Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire Through Time
The Anglo-Saxon word pearroc means "a piece of land with a fence around it". The manicured park landscape that we associate with the country estates of the gentry were not developed until the 18th century. In the Middle Ages, the word "park" had a meaning closer to the Anglo-Saxon, in that this was land which was fenced in by the lord for his own use and, as we shall see, one of the main reasons was for keeping deer. The scholar Oliver Rackham estimates that around the year 1300 there were about 3,200 parks in England, covering nearly 2% of the land.
In the Middle Ages only lords were allowed to hunt, as was stipulated in the game laws. Hunting was the main sporting activity for the nobility, and both the meat and the hide were important assets. To make hunting easier, large tracts of land (100-200 acres) were enclosed into parks to keep the deer in. These parks were surrounded by banks and ditches and often topped by hedges or fences.
The park differed from the forest, the chase and the warren in that it was completely and securely enclosed (W.G. Hoskins, Fieldwork in Local History, 1983, p. 51). These boundaries can still be traced and provide evidence for the existence of deer parks in Herefordshire.
The Herefordshire Historic Environment Record records more than 50 deer parks. One of these is Hamnish Clifford in the parish of Kimbolton (HER no. 12023). The Charter of Reading Abbey, which was the mother house of Leominster Priory, mentions the deer park at Hamnish. The abbey granted Walter de Clifford 28 acres of land, including a spring, a stream and a small wood, so that he could enlarge his park. In exchange he was to pay 2s a year and a white doe skin (D. Whitehead, ed. by J. Patton, A Survey of Historic Parks and Gardens in Herefordshire, 2001, p. 187).
To discover the date of origin of a deer park, we need to look at written sources. Moccas Park (HER no. 7599), 17 km west of Hereford, has been described as "a beautiful, fascinating and significant place; the essence of the classic English deer park". It is now being conserved, studied and restored as an official parkland National Nature Reserve. Remains tell us it originated as a deer park, but to find the date of origin we need to consult written sources. David Whitehead has researched the history of Moccas deer park and has been unable to find any documentary evidence earlier than 1617, when Henry Vaughan of Moccas sent deer to stock the park of his cousin in Ireland (D. Whitehead, "The de Fresnes, Vaughans and Cornewalls: 1160-1771", in P.T. Harding and T. Wall (eds.), Moccas: an English deer park, English Nature, 2000).
Nevertheless, lack of evidence does not mean that a deer park did not exist in this area in the Middle Ages; it just means we do not know when it was created. The neighbouring estates had deer parks, such as the park of Ralph de Baskerville at Bredwardine and one in Dorstone belonging to Geoffrey de Bella Fago. It is possible therefore, that Moccas estate had a deer park too.
Many deer parks are associated with castles, at least 14 in the case of Herefordshire. Crenellation licenses were often granted at the same time as permission to enclose a park. Royal permission was needed to fortify a house and that included the crenellation of the house, whether for defensive purposes or just as a status symbol. Castles and deer parks both became status symbols, especially for families which had newly acquired the status of gentry, such as the Harleys or the Vaughns in Herefordshire.
During the fifteenth century, several more parks were created in Herefordshire by newly-established families: Sir Roland Leinthall of Hampton Court (HER no. 6560) was granted permission to empark 1000 acres, Richard de Beauchamp received a licence to crenellate and empark at Bronsil near Eastnor (HER reference no. 934) and the Harleys made a deer park at Brampton Bryan (HER reference no. 6213).
[Original author: Toria Forsyth-Moser, 2002]