our photograph – most of our body parts were in the frame.
                    
370 paces      We pass buildings scheduled for demolition if the proposed Tesco development goes ahead.

670 paces      To our left the new regime at Meden School proudly promotes ‘ the most improved school in Nottinghamshire’.

900 paces      We leave Market Warsop along Burns Lane.  The enclosure map of 1825 calls this route Tuxford Road as it was the coach road leading to the Great North Road.

2190 paces      Rust on the rails beneath the bridge on Broomhill Lane remind us than Welbeck Colliery closed last year with the demolition of the headstocks leaving the view uncluttered but strangely bare.

2300 paces      When the wind blows in a certain directing the smells from the nearby sewage works remind me of childhood holidays on the Sussex coast!

2400 paces      We are on a resurfaced bridleway.  This is part of the Dukeries Trail that runs for 32 miles between Shirebrook station and Harby, near Lincoln.

2950 paces       Are the stones beneath our feet the remnants of the old coach road?

3320 paces      The lane between arable fields becomes a headland path and soon we will enter a beech plantation on the edge of Birklands. 

4100 paces      An oak post marks the site of Jerusalem’s Well, a watering place on the old route through the Forest.  The stone lined shaft was filled in about forty years ago.  Nobody seems to know how it obtained its name – there is also a Jerusalem Plantation nearby.

4290 paces      As we turn left towards Gleadthorpe we leave the Forest of Birklands.  If we had carried straight on we would have encountered the legacy of a Northumbrian king, a royal hunting Forest, the pleasure grounds and plantations of dukes, ancient stag-head oaks, traces of World War ii military activity and the Viking age assembly site of Thynghowe.  But we didn’t so we won’t.  You can always return on another day or explore online on www.thynghowe.org.uk

4800 paces      As we head down the lane to Gleadthorpe we pass a the agricultural buildings where 600 cows will produce milk in this £1.4m development.

5050 paces      The levelled meadows alongside the River Meden were part of the Duke of Portland’s water meadow scheme from the early 1800s.  Earlier crops of grass were produced by flooding the meadows Water Meadow in spring, allowing livestock onto the pasture sooner.

5150 paces      The farm stands on the site of Gleadthorpe Grange, an estate granted to the monks of Welbeck Abbey.  The land passed to the Dukes of Newcastle and Portland, eventually in 1949 becoming a government experimental husbandry farm.  Following its recent privatisation it is now an environmental consultancy business.

5800 paces      After turning right onto another old track we soon walk between open arable fields again.  Cropmarks have revealed the site of a Roman marching camp on the higher ground to our right.

6100 paces      The woodlands of Gleadthorpe  Breck contain an assortment of military structures dating from World War II when this part of Sherwood Forest became a massive ammunition store.  Plans have recently been passed allow war games in these woods.  I wonder what the soldiers stationed here seventy years ago would have made of this.

6500 paces      The hedge bank between our track and the field to our right indicates that we have left the parish of Warsop and our now in Norton, part of Bassetlaw district.

6940 paces      And so onto the busy junction with the A616 at Hazel Gap.  Seven routes meet here taking you towards Warsop, Cuckney, Norton, Carburton, Duncanwood, Budby or south into the Forest.  This spot is mentioned on perambulation accounts and has been an important crossroads for many centuries.

7200 paces      Here we spot the first Himalayan Balsam of the walk.  I mutter about Victorian aristocratic gardeners ruining our flora by importing invasive species.  Dave is still complaining about the path surface put down for cyclists.  Time for a refreshment halt.

9000 paces      After crossing the B6034 at Duncanwood Lodge we join Freeboard Lane, another ancient route running for almost three miles between the Thoresby estate to the south and the Welbeck and Clumber estates to the north. Lanes between the large estates allowed common folk the opportunity to move around unchallenged.   The generosity of Queen Anne in the early 18th century allowed the Dukes to enclose lands that had previously been part of the royal Forest of Sherwood seized by William the Bastard following his invasion of 1066.

11000 paces      We enter Clumber Park near South Lodge following Beech Avenue northwards.  Many of the trees were planted for their ornamental value, designed to impress visitors particularly their neighbour Earl Manvers from Thoresby.

12300 paces      We cross Clumber Bridge over the dammed River Poulter which forms the lake that is the centrepiece of Clumber Park.  This approach to Clumber House was designed to impress with glimpses of the mansion as the road meandered though the parkland. 

13524 paces (or 8 miles)      Clumber Café provides a welcome cup of tea.  A part of the café is all that survives of the mansion that was demolished in 1938 as it was too costly for the Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne to run.  There were plans for a smaller house to be built but following the war the Duke sold the estate and the National Trust took over.  So the people regained their land after almost 900 years (assuming they are one of the 3.8 million members of the National Trust!).
 

