Settlements

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Romsey Extra starts in the north at Stanbridge and can be tracked southwards past Roke, Sparsholt, Pauncefoot, Ridge and Moor Court.  Of these places Stanbridge, possibly Roke, Sparsholt and Ridge names are of Anglo-Saxon derivation whereas Pauncefoot and probably Moor Court are post-Conquest names.

None of these settlements are the subject of any written material that precedes the Domesday Survey and that source is ambiguous for this area.  There are two Domesday entries that may or may not impinge on Romsey Extra.  One consists of land granted to Bernard Pancevolt of Embley. (39,5) in the Broughton Hundred of that date.  

      Phillimore Domesday (39,5)
      Embley
      In Broughton Hundred
      Bernard [Pancevolt] also holds Embley. Godwin held it from King Edward in freehold. Then it paid tax for ½ hide;         now for nothing. Land for ½ plough.
      The value was 10s; now it is waste.​a small holding of half a hide, once worth 10s was deemed to be worth nothing. 

The boundaries of this estate are problematical.  They may consist only of Embley as we know it today and the size of the estate would not be inconsistent with that interpretation but it may include those parts of Romsey Extra that now border the A27 above Green Hill, possibly as far south as Pauncefoot Hill.  Pauncefoot Hill name derives from Pancevolt.

The other possible Domesday estate is the unidentified estate in Somborne Hundred held by Ralph de Mortimer.

   Phillimore Domesday (29,11).
   In Somborne Hundred
   Ralph (de Mortimer) holds 1 manor himself which Chipping held from King Edward. Then it answered for 2 hides;      now for 1½ hides.
   Land for 3 ploughs; however in lordship 2 ploughs;
   1 villager and 8 slaves with 1 plough.
   A mill at 7s 6d; meadow 15 acres
   Waleran holds 1 hide of this land from Ralph. He has 3 smallholders.
   Value before 1066 together £7; later £4; now Ralph’s part £4 and Waleran’s 20s; however it pays 30s.

 

It has been suggested that this could be Stanbridge or Stanbridge Earls.  It fits in that it includes a mill, which could be that at Greatbridge.  It had been 2 hides, but by 1086 it was only 1½ hides.

If this holding was at Stanbridge, it was surrounded by Pancevolt lands as Bernard Pancevolt held Awbridge as well as Embley.  Only two places in Somborne Hundred lie to the west of the Test, namely Awbridge and possibly this unidentified holding.  Romsey itself was not listed in a hundred in  Domesday Book.

Looking at the named places on the west, they are very similar to settlements found in chalk valleys, in that each area runs in a linear fashion from hilltop to river.  The difference from the chalk valleys is that the settlements tend to be on the high ground with estates that reach down to the river, whereas in chalk valleys people live near the river but their farming takes them up onto the hills.

Stanbridge has been very much a separate estate throughout history, although sometimes it has been owned with swathes of Awbridge.  Whether Roke represents a different estate or whether we have two settlements in one ownership is arguable.  Roke and Stanbridge have very intermingled ownerships. It is probably that the mill at Greatbridge was part of this complex.

Coming south, the next complex is that known as Spursholt.  The centre of this settlement is also on the hill top, with its mill, Sadlers Mill, in the valley below.  There is no mention of a mill in Embley at Domesday, so there may have been no mill there then, or the estate is not included in the Survey.

South of Spursholt is a little more complex.  To the south-west of Romsey medieval town, is the area now known as Pauncefoot.  It is likely that the settlement there is only of post-Conquest date and that when the Pancevolt family established a farm on the hillside, then it became necessary to establish a crossing of the Test that enabled contact with the town.  Although there is a settlement, Mainstone, at the bottom of the hill, there is no mill associated with Pauncefoot.

Also on the hill top plateau are Ranvilles, Ridge and Romsey Common which latter two were part of Little Testwood in the middle ages and early modern period.  However Little Testwood is not identifiable in Domesday.  Below this plateau are steeply wooded slopes that run down to the valley floor.  In eastern Hampshire, they would be known as hangars.

As the land level drops to the west is Bowmans Farm, very much in the valley of the Blackwater and more akin to the settlements of Wigley and Ower in Eling Parish than to Romsey Extra.

Finally in the extreme south-west of Romsey Extra is Moor Court.  For much of the middle ages, this area comprised two holdings, Moor Malwyn and Moor Abbess.  Moor Abbess belonged to the Abbey of Romsey and Moor Malwyn was ceded to the abbey in the late 14th century.

The Moor area is more or less the only land that the Abbess of Romsey owned on the west of the Test in Romsey but by the 12th century there is evidence of the abbess granting land in Terstewode and ly Wada.  At Domesday, the abbess also held an estate in Totton.

