Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire Through Time
Twenty-one places are listed in the Domesday Survey of Herefordshire of 1086 which no-one has yet succeeded in locating:
(Note: The Old English word tun/e is often attached to a placename and denotes "settlement", "village" or "enclosure", for example Winetune. -tun has also been interpreted as "outlying farm", which might account for the fact that some Herefordshire Domesday places are today only individual dwellings or farms.)
June Sheppard in "The origins and evolution of field and settlement patterns in the Herefordshire manor of Marden" has studied the settlement pattern around the estate on the manor of Marden. She concludes that in the 11th century there was a village near the centre of this estate, whereas the royal manor house, demesne, church and bond hamlet (where the servants who only worked on the lord's land lived) were about a mile to the west of the village. Towards the outlying parts of the estate were some single homesteads, as well as the village of Sutton St Nicholas and several small clusters of tenant dwellings. Her conclusions bear out the theory that during the Middle Ages in Herefordshire there was a mixed pattern of settlement.
[Original author: Toria Forsyth-Moser, 2002]