Sent by Nottinghamshire Archives


Notes used as part the Talk by the Archives.


The Archives of Sherwood Forest

Notes

See:
The Victoria County History of Nottinghamshire, Vol. 1
Thoroton Society’s Nottinghamshire Heritage Gateway, www.nottsheritagegateway.org.uk.
‘The Community of Mansfield from Domesday Book to the Reign of Edward III’ by David Crook in Transactions of the Thoroton Society, Vol. 88 (1984)

Geography and History
§  The term ‘forest’ was a legal one that referred to land outside (foris) the common law and subject to a special law introduced by the Normans to protect the venison (beasts of the chase such as deer and wild boar) and vert (the vegetation the animals lived on).  The forest was therefore not a heavily wooded area but rather a ‘waste’ used for hunting purposes
§  The forest covered approx. 90,000 acres (17 per cent of the county).
§  Its boundary was largely defined by rivers: the Trent on the south, Doverbeck to the south-east, the Leen to the south-west and the Meden on the north.
§  The forest landscape included woodland, open heath, a number of deer parks and a number of settlements including Nottingham and Mansfield.  Nottingham was not subject to the forest law.
§  The Crown owned large areas within the Forest including Clipstone Park, Bestwood Park, Nottingham Castle, Birkland and Bilhaugh.  Clipstone was created by Henry II in the 1170s and was the focus of much hunting activity in Sherwood.  The Forest provided the Crown with important sources of income including hunting and wood rents, grants of rights, revenue from forest courts, timber for repairing buildings and fitting ships and weapons, and venison supplied the royal table; often deer were granted as gifts to nobles.
§  A large number of monasteries and religious houses were situated in the forest and they usually had special rights granted to them of fuel and other wood, pannage and agistment rights and sometimes venison.  Religious houses in Sherwood included the Cistercian monastery at Rufford; Newstead Abbey; Welbeck Abbey; Worksop Priory; Blyth Priory and Lenton Priory.

Forest Law
§  At different times the forest law was enforced to differing degrees of severity; during the twelfth century it was harshly imposed but later it was relaxed
§  A number of officials administered the forest law: these included justices of the forest for the forests north of and south of the Trent (at the top of the hierarchy); wardens, who were in charge of a single forest; verderers, who were local landowners and who had to attend the forest courts; foresters; woodwards, who were private foresters; rangers; regarders and agisters
§  The main court dealing with forest offences was the Forest Pleas, a court of justices in eyre, at which those who transgressed the rules of the forest including trespass would have to attend.  This court was held every few years
§  The Forest Eyre of 1287 established the practice of the Courts of Attachment, in response to the concern that the king was considered to have sustained many losses due to the long delay between the eyres.  The Courts of Attachment met every few weeks at Edwinstowe, Mansfield, Linby and Calverton and only dealt with minor trespasses against the vert.  Serious offences at the Attachment Courts would be referred to the next Forest Eyres.
§  Other courts which sat included the swanimote, a meeting of the foresters to make arrangements regarding pasture and to receive rents; and the special inquisition held when a deer was found dead or wounded or for forest trespass.
§  Most court records are held at The National Archives including many references to the forest in the records of Chancery and the Exchequer and a large number of the Sherwood Attachment Court Rolls.
§  A number of interesting cases are extracted in the first volume of the Victoria County History of England; an example of this is:

A striking illustration of the occasionally rebellious conduct of the forest tenants of Sherwood against the officials who guarded the king’s game occurred in 1276.  On 3 July John de Lasceles, steward of the forest, caught two men, Robert Martham and Robert Afferton, with bows and arrows, took them to Blidworth, intending to keep them till the morrow, when doubtless they were to be delivered to the sheriff at Nottingham Castle.  But during the night twenty men, armed with swords and bows and arrows, broke open the doors of the place where they were confined, released the prisoners, and severly beat one Gilbert, a young servant of the steward.  Then the men proceeded to the residence of the steward, insulted him, and broke his doors and windows.  When an inquest was held by the verderers, regarders, and other ministers of the forest, it was found that two or three of the marauders had fled [into Yorkshire], and one was dead, but sixteen names are set forth.

