Anglo-Saxon Romsey and the Lower Test Valley
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Chilcomb and Ampfield Charters by Karen Anderson
Both the language and the landscape have changed considerably in the past thousand years. Turning a verbal description of a boundary, written in Old English, into a set of points on a modern map is never going to be simple. Fortunately for anyone trying to solve a charter, boundaries tend to be persistent features in the landscape.
Landowners would have taken measures to define their property on the ground. The lands either side of a boundary would have had a different series of owners and, in some cases, a different history of land use. This artificial division is visible in the landscape. One of the earliest charters in our area defines a large area of land encircling Winchester. The Chilcomb boundary enclosed land totalling 100 hides. The hide was a unit of land originally defined as the amount of land required to support one family. It was used to assess tax and the provision of men for military service. The Chilcomb estate was granted to Winchester Cathedral along with a reduced tax burden, assessing the land at only 1 hide. According to the monks of Old Minster, this beneficial hidation had originally been granted in the 7th century by King Cynegils, the first Christian king of Wessex. A charter of Æthelwulf (S 325) written in 854, which lacked a boundary clause, confirmed the lower tax, as did the charter of 909. This issue of taxation takes the date of the estate, and its boundary, back to the 7th century. It could be centuries older still, forming the territorium of Venta Belgarum, Roman Winchester.
Part of the Chilcomb boundary crosses our area. Slackstead, Ampfield, Michelmersh, Romsey and North Stoneham each lie alongside Chilcomb, sharing parts of the boundary. The boundary can be traced on the Hursley map of 1588 and the North Baddesley estate map of 1826. By combining the information in the boundary clauses and the maps, it is possible to determine the probable line of the Chilcomb boundary.
Chilcomb church. The small village of Chilcomb southeast of Winchester gave its name to the Chilcomb Hundred.
Photo by Karen Anderson
Slackstead bordering the Chilcomb estate. Arrows pointing left indicate the Chilcomb boundary, partly shared with Slackstead. The right-pointing arrows complete the Slackstead boundary.
A section of the Chilcomb boundary can be followed on an aerial view from Google maps, running from Woolley Green near Pucknall to Farley Mount Country Park. The boundary clause described the landmarks as they appeared to the party of surveyors recording its defining features from ground level:
swa to tæppe leage
swa forð to scipleage
þæt to bradan ersce
swa to þære ealdan cwealmstowe
so to tæppe lea
so forth to sheep lea
then to broad park
so to the old death place
The shared boundary of Slackstead and Chilcomb runs through tæppe lea, mentioned in both charters. A lea is wood pasture, land suitable for grazing with a scattering of trees. The word tæppe means tape or ribbon, the name used for a band of embroidery applied to the edge of a high-status garment. This would be an appropriate description for the strips of land at the sides of the long, narrow valley later followed by a road. The name sheep lea, the next landmark, survived as a collection of Shepley fieldnames on the 1588 Hursley map. The location is visible from the northern point of the shared boundary.
Looking south along Dores Lane, the road through tæppe lea.
Photos by Karen Anderson
The view of sheep lea, looking northeast from tæppe lea.
Continuing north past broad park, which hasn’t been located, the boundary comes to the ealdan cwealmstowe, the old execution place. Anglo-Saxon judicial executions were carried out on boundaries. Execution cemeteries are notable for the careless treatment of the dead, in contrast to the orderly placement of churchyard burials. These sites are often located near routeways or associated with barrows. This combination of boundary, barrow and routeway points to the location of the Chilcomb landmark near Farley Mount. Parish boundaries converge near a barrow, named on the 1588 Hursley map as ‘Robin hudes butt’. A Roman road running from Winchester to Old Sarum, via a crossing of the Test at Horsebridge, passes north of the barrow. The execution site was described as ‘old’ in the charter; it had gone out of use by 909. This might have been the result of a shift in traffic away from the Roman road to a new route crossing the Test at Stockbridge rather than Horsebridge. A late Saxon execution cemetery, located near a barrow, was excavated on Stockbridge Down, east of the Test. Coins that had been hidden in a purse in a man’s armpit dated one burial to 1065-1066. Did this execution site replace the ‘old’ one near Farley Mount?
Screenshot of the National Library of Scotland side by side maps with Farley Mount on the left of each image. The brown arrow points to a barrow or tumulus. The Roman road, red arrows, is shown on the OS map and appears as a parch mark on the aerial view. It is likely that a Saxon execution site lies between the barrow and the road.
NLS maps provides a valuable resource for exploring the landscape: https://maps.nls.uk
Detail of the OS map showing the lines of the parish boundaries, indicated by black dots, near the barrow. B.S. stands for boundary stone; one boundary was defined as lying 4ft. from the base of the bank.
The barrow near Farley Mount, Robin Hood’s Butt.
In solving a charter boundary clause it is a considerable advantage to have adjoining charters. A pair of charters literally provide different points of view of the shared boundary. A boundary clause describes a perambulation of an estate from a particular starting point. They usually proceed clockwise, so the surveying parties of adjacent estates would travel in opposite directions along the shared boundary, each selecting landmarks that were visible ahead. Having two sets of landmarks helps when trying to map the boundary.
