MF12: Articles written for CV-19 Times in 2020

copyright: LGWHT

The subject of this first local history article is the Shalden Parish Tithe Map completed in 1841 for the 1842 Tithe apportionment award. Tithe Maps became necessary following the Tithe Commutation Act 1836, which replaced the ancient system of payment in kind with monetary payments.

The tithe (or in Old English: “tenth”) was a custom dating back before the Norman invasion in 1066. Tithes were a one tenth contribution of local produce to the Church. The practice first came to England with St. Augustine in around 600AD and by the tenth century King Athelstan drew up a code requiring the payment of Church dues and “plough-alms” across most of what is now England [1]. King Edgar (959-975) in his fourth code written 962-963 attributes an outbreak of pestilence to the non-payment specifically of tithes [2].

The tithe barn, still to be seen on Shalden Farm, was the store into which the tithe payments of produce (wheat and other arable produce) was deposited. Originally the produce and the proceeds from the sale of this supported the rector of the parish and the upkeep of the church building and rectory. 

By the 1836 Act the system of tithes being paid in produce was becoming unwieldy across many parts of the country. It was also controversial in some places since following the Dissolution of the Monasteries a number of parish rights to tithes had ended up in ownership of private landlords. The Act sought to replace the system with monetary payment based on the value of produce and it was necessary to accurately identify the parcels of land on which tithe payments were then due.

The maps are some of the earliest to provide highly detailed outlines of parishes and were accurately put together by local residents and signed off by the Tithe Commissioners. In Shalden the award apportionment was signed 23rd September 1842. The map and apportionment award provides a detailed snapshot of the buildings, field names, owners and occupiers of the parish from this time. It is therefore of considerable interest to local historians and genealogists.

The 1,509 acres liable for tithe award payments are mostly owned by John Wood Esq. of Thedden Grange who has 1,003 (he acquired the Manor from the Knight family of Chawton in 1840) [3]. The next largest owner is Thomas Gregory Esq. with 245 acres. The farm now called Manor Farm was renamed from Gregory’s Farm on the acquisition from the Gregory family in 1847 by John Wood, who by then owned almost the whole parish. The Gregory family were landowners since before the will of John Gregory dated 1554. Each occupier and owner of the various numbered areas seen on the map (available to view online at this link: www.shaldenmanor.farm/history) can be cross-referenced to the award document which one day I also hope to make available online for reference. For the time being I have electronic scanned images of this award. It is also available from Hampshire Archives under reference 21M65/F7/202/2.

There was seemingly in 2018 a volunteer project to digitise all the tithe records for Hampshire (https://hampshirearchivesandlocalstudies.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/digitithe-hampshire-project/) but I am not aware of the progress of this project. Perhaps someone feels like volunteering?

In 1842 a total sum of £335 per annum (equivalent to c.£31,000 today) is deemed payable across the parish to the Rector (Charles Henry White). It is also of note that an Extraordinary Rent Charge is due in lieu of tithes upon Hop Grounds (numbered 102, 105 and 61 on the map). At that time hops were so profitable that an extra payment was considered due. Today the tithes are gone and hops are most assuredly not a highly profitable undertaking in this parish.

In this second local history piece I reproduce some cuttings from old newspapers discovered in archive searches relating to Shalden. You won’t be too surprised to know that over the last couple of hundred years there has not been a lot of major news from the village and some of what makes the ‘news’ is quite amusing… 

In this third local history piece I show the entries for Shalden from the Domesday book, completed in 1086. The original name for this volume was the Liber de Wintonia (or ‘Book of Winchester’) or sometimes ‘The Great Survey’. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 

[In 1085] …the king [held] a large meeting, and very deep consultation with his council, about this land; how it was occupied, and by what sort of men. Then sent he his men over all England into each shire; commissioning them to find out "How many hundreds of hides were in the shire, what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; or, what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire." … And all the recorded particulars were afterwards brought to him.

The Open Domesday project by Anna Powell-Smith  has digitised the manuscripts and from this source I show the Shalden entry below from Hampshire Folio 21:

The following information is contained in the entry:

1. That it is the land of William Mauduit, who also held Hartley (later Hartley Mauditt, now abandoned)

2. There are 11 villagers, 8 smallholders and 8 slaves†.

3. There are 6 ploughlands*; 1½ lord’s plough teams and 7 men’s plough teams.

4. The value of the land is 5 pounds per annum and was the same in 1066.

* ploughland was the amount of land which could be ploughed by an eight-oxen plough team in the course of the year. Sometimes this is known as a carucate which is approximated as 120acres, indicating 720 acres of arable land.

† this may surprise some, but slavery was prevalent during Anglo-Saxon times and indeed: ‘after England began to have Norman lords’, wrote the monk Lawrence of Durham (d.1154), ‘the English no longer suffered from outsiders that which they had suffered at their own hands. In this respect they found that foreigners treated them better than they had treated themselves.’

This week I thought I’d keep it a little lighter on the word count and include some of archive photos of scenes around the village, mostly from the 1930s. They say a picture tells a thousand words, so hopefully the editor won’t mind less copy this week.