Near to Moor Court, where there is an ancient ford of the Blackwater, the area immediately to the south of that river is known to this day as Wade, which is apparently an early Saxon name for a ford.  Thus we have another instance where place names seem to be important clues in our understanding of the Saxon landscape.

Wade is beside the roadway known as Hill Street, which is not in Romsey, but in Totton and runs up the hill from the Blackwater.  However as a route it must have led to a route into southern Romsey and may link up with the lost Eny Street that ran south from Middlebridge Street.

The major question of these lands to the west of the Test, is why are they part of Romsey and from when?  With the exception of Moor Court area, they have quite different ownerships before the 18th century, and Stanbridge and parts of Embley never became part of the Broadlands estate as the rest did.

One interpretation is that we are looking at an ecclesiastical division of territory in which pre-abbatial Romsey was the centre of a minster that included lands to the west of the river.  If so, the minster’s area of influence might have extended beyond the bounds of modern Romsey Extra.

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The other possibility is that we are looking a small shire as discussed by Bruce Eagles which was centred on Romsey but that is even more speculative and needs further consideration.

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Roads

As David Hopkins, the County Archaeologist has pointed out, the landscaping of Broadlands Park and changes to the estate make it difficult to determine what preceded the present arrangements.  However I will discuss what we have.

There are two directions that must be considered, one is of routes across the area from east to west and the other is of tracks that connects the area north to south.

I will consider tracks across the landscape first.

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Starting in the north it seems likely that Old Salisbury Lane is long established; it continues due east into the B3084 and until 1911 continued eastward to cross the Test due east of the Duke’s Head.  The age of this road is one of the issues that we need to consider.  It connects both Roke and Stanbridge Earls to an eastward route to Winchester.  What route it followed once across the Test is one of our puzzles because the land is so boggy there.  It has been suggested that the name Stanbridge implies a stone built causeway across this land.  I am not entirely happy with that because the stretch of the B3084 that the route uses does not seem to need a causeway.  However there could have been a causeway further east, say across the river, but if so, why is a settlement 1.5 km away called ‘stone bridge’ and not something nearer? 

It should be noted that the river is both wide and deep where the old bridge was, but whether this is natural, or whether originally the water was wider and shallower is also something to be considered, along with much else to do with the waterways of Romsey.  The presence of Shootash, a name of Saxon derivation, by the western end of Old Salisbury Lane gives further credence to our having a pre-Conquest routeway.

As stated, Sadlers Mill was part of the Spursholt estate and house and mill would have been connected by a track, though the date when the mill was built is not known.  However the track may have been no more than a route for estate use.

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The absence of the mention of Middlebridge in the 10th century charter given to Romsey Abbey may imply that that bridge did not exist before the Conquest.  However, since the boundary is simply described as following the River Test there was no need to mention a bridge. A crossing was probably established to serve the post-Conquest estate of the Pauncefoot family.  If the bridge were not there, the route over Pauncefoot hill leading to Ridge Lane is of doubtful antiquity and casts similar doubts on the age of Ryedown Lane.

We also need to think about north-south routes.  Obviously the main thoroughfares will go to the town of Romsey itself, but that does not rule out the need to travel on the other side of the river.

The lost road of Eny Street that ran south from Middlebridge Street, probably crossed the Test, possibly in the vicinity of Long Bridge, also known as Skidmore Bridge.  There is still a track across the land here that leads from Lee down to Moor Court and then to Wade Bridge.

Certainly in the post conquest centuries there was a route through the fields, south from Mainstone.  This route was known as Waldrons Lane and was closed off to the public by the Broadlands estate in the 18th century, some time after they removed Waldrons Bridge.

There is still a footpath that leads north from Moor Court, known as Turkey Grass, and much of it now part of the Test Way.  During the eighteenth century extensive drainage systems were put into these fields, so it is difficult to know how much this land could have been used for agricultural or grazing animals in pre-Conquest centuries.  Certainly some of them were used for hay and for crops in medieval and early modern times.

There is a right of way that leads north from Sadlers Mill, across the meadows and then into Squabb Wood, coming out on Old Salisbury Lane.  There is a track from this path to Roke, but nothing to Stanbridge Earls, so whereas one can (could?) traverse Romsey west from north to south, there does not appear to be any obvious route, more a case of selecting a pathway here and a pathway there.

Thus to summarise, we have a scattered series of settlements on the west of the river of which the most identifiable is that around Stanbridge to the north and Moor Court to the south.  Why and when this strip of land became part of Romsey is, either all at once, or gradually, is one of our unsolved puzzles.