The western boundary of the Chilcomb estate is described from south to north. After zigzagging from the east past North Baddesley it reaches an area used for raising horses at stud lea, then turns north:
to stodleage
swa to ticnes felda
þæt to mearc dene
swa to tæppe leage
to stud lea
so to ticnes felda
then to boundary dene
so to tæppe lea
Only two landmarks were used to define the boundary between stud lea at North Baddesley and tæppe lea on the boundary of Slackstead. The land described in the Ampfield charter, lying within the Chilcomb estate, fills in the gap:
ærest æt ticcenesfelda wicum
swa nor∂ andlang hagan
Ƿæt man cym∂ to fearburnan
Ƿæt for∂ to mearc dene heafdum
swa nor∂ to seaxes sea∂e
first at ticcenesfelda wicum
so north along the haga
until you come to fearburnan
then forth to the head of boundary dene
so north to seaxes sea∂e
The Ampfield charter bounds start at ticcenesfelda wicum. Ticcenes could be a personal name or nickname - it means a kid or young goat; feld means an area of open ground. Ticcen’s feld could refer to the area now called now called Baddesley Common. Wic often refers to a farm of special purpose, perhaps dairying. The starting point was at a locaton on the north edge of the common along the Tadburn stream. The landmarks proceeding north along the boundary also appear in the charters of Romsey and Michelmersh which lie on the west side of the Chilcomb boundary. Each of these has been identified in the modern landscape.
A 3D map of the Ampfield charter bounds with an early edition OS base map and modern surface water. Solid red lines indicate parish boundaries. The parish boundary of Michelmersh has shifted west to Pucknall, away from the Chilcomb boundary. The boundary of Romsey Extra follows the Bishop’s Bank on the west side of Ampfield. This piece of woodland, partially enclosed by a haga, was probably a deer park.
LiDAR hillshade map showing the northern boundary of the land described in the Ampfield charter. The brown arrow points out the boundary dene. The blue arrow on the left marks the point where the Bishop’s Bank meets the Fairbourne, and the other blue arrow shows the location of Woolley Green pond.
The valley known as mearc dene, boundary dene, stands out in the LiDAR image as a distinct topographic feature. The Ampfield boundary comes to fearburnan, the Fairbourne, and follows it upstream to the head of the dene. The Michelmersh boundary, travelling in the opposite direction, comes to the feora burnan æwylman, the spring at the source of the Fairbourne, and follows the stream to ceomman bricge. The bridge was probably located at the west edge of Hillier Gardens, on Braishfield Road. Further downstream the Fairbourne formed a part of the Romsey boundary, from the Test floodplain as far as carebrok, a tributary of the stream. The Old English name did not describe the stream as ‘fair’; feor means ‘distant’. The names of these features, the distant stream and the boundary dene, hint at a territorial division that was old, possibly ancient, in the early 10th century.
Seaxes sea∂e is Woolley Green pond. Woolley has nothing to do with sheep; the name was derived from the Old English word for ‘well’. A seath is a spring-pond, a man-made pond created by digging a hole into the chalk at the bottom of a dry valley. The groundwater seeps into the hole and bubbles to the surface, seething like boiling water. The pond features as the northern-most point of the Ampfield boundary and the start and end of Slackstead’s. Travelling clockwise, this boundary returns to the pond via tæppe lea, the ribbon of wood pasture at the side of a dry valley. Dry valleys were formed at the end of the last Ice Age by melt water flowing over the surface of the chalk, unable to penetrate into the frozen ground beneath. The reference in the pond’s name to a seax - a large, Saxon single-edged knife, is uncertain. In the Bronze Age swords were frequently deposited in watery places as offerings. Perhaps a sword was found in the pond when it was being cleared of debris and silt by the Saxons. This explanation would require a prehistoric date for the pond’s construction.
Woolley Green pond
Maintenance work on Woolley Green pond in October 2016. Photos by Karen Anderson.
The Ampfield boundary heads north from ticcenesfelda wicum along a haga that runs along the west boundary up to the Fairbourne. The word haga means ‘hedge’, but is also used to describe a bank topped by a hedge. Hagas are often associated with deer parks. The Ampfield charter bounds change direction at Woolley Green pond:
swa nor∂ to seaxes sea∂e
swa su∂ Ƿonan of hit cym∂ to Ƿære holding stowe
Ƿonne Ƿer su∂ andlang hagan of hit cym∂
æft to ticcefeldes wicum
so north to seaxes sea∂e
so south until it comes to the holding stowe
then there south along the haga
till it comes again to ticcefeldes wicum
The land at Ampfield was partially enclosed by a haga. Holding stowe means, literally, ‘slaughtering place’, a hold is a corpse. Domestic animals would have been driven to market as meat on-the-hoof. The holding stowe was not a slaughter house for cattle or sheep, but the place where deer were dismembered for distribution, the best cuts being reserved for high-status individuals.
The Romsey charter described the western haga as the bisshopes marke, the Bishop’s boundary. The Chilcomb charter didn’t bother to mention the very visible physical boundary. Sections of this earthwork, now known as the Bishop’s Bank, still survive.
Examining the Bishop's Bank on the boundary between Romsey and Ampfield.