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An Oxfordshire Long House Type [38] by S. Wass.

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26. Long House Types.

"The house and cow-house were then under the same thatched roof with no break in the ridge-line and there was no door into the dwelling-house other than the door which served the cow-house feeding-walk positive proof of the long-house character..." [Iorwerth C.Peate 1964 Folk Life vol 11 pp78,79].

Timber long-houses have been built in the British Isles for many centuries coming over originally from Northern Europe. They were all built with the intention of the stock and hearth being under the same roof, with one entry door common to man and beast.

The new age of rebuilding in stone along the limestone belt produced a break away from the traditional timber dwellings. Husbandmen on larger homestalls were able to rebuild their houses detached from the cattle yards and their surrounding hovels, cowsheds, stables and barn. This may have been the intention of the majority, but the width and depth of some closes and insufficient land attached to the holding prevented them from carrying it out, instead they rebuilt in the long-house fashion in stone. Several of these, though not all, have survived to this day, because of their adequate accommodation. Unfortunately many of the detached farms and possibly some long-houses, because of land reorganisation, have been altered beyond recognition, or have long since vanished. To confuse the issue it is possible that at least three of the rebuilt sixteenth century farms were using the long-house plan, even though they had a reasonably large close. One was built by the French [4] family on the west side of the town which faced south with their barn to the left of their entry. Another built by William Lyllee [29] faced south onto a passage. Hunts [16] who faced west across the Green probably had their barn attached at the north end but in this case the house and byre were not sharing the one entry passage as there was room for a separate farm entrance.

The great problem with trying to understand the sequence of events on a farm site is the lack of records, the rebuilding, the reshaping of this or that bay, a complete recycle of the house and farm buildings to suit another trade, or being turned into a row of cottages.

What does become very apparent is that no building, whether new, rebuilt or adapted, could be looked at without first asking how they had used past buildings and customs to fit in with the type of work the family intended to earn their living by. Was it totally by husbandry, or a true peasant mixture of crafts and agricultural skills, or perhaps a mixture of the family's contribution and day labouring, or full time employment such as shepherding.

It may seem unnecessary to keep filling the pages with long family "trees" and details from wills and inventories, but with manorial records largely missing, what else have we to use to try and understand not just the fabric of the buildings, but also the people, complete with their possessions? With those inventories which now speak about ghost houses, it helps to find the site they come from and fill the missing gaps to complete the picture of the whole town instead of just relying on those whose structural fragments still remain.

Many newcomers entered the craftsmen's holdings, built in stone like the farmers, but not all built in the long-house way. Cropredy had around sixty households and probably at least nine were old fashioned enough to join the farm buildings to the dwelling house.

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Apparently in Sussex only one in sixtythree did this [Harvey N. A History of Farm Buildings in England and Wales 2nd ed. 1984 p 56 ].

One example of a house-cum-byre property is Huxeley's now Monkeytree House [36] in Creampot Lane, which has stood the centuries well to still proclaim the craftsmanship, the adaptability and the spaciousness of the accommodation. It was built not for a yeoman, nor a husbandman, but for a shepherd, whose son Valentyne ended his days as a labourer. A day labourer, yet well versed in the art of shepherding and maintaining a household run on peasant lines. He remained independent to the last. His daughter proving his will in London due to the suppression of the local church court, during the interregnum.

The long-house type of building had the advantage of providing accommodation for a craftsman and his small holding. It could become totally agricultural, or return to the original croft for an artisan. In this way the owners, or tenants could survive a crisis which hit half their income, whereas a larger farm in very difficult years may have nothing to fall back on. In such times the farmsteads often began to fall into ruin, much to the annoyance of the landlord in the 1680's who gave them notice to quit. This could work the other way. The husbandman doing well would take up other spare half yardland parcels of land and increase his income, allowing the place to be extensively altered to reflect their new station in life. The husbandmen and artisans who helped to rebuild in the sixteenth century and continued to prosper found in the seventeenth century, their sons becoming yeomen and their grandsons gentlemen. These descendants were the ones who placed date stones on their improved dwellings. They were the status symbols for the latest gentlemen. A century later following the Enclosure Award of 1775, two left the village farms to rebuild in the middle of their reallocated land. The old farm and barns were then made into cottages which had no land. This also happened to the long-houses, although two [36 and 39] did escape and remained to stand today as one property. Truss's [33] became first five then four cottages, Elderson's barn [38] was made into three new dwellings, and Devotions [3] farm was turned into six cottages.

What evidence do we have that these long-house-types were constructed in such good substantial stone and thatch from 1570's onwards, when this has not yet been recognised from any national survey? Raymond B.Wood-Jones in his Traditional Domestic Architecture in the Banbury region failed to find any, and Anthony Quiney in his 1990 book on the Traditional Buildings of England did not find husbandmen and craftsmen of this period and region building long-houses when space was limited. The answer surely lies in the lack of detailed parish surveys which combined with local records should reveal far more than a general study. North Oxfordshire did not become such a rich area that all the small holders' properties and land were likely to be bought out and erased over the centuries, through early enclosures, or wealthy freeholders.

