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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 3200 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 hide were an important asset. 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.
©animation factory.comThe park differed from the forest, the chase and the warren in that it was completely and securely enclosed.
These boundaries can still be traced and provide evidence for the existence of deerparks in Herefordshire.
The HSMR records more than 38 deer parks. One of these is Hamnish Clifford in the Parish of Kimbolton. The Charter of Reading Abbey, which was the mother house of Leominster Priory, mentions the deerpark 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.To discover the date of origin of a deerpark, we need to look at written sources. Moccas Park, 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 deerpark, but to find the date of origin we need to consult written sources. David Whitehead has researched the history of Moccas deerpark and has been unable to find any documentary evidence earlier than 1617, when Henry Vaughan of Moccas sent deer to stock the park of this cousin in Ireland.
Deep ditches were built around deerparks to keep the animals in. Here is an example of such a ditch.
Nevertheless, lack of evidence does not mean that a deerpark 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 deerparks, 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 deerpark too.
Many deerparks are associated with castles, in the case of Herefordshire, at least 14. 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 includes the crenellation of the house, whether for defensive purposes or just as a status symbol. Castles and deerparks both became status symbols, especially for families which had newly acquired the status of gentry, such as the Harleys or the Vaughns in Herefordshire.
This is a picture of Croft Castle. Herefordshire Archaeology is currently excavating for medieval remains during the summer months. You can see the crenellations on the Tudor castle.
Croft also had a deer park and an ornamental park. This lane of chestnuts is said to commemorate the Victory over the Armada.
During the fifteenth century, several more parks were created in Herefordshire by newly established families: Sir Roland Leinthall of Hampton Court was granted permission to empark 1000 acres, Richard de Beauchamp received a license to crenellate and empark at Bronsil near Eastnor (SMR 934) and the Harleys made a deerpark at Brampton Bryan (SMR 6213).
In the later Middle Ages, kings developed hunting forests. These forests were not necessarily covered with trees (it is estimated that only about 1/5th of legal forest was actually woodland), but had a variety of landscape features. In fact a forest is a tract of land which is subject to the Forest Laws. That means that all proceeds go to the king and that the royal household alone has the right to hunt. Special officials looked after the royal forests and brought poachers to justice.
Many a poacher sat in the dungeon of Goodrich Castle awaiting punishment for as little as snaring a rabbit to feed his family. Medieval law stipulated that a poacher could have a hand chopped off, be blinded or have his testicles severed. In reality though, according to the evidence of court proceedings, he was usually fined, imprisoned, outlawed or pardoned. "The Pipe Rolls show that already by 1150 the main effect of Forest Law was to provide revenue."
The animals preserved in these forests were fallow deer, red deer, roe deer and wild boar. The king’s hunters were regularly sent into the forests to hunt boar for the king’s table. Henry III had 200 wild boars from the Forest of Dean for his Christmas dinner in 1251. Not long after this period, however, the wild boar died out. Wild boar love wooded areas and the landscape archaeologist, Oliver Rackham maintains that wild boar survived longest in England in the Forest of Dean, because this was a heavily wooded area. However even here the death knell of the wild boar was due to the mining industry in the Forest of Dean, encouraged by Henry III. The species was kept alive in semi-captivity in swine parks, which continue to this day.
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Hunting with
falcons was also a popular pastime. Falconry, also called hawking, were
practised only by the very wealthy. The birds were expensive, as was their
upkeep and training. King Edward I was particularly keen
on falconry. In the 1270s he had a special room built for his falconers,
which backed onto an enclosed garden in which was built a bath for the king’s
birds. An aqueduct carried fresh water to this bath which had four brass,
leopard-head spouts. (some birdbath!) The falcons were fed with doves raised
in a dovecote on site. |
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| Edward
was in fact so involved with his birds, that when one of them was ill, he
not only paid to have it specially looked after, but had a waxen image of
the sick falcon made so that it could be offered at the shrine of
St. Thomas de Cantilupe in Hereford Cathedral.
He hoped that the intercession (prayers for someone- in this case a bird)
of St. Thomas would make his bird better.
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In England wolves were more or less exterminated under Edward I by 1281. A man called Peter Corbet was hired to destroy all the wolves in the counties in the west of England, including Herefordshire. This campaign was supposedly commemorated by an iron wolf’s head on a medieval door at Abbey Dore.
Clearing and farming were forbidden. The king sometimes allowed nobles to have private forests called chases. These private hunting areas were subject to common law, however, the lord of the manor had the exclusive right to hunt. Poachers were severely punished. Hunting lodges were built for the use of visiting lords wishing to hunt. The SMR records two hunting lodges, one belonging to the bishop, who as a lord also had the right to hunt.