If you have any old photos of the village from days gone by you think should be archived for posterity then do send them to lukehtaylor@gmail.com and I’ll do my best to set up a page on the Local History archive site over the next few weeks to make them available to all and include the rest of the archive above.

In this local history piece I return to the subject of old maps. I mentioned the 1842 tithe map as a rich source of information about the historical development of the parish and the occupants of the village at the time. Initially I thought of uploading copies of every old map I had collected over the last few years. After making a list for the first time I realised this would not be possible in any reasonable timescale and instead found that producing a catalogue alone was enough of an undertaking. 

I will endeavour to the index of the maps in various categories and attach links to allow these to be viewed online wherever possible:

Early county maps

These maps from the 16th century onwards generally show only the approximate position of Shalden (oftentimes shown as Shaldon) relative to other nearby settlements. The relative importance of Odiham, compared to Alton and Basingstoke, in the medieval period becomes clear when these are studied. Shalden was within the Odiham Hundred .

A useful website produced by M & J Norgate between 1996-2006 covering 22 different Hampshire maps is available here: http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/webmap/hantsmap/hantsmap/hantsmap.htm 

The most important examples of these are:

1575 Christopher Saxton’s Atlas, commissioned by Lord Burghley as Secretary of State to Elizabeth I. This is the first cartographically correct map of the whole country recording individual settlements. This map shows Shalden as ‘Shaldon’ and the first thing one notices is the lack of any roads shown on the map.

1611 John Speed’s map of Hampshire includes a town plan of Winchester. It also delineates the boundaries of the Hundreds. It continues to use ‘Shaldon’.

1759 Isaac Taylor attempted to map the whole county at a scale of 1 inch to 1 mile. This was presumably due to the premium of £100 offered by the Royal Society in the same year. It is recorded that this map failed to win the prize, but it does show the roads around ‘Shalldon’ in some detail and is useful nevertheless.

1788 John Harrison’s county map shows the village name as ‘Challdon’ which may well have caused some confusion.

1791 Thomas Milne’s map seems to be the first to show individual houses in ‘Shaldean’ but there appears to be little accuracy in their placement.

Left to right above: Saxton, Speed, Harrison.

Next week I shall cover the Ordinance Survey maps which start to appear in the early 1800s and the following week I will highlight the Estate maps found in Hampshire Archives which are far more detailed and show individual village fields from 1769 and are a more important resource for our village history.

Carrying on again from the thread of old maps covering the medieval period up to c.1800 we arrive at the establishment of the Ordinance Survey (OS). Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 it was realised that the Army lacked good maps of Highlands and the military took on responsibility for accurate map-making. The Principal Triangulation of Great Britain carried out between 1791 and 1853 by the Board of Ordinance (once the second largest department of Government after the Treasury) and this allowed for very detailed and accurate maps.

The Ordinance Survey Act 1841 gave explicit rights to the surveyors to enter private property in order to complete their work. The OS maps cover several series and these are available online through the National Library of Scotland which has the best interface for searching these maps: https://maps.nls.uk/os/ (try yourself online and see what you can find from these old maps).

I find the easiest way to navigate is with the seamless zoomable overlay layer against modern satellite images. This option can be found here for the 25-inch series: https://maps.nls.uk/os/25inch-england-and-wales/ 

I show a couple of extracts, but these are best viewed directly online for the highest resolution images. I note the marking of several ponds in 1894 which no longer exist (except the one which still arise outside the village hall in wet weather!). There really is no excuse to be bored with all these old maps at your fingertips…

25-inch series, revised 1894 map, published 1896 

1:10,560 series, surveyed between 1930-60 and published in 1961

Having completed the medieval county series of maps and the more recent Ordinance Survey maps, there are some far more unique records of local maps which we can investigate to learn more about the village over time. In my background reading on the village I spent a good deal of time searching the Hampshire Archives and Local Studies Office. This can be searched online here: https://www.hants.gov.uk/librariesandarchives/archives

Having identified an entry in the index there is a process (in normal times) where one can either visit to view this record in person at the Archive or have a digital scan undertaken by a librarian there and sent to you. I have undertaken a number of digital scans of the material relating to Shalden I have found.

The entry 14M78 for example contains:

• Overseers account and rate book 1742-1823; 

• Copy of Shalden tithe apportionment, 1841; 

• Map of Shalden Manor Farm, 1769

We can further dig into this record and find that the 1769 map was made by Henry Hogben for the Knight family, specifically Thomas Knight Esq. who was then Lord of the Manor. This map names almost every field in the parish and covers some 957 acres.

Other useful maps in the Archives include a 1765 map showing lands owned by William Gregory (of Gregory’s Farm) who owned 48 acres known as ‘Fishers Lands’ and containing fields such as; Well Close, Trowshords, Foxomer Hill and Fishers Purrock (sic). 

Much more can be found under the Archive Records 37M71.

Extract from the 1769 map of Shalden Manor Farm 

(now Shalden Farm, Gregory’s Farm was renamed Manor Farm in the 19th century)