It has long been thought that in the Midlands and Lowland areas to the east, long-houses ceased to feature in the rebuilding in stone. Only in the upland pastoral areas of Britain were they continuing to build them moving the tradition further west as the centuries advanced, right up to the nineteenth. How then did they reappear, or continue, in this small town in north Oxfordshire? Was the reason the type of agriculture which was mainly mixed farming? In different parishes around Cropredy yardlanders were allowed to keep three, four or five cows according to the custom of the manor they were in, and this meant they needed at least a good barn for corn, hay and cow-stalls.

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Mixed farming always required more buildings than purely pastoral. The fallow land could only take perhaps the store cattle and sheep over winter. The oxen, milch cows and calves needed a closed house, or an open hovel with a pen, to get through the winter. Husbandmen had sufficient arable land to produce enough straw for an open cattle yard. A smallholder on a few lands had only sufficient straw to bed stock inside (there was no bracken substitute). In other areas they had the stock out on rough pasture and seldom housed them apart from yards, except on the higher farms which had a greater need for a barn. Cropredy's greensward on clayland was easily poached by cattle in a wet season. The custom was to keep them off. Smallholders would not allow their cow to graze their few strips of leyland until after the hay had been taken, which was why they needed an all purpose building to take their one cow, food for a few sheep and other produce. Judging by the mill races and medieval tithe barns mentioned in documents the area has always grown plenty of corn, while the ready market for butter and cheese at Banbury made it possible for husbandman and cottager alike to survive on this dual economy. The advantages outweighed the disadvantages for one strip took up a day's ploughing, seeding or harrowing. Working for others at 5d a day in summer or 4d in winter (1593) became a necessity only with old age and loss of their flock.

In Cropredy a third of the tenants had copyhold leases. These were husbandmen rather than yeomen. They included lesser husbandmen with one yardland. Just under two thirds were artisans with a quarter yardland, or only four acres, but mostly less, and yet they managed to lease these surprisingly large and well built long-houses. Several properties were built to this design on the A manor and the landlord's books kept them in a separate group from the older farmsites, so that in 1681 they were released from the estate into the hands of the tenant. This was only a hundred years after they had been built. Did the landlord think they would be a better asset to his estate built in this way? He had surely set out with a definite plan to update his estate in the best possible way, building good substantial properties. Why then did his descendant get rid of them? A great deal of research into the landlords of the A manor still needs to be done if only more records could be located. Had this happened in any other parishes? A survey in several parishes could help to discover if the landlords were the original influence, or the type of business carried out on the sites.

The B manor records are kept in the muniment room at the Brasenose College. No direct evidence has been found for the way the farms and smallholdings were funded. Their two long-houses [3 and 33] lasted through the centuries as manorial property until [33] was sold off after they had been made into farm cottages in the nineteenth century, but they were later brought back by the college. They had been converted into cottages sometime after the Enclosure of the Open Common Fields due to the failure of the smallholdings. William Bloxham at Truss's [33] old site, was granted the lease of a plot of land which he would have to fence, but he appears not to hold onto it. The tenants could not by then lease extra land when the family expanded, or worse if they had some, dare not release it when the family unit was small again. Once all the land was permantly allocated to farms then the way of life, once possible on a Cropredy long-house site with their common rights, as well as leyland strips, became for some untenable (more tradesmen had by then entered the old farms at [14, 15 and 16] as well as Church Street). They had also ceased to have a second trade. First one then the other gave up.

Yet in two of the three A manor long-houses which were purchased in 1681, we shall see that some kind of business continued to be undertaken along with the use of a very small amount of land.

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It could be questioned why, when the general trend was to depart from the stock and hearth being so close, did some insist on building in the old way. Peasantry throughout the centuries had obviously chosen to dwell in this type of accommodation for the success of the structure was repeated over and over again. Craftsmen appreciated the closeness of the household to their livelihood with the convenient and safe storage of everything under one roof. It had proved essential during difficult times when one entry door was easily guarded, and small wooden window holes could not be entered. All felt safe too in severe weather to be in one area indoors. From the central open hearth they had only to cross the entry passage to reach the cow stalls. Craftsmen brought up on farms would appreciate the traditional design which was easily and economically adaptable to their requirements. One bay could be used as a carpenter's woodstore, or a mercer's shop and they did not have to have only a three bay barn, it could be two, four or more. However it was planned and built the principal was the same: one common entry and a continuous wall at the front and the rear. Not all had the barn and house roof at the same height, because at least three had cocklofts over the first floor chambers. It was the change in roof level that takes them into a new category. The new adapted long-houses in Cropredy were still built as true vernacular buildings each "stone walled and thacked." They did however add an inner stone gable to divide the hall house from the byre, but on some of the larger farms the unmarried servants still lived close to the animals by sleeping over the stable (p91). The different demands reveal the various layers in the community.

The Entry.