§  An important feature of forest administration was the production of written perambulations of the forest’s outer boundaries. The boundaries were marked by merepoints (waymarkers), which were used by forest officials during the perambulation process. The earliest surviving perambulation of Sherwood Forest dates from 1218; the last one was made in 1662.
§  Many individual perambulations survive at Nottinghamshire Archives.  Others are kept in Forest Books.  These were originally compiled as memoranda and were intended to be works of reference on the administration of the forest and to be records of forest rights and privileges.  They include copies of statutes and ordinances, perambulations, inquisitions, writs, chapters of regard and extracts from the forest eyres.
§  The Thoroton Society Nottinghamshire Heritage Gateway identifies fifteen surviving Forest Books; Nottinghamshire Archives holds two of these: The Rufford Abbey copy, c 1216-1447 (DD/SR/20) and The Sherwood Forest Book, 1661-1934 (DD/SK/229/1-9/12), plus a ‘Foljambe forest book’ 1631-1662 (DD/FJ/1/9/6) and a number of copies.
§  Several maps of Sherwood Forest’s extent and boundary also survive, the earliest ones dating from the fourteenth century, but most from the 16th and 17th centuries.
Mansfield Manor
§  Mansfield was a royal manor in 1086 mentioned in Domesday Book with its considerable estates, although the manner in which these lands have been described makes it difficult today to determine where they were.  They include two immediate berewicks [outlying parts of an estate] of Skegby and Sutton; later Mansfield Woodhouse became a core part of the estate.
§  Mansfield remained as a royal manor until 1602, which contrasts with other towns such as Newark and Chesterfield which became boroughs.  After 1602 it became a manor of a series of dukes and earls.  In 1891 it became a municipal borough.
§  The men of Mansfield often acted together in their own interests; two examples of this are:
  • King John allowing them to have their common pasture in Clipstone Park in 1200, as it had been enjoyed before it had been enclosed into a royal deer park by Henry II (the first recorded example)
  • In 1227 the men of Mansfield went to Westminster and offered the king a fine of five marks in return for the grant of a charter giving them the right to hold a weekly market.  A brief charter was issued, which stipulated Monday as market day.  This would enable the men to control the market in the town and receive profits from it such as stall rents.  However, the charter was cancelled when the manor was granted to Henry de Hastings in 1238.
§  The manor court sat regularly at Mansfield and details of activities and events in the life of the town can be drawn from surviving court rolls.  The manor court rolls of 1315-16 are possibly the oldest manorial records held at Nottinghamshire Archives.  One example from the rolls:

William de Holnyebrock and Thomas le Sauwer of Schiburne came into the vill of Mansfield on Thursday the Feast of St Dionysus [9 October] 1315, with four sheep to sell in the mark of Mansfield, and the bailiffs of the Lord the King’s Liberty of the same came (and arrested) the aforesaid William and Thomas on suspicion of robbery, whereby they were put in fetters and kept until the Court holden on Thursday next after the Feast of St Luke the Evangelist in the aforesaid year [i.e. for fourteen days].  On which day the said William and Thomas appeared, and put themselves upon an Inquisition of the Court touching good and evil, to wit, by the oaths of Richard son of Robert de Hybern of Mansfield, Henry son of Roger of the same, William de Celar of the same, William Page of the same, Hugh son of Robert son of Symon de Sutton, Peter Smith of the same, Walter Tylbot of the same, Hugh son of Ralph le Westrin of the same, Alan son of Hugh de Wodehous, Alan Cock of the same, John son of Geofrrey Wymarck of Boteby, and Henry son of Roger de Scofton, who say that the aforesaid William and Thomas are good true men”. [23 October 1315]

Rufford Abbey
§  Rufford Abbey was situated at the centre of Sherwood Forest and was a Cistercian house, a reformed Benedictine order which focused on a life of austerity with an emphasis on manual labour and prayer.
§  Rufford Abbey was founded c 1146/8 by Gilbert de Gaunt, Earl of Lincoln.  It was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and was occupied by monks from the Cistercian Abbey at Rievaulx.  The original endowment included all the founder’s land at Rufford, 30 acres on the banks of the Trent and other lands including at Willoughby.  A range of subsequent charters provided them with many rights, many of which are held at Nottinghamshire Archives.  Two of these are:

Charter of protection for the Abbey and monks of Rufford and their possessions, issued by Henry III c 1185 (DD/SR/102/135)

A grant made by Henry III in 1233 to the abbot and monks of Rufford, confirming a previous gift, but accompanied by a licence to enclose the land with a dyke and a hedge, so that beasts of the chase might have free entry and exit, and to cultivate all the said land, build on it, or dispose of it as they will (DD/SR/102/158)

