Tag Archives: Barrington

Right of Way: A historically contentious issue

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During our closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic we have been working hard adding new entries to our catalogue “Essex Archives Online“. Archivist Katharine Schofield takes a look at one of these documents which reveals that rights of way disputes aren’t a modern invention.

Among the entries added to our online catalogue during ‘lockdown’ are calendars of medieval deeds, dating from the early 13th century onwards, relate to various small properties mostly in Hatfield Broad Oak.  The deeds are part of the Barrington collection (D/DBa).

Not all of the calendared deeds related to the Barrington family’s possessions at the time, although they may have subsequently acquired the land.  They include the ratification of an agreement (D/DBa T4/253) between William le Cook of Broad Street and Hatfield Priory, dated at Hatfield Broad Oak on the Monday after Epiphany in the 18th year of the reign of Edward III (10 January 1345) and it concerns a dispute over access.  John de Barynton’ is listed as the first of the witnesses.

The access in contention is described as a footpath 6 feet wide leading through Bykmereslane beyond William’s property Bykmerescroft towards Munkmelnes where the Priory’s mill was located.  Canon Francis Galpin identified Bykemere Street or Lane as the present-day Dunmow Road (B183) past the junction of the High Street and Broad Street (Essex Review volume 44, page 88).  He described the name as a corruption of Byg (or big) mere, probably derived from the nearby ponds.  The ponds still visible on maps today presumably provided the water power needed for the Priory’s mill.

The agreement recites that there had been ‘contention’ between William and the Priory over the footpath.  The Priory produced deeds from their archives (ostensionem munimentorum), made by William’s predecessors, tenants of Bykmerescroft.  The archives had demonstrated that the Priory and all others were accustomed to use the footpath to the mill and had the right to do so.  Consequently, William agreed to make rectification.

Mills were a vital part of the medieval economy.  At the beginning of the 13th century, it has been estimated that there were between 10 and 15,000 mills in England.  They were also a key part of the income of a manorial lord.  Lords were able to compel their tenants to use their mills, paying for the right to do so.  It has been estimated that payments from mills made up 5% of manorial income at the beginning of the 14th century (John Langdon ‘Lordship and Peasant Consumerism in the milling Industry of Early Fourteenth Century England’ Past and Present 145, pages 3-46, November 1994).  The Priory was anxious not to have access to their mill disrupted and their record keeping ensured that they were able to prove their rights and request remedy.

Even today, among the many people visiting the Record Office and using the archives, it is not unusual for people to try to solve access problems, although mostly by using Ordnance Survey maps, rather than medieval deeds.

Document of the month, July 2015: The heat of summer

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Each month one of our Archivists selects a document to highlight. This month it is the turn of Chris Lambert – his chosen document will be on display in the ERO Searchroom throughout July 2015.

It was July 1615.  Joan, Lady Barrington, of Hatfield Broad Oak was unwell, and she sought medical advice.  That advice, from Dr Duke of Colchester, survives amongst the Barrington family papers in the ERO (D/DBa F40/1).

D-DBa F40-1 watermarked

The advice of Dr Duke of Colchester to Lady Barrington of Hatfield Broad Oak, July 1615 (D/DBa F40/1)

Reassuringly, Duke did not believe ‘that the swelling of her legges shold be an effect of a dropsy’ (what might now be understood as heart disease).  Lady Barrington’s urine suggested to Duke ‘only much melancholy’.  The effects of melancholy were extensive, including ‘windiness of stomacke & body, flushing heates, [and] causeless feares’, but Duke did not think them dangerous.

Beyond that, Lady Barrington was ‘of a good complexion, well coulered & eateth her meat well, having a full body’.  For Duke, this was evidence that the swelling was simply ‘an effect of watery humours in the veynes, wherewith Nature being burthened, she doth expell & abandon them to the inferiour partes’.  The condition appeared in summer because Lady Barrington ‘eateth & drinketh liberally although the naturall heat of the stomacke be now much lesse then in winter, as also because the passages of the body are more open in sommer … and so the humours do with more facilitye flowe into those partes’.  The ancient Greek doctrine of the four bodily humours, associated with the four seasons, still ruled 17th-century medicine.  In 1615, William Harvey’s revolutionary discovery of the circulation of the blood still lay 13 years in the future.

D-DQ 14-191 watermarked

Hatfield Broad Oak, seen in a contemporary map (D/DQ 14/191). Lady Barrington’s home at the Priory House appears just above the church.

Duke’s prescription was a moderate purge, the ‘often use of turpentine of Cipres [Cyprus]’, and frequent ‘astringent bathes’ for the patient’s legs.  But ‘at the fall of the leafe, it wer necessary to take some more forcible purging physicke’.  The humours of the body being un-balanced, purging would restore them.  Perhaps it did: Lady Barrington lived on until 1641.