‘TO BEG A TREE AND TARRY HIS PLEASURE TO ASSIGN IT TO ME’ — THE ROLES OF LORDS, LANDLORDS AND TENANTS IN HOUSE BUILDING AND IMPROVEMENT

Abstract

David Clark in Vernacular Architecture vol. 44 drew together thoughts from papers at the Vernacular Architecture Group Winter conference in January 2013 and suggested what might be the standard model of the medieval house, its use and meaning.¹ As a premise it was proposed that customary tenants, the successors of the unfree villeins of the earlier medieval period, holding a single virgate of land, usually built their own house, albeit with the lord possibly supplying materials. This paper examines whether there is evidence that this was usually the case, and considers the availability or otherwise of building materials and the complex relationship between landlords and their tenants, leasehold, as well as customary, when new building or repair was required.

This article should to be read alongside C. R. J. Currie, “Why Historians Believe that Customary Tenants Normally Paid for Their Own Buildings: A Reply to Pamela Slocombe,” Vernacular Architecture 49 (2018): 38–43.

Keywords:

• Landlords
• tenants
• copyholders
• buildings
• repairs
• medieval

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Stuart Wrathmell and John Hare for advice and additional references, and also to David Clark, Bob Meeson and others for further comments.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

NOTES

Notes

1 Clark, “The Medieval Peasant House — Towards a New Paradigm,” 1–6.

2 Platt, “The Archaeology of the Peasant Land Market in Pre-Plague England c.1290–1350,” 300–9.

3 For a full definition and description of how copyholds worked, see Bettey, “Ancient Custom Time Out of Mind,” 307–22.

4 Alcock and Miles, The Medieval Peasant House in Midland England, 108.

5 Dyer, “Building in Earth in Late-Medieval England,” 63–70.

6 Hare, “A Prospering Society,” 145.

7 Ibid., 144.

8 Ibid., 144.

9 Meeson and Alcock, “Black Swan Terrace, Upper Spon Street, Coventry,” 1–19.

10 Ibid.

11 Rimmer, “A Re-assessment of the Use of Building Accounts for the Study of Medieval Urban Houses.”

12 Ibid.

13 Aston and Bond, “The Landscape of Towns,” 78–9.

14 Wrathmell, Medieval Rural Settlement, 252–3.

15 Dyer, “Building in Earth,” 68.

16 Faull and Moorhouse, “West Yorkshire,” 814.

17 Wrathmell, “Peasant Houses, Farmsteads and Villages in North-East England.”

18 Hodgson, Percy Bailiffs’ Rolls of the Fifteenth Century, 24–43

19 London, The Cartulary of Bradenstoke Priory, 89.

20 Rogers, Lacock Abbey Charters, 50.

21 Alcock and Miles, The Medieval Peasant House in Midland England, 143.

22 Alcock and Blair, “Crucks,” 36–8.

23 Roberts, Hampshire Houses, 128.

24 Slocombe, VAG Spring Conference Programme, 1990, 10.

25 Alcock and Blair, “Crucks,” gives further examples of repairing leases specifying what was to be built.

26 Hare, A Prospering Society, 144.

27 Wiltshire & Swindon Archives, ref. 189/41.

28 Michelmore, The Fountains Abbey Lease Book, xlvii.

29 London, The Cartulary of Bradenstoke Priory, 171.

30 Hargreaves, “Seignorial Reaction and Peasant Responses,” 53–78.

31 Ibid., 71.

32 Ibid., 65.

33 Hare, A Prospering Society, 81.

34 Jones, The Parish of Bradford-on-Avon, 74–5.

35 Bathe, Common Land, 7.

36 Brett, The Manors of Norton St. Philip and Hinton Charterhouse, 77.

37 Machin, The Houses of Yetminster, 141.

38 Ibid., 140.

39 Hargreaves, “Seignorial Reaction and Peasant Responses,” 65.

40 Brett, “Some Elizabethan Timber Building Terms,” 179.

41 Brett, The Manors of Norton St. Philip and Hinton Charterhouse, 61.

42 Faull and Moorhouse, West Yorkshire, 815.

43 Alcock and Miles, The Medieval Peasant House, 107.

44 Melling, Kentish Sources, 22, ‘landlords usually reserved most of the wood on a farm to their own use’.

45 Bettey, “The Eyes and Ears of the Lord,” 19–25.

46 Stevenson, The Edington Cartulary, 60.

47 Harvey, “Shaftesbury Abbey’s 12th Century Rentals,” 79.

48 Ibid., 84.

49 Hare, A Prospering Society, 144.

50 Faull and Moorhouse, West Yorkshire, 815.

51 Harrison, “The Composite Manor of Brent,” 178.

52 Scrase, “Wells. The Anatomy.” 31.

53 Sharp, “Some Mid-fifteenth Century Small-scale Building Repairs,” 20–9.

54 Dyer, “Living in Peasant Houses in Late Medieval England,” 19.

55 Hill, “Book Reviews,” 114.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pamela Slocombe

Pamela Slocombe, Wiltshire Buildings Record

[email protected]