The Forest of Haye (Haywood), just south of Hereford was a large royal forest during the Middle Ages and provided much of the timber for the building of Hereford Castle. A survey in 1583 estimated it at 760 acres of oak woodland and 155 acres of waste ground. In 1383 Richard II granted Hereford town 30 oaks from the "King’s Forest of the Haye" to repair the bridge across the Wye.
Several early medieval kings came to stay in Hereford on several occasions to enjoy the hunting. In the Domesday Book, in the section where the customs for Hereford are listed, there is following record:
"When the King was engaged in hunting, by custom one man from each and every house went to stall game in the woodland."
The overlord for the town of Hereford was the king and helping out with the hunt was part of a number of responsibilities the English townsmen had. (The Norman ones were exempt from this duty).
There were other royal forests in Herefordshire. The Domesday survey mentions forests 13 times with references to several places. The entry for Bullinghope (Bullingham), for example, tells us that "the woodland is in the Kings Forest."
With regard to Cleeve (near Ross on Wye), it states: "In King William’s Forest there is as much land of this manor as paid 6 sesters of honey and 6 sheep with lambs before1066."
A very important forest was Treville, near Kilpeck. William Fitz Norman was the Royal Forester, paying £15.00 to the King. In the early 13th century Hugh Fitz Waryn was custodian of the Royal Forest in Herefordshire.
In the north of the county, forest existed in Bringwood, Mocktree and Darvold. In the west was Treville and in the centre, the Forest of Hay. Toward the south were Aconbury and Harewood and in the west, Malvern Forest/Ledbury Chase.
The Crown could also grant the right of free warren to manorial lords. This means they could hunt small game, such as fox, rabbit, hare, wild cat, badger, squirrel, marten and otter, as well as partridge and pheasant on their own land. Rabbits were brought to England in the 12th century by the Normans, who thought they were a useful source of meat.
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Rabbit warrens were enclosed areas of up to a square mile which were under the supervision of a warrener. In Herefordshire, there is evidence of a medieval warren at Norton. Smr link 4718. Archaeologists believe that "pillow mounds", little bolster-shaped hills could have been built specifically as rabbit warrens.
By 500 BC half of England had been cleared of woodland and by the 11th century, only some 15% of the land recorded by the Domesday survey was woodland and wood-pasture. Out of 12,580 settlements only 6208 contained woodland
Here is an example of a record of a woodland in Herefordshire:
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1,3 KINGSTONE King Edward held it… A wood named Treville which pays no customary
dues except hunting rights. The villagers who lived there before 1066
carried (the produce of ) the hunt to Hereford and did no other service,
as the Shire states. |
(Today only 1% of land is woodland). It is thought that the Forest of Dean was the last natural wildwood in England and that this was felled in the 13th century.
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In the Middle Ages most woodland was managed. Some of the woodland was used for pasture; pigs especially foraged in the wooded areas. Fallen nuts, acorns or beechmast were good pannage (food) for pigs. Large trees were felled for timber for houses and ship building, and underwood, such as hazels, ash and willow was coppiced to produce poles and material for fencing, wattles and basket weaving etc. Even the bark was used for curing meat and tanning leather. Underwood also provided wood for fuel and to heat kilns for industry, such as glassmaking.
Both trees and underwood renew themselves if given a chance (eg. not letting animals eat regrowth and not burning stumps) and produce a sustained yield. Managed woodland provided a considerable source of income and owners were very careful to punish misuse.
An example of a lord bringing a case against someone who cut wood in his woodland in Herefordshire, is from a manorial court document of 1344:
"The lord as plaintiff opposes Hugh de Wotton in a plea of trespass that Hugh and his household… have cut his wood at Heckwood to a damage of 20s and a value of 20s and he brings his suit…"
Whilst people were punished for taking or damaging trees in medieval England, the law was not as brutal as the Old German laws mentioned by the Roman author Tacitus. He noted that the penalty for someone who dared peel the bark off a living tree ( and thus killing off the tree) was to have his navel cut out and nailed to the tree and then to be driven round the tree until all his guts were wound about its trunk.
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The saying "by hook and by crook" comes from the Middle Ages when villagers were only allowed to take dead wood, not cut down trees or bushes. Fallen timber and dead wood could be cleared and pulled out with a shepherd’s crook or a weeding hook, ergo, "by hook or by crook". |
King Henry III tried to pay off some of his debts with the proceeds of the underwood of his forests. In 1255 he appointed agents, such as Peter de Neyreford and Nicholas de Rummesye to raise money by selling the underwood.
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 ©Hereford Cathedral Library |
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In addition to fish ponds, parts of a river could be used to create fisheries.
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©Hereford
Record Office