§  The daily life of the monks in the abbey followed the Rule of St Benedict and focused on manual labour and on prayer.  Prayers were said seven times a day and involved the community coming together in the abbey church to sing psalms and read from the Bible.
§  Between these times the monks would work.  Their work included looking after the monastery's provisions and preparing food; giving alms and looking after travellers; writing and illuminating copies of religious works, such as saints' lives and histories; looking after the sick and infirm; a large number of crafts, including pottery, fulling, weaving, barrel-making and carpentry.
§  By the late fifteenth century the monastery had relaxed its strict regime. In 1481 the abbey was visited by Peter, abbot of St Mary de Lande in France and Robert, the abbot of Woburn, both delegates appointed by John, the abbot of Cîteaux, and the chapter general of the Cistercian order. Following the visitation, the delegates issued new ordinances or rules to the monks at Rufford, giving precise instructions as to how they should behave.  These included: both the day-time and night-time services should be sung in an 'intelligent, audible and melodious voice with due solemnity, striking out empty trifles, eyes fixed on the ground and hearts raised; clothing was to be simple and made of cloth, serge or wool; no monk should 'speak or converse by day or night with any suspect women of ill fame, whorish or dissolute'.  Punishments for breaking the rules ranged from a diet of bread and water to beatings.
§  The Victoria County History records:

‘The abbey was visited in 1536 by the commissioners Legh and Layton who reported that there were six monks guilty of disgraceful offences, and the abbot had been incontinent with two married and four single women.  They further stated that six of the monks desired exemption from their vows’. 

§  The annual value was £100 and the debts £20.  These reports are likely to be false because the Abbot, Thomas Doncaster, obtained a pension of £25 a year on the dissolution of the house which was voided on his ‘speedy appointment to the rectory of Rotherham on 2 July 1536’.
§  The abbey was dissolved in 1537 and the site passed to George, Earl of Shrewsbury in October of that year.

Post-mediaeval Sherwood
§  There was a general decline in interest and use of forests by the seventeenth century and over time, especially during the civil war and the Commonwealth there was increased destruction of woodlands, which increased after 1660 with a greater need of timber for the navy.
§  During the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century much of the forest lands were largely sold off to nobles who established large estates there (becoming the Dukeries), with much of the land becoming parkland and the process of enclosure in the nineteenth century changing the landscape including use and rights. 



Further notes given previously.

According to The Thoroton Society's Historical Gateway (http://www.nottsheritagegateway.org.uk/places/sherwood.htm) the earliest surviving perambulation dates to 1218.  We [the Archives] do hold perambulations dating to the reign of Henry III (1216-1272) including one from 1226-7 and one from c 1232 (most of them copied in the seventeenth century).  We also hold another type of record called the Forest Book; these volumes were compiled at the time and collect together lots of different forest records including perambulations.  We hold a few at Nottinghamshire Archives; one is the copy that was made at Rufford Abbey and dates between c1216 and c1447 (reference: DD/SR/20).
From the dates of the surviving perambulations they seem to have been held every few years.  Their purpose was to mark the boundary of the forest, and so the officials of the forest would walk around the forest, recording where the boundary was, and physically marking it with merepoints or waymarkers.  I think the main purpose behind this would be to establish the limit of the forest and therefore which areas were subject to forest law.
The concept of the forest is an area which is outside (foris) the common law, and therefore subject to a special law introduced by the Normans to protect the venison (at this time meaning all the beasts of the chase, including deer and wild boar) and the vert (the vegetation the animals lived on).  It would therefore be necessary to determine where the boundary of the forest lay in order to determine which places were subject to the forest law.
There was a general decline in interest and use of forests by the seventeenth century and over time, especially during the civil war and the Commonwealth there was increased destruction of woodlands, which increased after 1660 with a greater need of timber for the navy.  During the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century much of the forest lands were largely sold off to nobles who established large estates there (becoming the Dukeries), with much of the land becoming parkland and the process of enclosure in the nineteenth century changing the landscape including use and rights.  So I think the decline in the perambulations at the beginning of this process can be seen in this context, with the overall decline in the management and use of the forests compared to how they had been used in the mediaeval period.  Interestingly it's during this time that the development of mapmaking in the forest area begins to increase, probably because the knowledge of the forest boundaries was generally being lost. 
The people carrying out the perambulations would be forest officials.  There were quite a number of different forest officials, which included rangers and regarders.  These last were twelve knights chosen to carry out a general inspection of the forest every three years, so it is likely that they would be involved in the perambulation process.  Most of the officials were either appointed by the forest wardens or were elected in the county courts. 
Most of this information is drawn from the Thoroton Gateway web site and also the Victoria County History; I'd recommend having a look at the former as it gives a bit more of an overview about the forest administration and how this worked.