All the Cropredy long house types had their main entrance at the front. They led into an entry passage and for some very strong reason the dwelling house was always off to the right and the barn or cowshed to the left. Why? Was it local custom or superstition? In other places they reversed this, but not in Cropredy. When they stoned the floors of the house they stopped at the passage and the byre had earthen floors though we do not know for certain when stone floors arrived. The inglenook chimneys were laid directly onto a specially prepared clay base since uncovered in Robins nether chamber [26]. There is an expression "the head of the floor" which could refer to the house end, usually the upper end, because it was traditionally above the byre floor, and the place for the head of the household to sit at his table. Examples can be found in Welsh long-houses where the dwelling house was at least a step up from the cow byre. Yet in this parish a few were actually built a step or two lower than the cow's quarters.

How had this come about? The later sites, created from the 1570's onwards, all had to face west or south. The descending line of the lanes in the town is from north to south. The rest leave this main route to descend eastwards. Those on the sloping ground, however slight, had the disadvantage of the dwelling house being several inches below the cattle. All the smallholders had their barn on the north or west of the house with the result that Huxeley's barn [36] was eighteen inches at least higher than their hall and Truss's [33] was twentyfour. Elderson's [38], Devotion's [3] and Tanner's [39] were on flatter land. Why could they not reverse the position of house and barn? It meant that a large drainage pit must be dug near the barn [36] with some means of reaching the ditch flowing down Creampot Lane.

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The Roof and Plan.

Truss's and Devotions had only one and a half storeys for their house and barn, but Huxeleys, Eldersons and Tanners fail the real long house roof test, because none of them have the same roof level right across the house and barn, due to cocklofts. If this disqualifies them from being true long-houses there was a good reason for advancing and improving on the type of plan by extending upwards on the dwelling house end. These three new properties built on land taken from the demesne farm close all had a limited depth to their sites of around a hundred feet. This could have been deliberate, because smallholders did not require a large cattle yard and room for numerous hovels out the back. They did require adequate space to house their cow or cows and store and thresh their grain as well as find room for the hay. A good substantial, all purpose barn capable of holding stock and crop had been the answer for centuries and was still proving viable in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. They would not want a separate store for wool and threshed corn if they took them up into the dry cockloft.

Plan of Huxeleys [36].

It rather looks as though the three with cocklofts were from the same inspiration, but adapted to each new tenants requirements. If the housewright concerned with the redevelopment of Cropredy had the backing of the landlord to produce buildings which were an asset to the estate, and at the same time provide what the craftsmen, shepherds and mercers needed, then updating the design and advancing it up to two and a half storeys at the house end and into a good stone one and a half storey barn at the other, they could still have the favoured common entrance and add the chimney to back onto the passage. This needed only three gables instead of the four required when farm buildings were separated from the house. Huxeley's at Monkeytree had their two cart doors at the back and Elderson had them at the front. Opposite the cart entrance they each had a winnow door. The usefulness of the two or three bay farm building has been proved, whether combining it with a carpenter's workroom, or the mercers shop. All and everything coming in through the one common entrance door as of old.

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Can this be still called a long-house? Or is it just a descendant of the model? A long-house type.

The Walls.

Stone had the great advantage of being able to increase the height and yet remain within the price range of moderate, though still rare dwellings. None used ashlar stone as a few of the farms did on the A. Manor. The coursed rubble rows have weathered well, since they were laid by the stone masons, providing the roof was kept in repair. The inner gable, which not only supported the roof and backed onto the cross passage, made a better division to divide the upper and lower parts of the property, than a timber one. It proved to be a very convenient wall to place the chimney and oven, when the hall house was always the first room to be approached from the entry. The wide cross passage could be used as a nethermost service room and later a kitchen, though few took advantage of this. The bay beyond the hall being reserved for the parents' lodging room, soon to be called the chamber and later still the parlour. As in the timber cottages in Church Street the buttery was situated behind the chamber. The leap forward from the older long house was the chimney taking away the smoke. When did they replace the wooden slatted "windows" for casements?The oak framed windows in [36] eventually had three lights with wrought iron casements, hinges and handles. Outside a quadrant held the opening middle light and a bar prevented entry through the open window. Not all favoured the new low ceiling to the hall with the heat coming only from one angle. A central fire had at least allowed everyone a position "round" the fire. It may have smoked, but it burnt slowly. With the new inglenooks a draught whirled in and up the chimney causing the wood to burn quicker, and cool the legs of the residents, but once the chimney was warm they rarely blew smoke back into the room. On one side of the hearth at [36] an oven was built into the chimney, projecting a little behind. A smoke cupboard for the bacon could be added if burning wood.

Each of the new houses had four front windows regularly arranged with two on the ground floor and two above. This has led to the idea that they were of later construction. The hall, chamber, hall chamber and upper chamber each had a window facing the road, leaving the buttery sometimes windowless at the rear. Those with cocklofts had gable end windows. A smokefree, well ventilated and warm building, under a good thatch could now be obtained whether or not the cattle byre shared the same roof. They would each hang a door in the stone inner wall, between the hall and the byre, to physically separate the two ends.

There were further advantages of using a hall, chamber and buttery design in a long-house. Perhaps like the Church Street cottages many had been brought up in a house which had an upper chamber only in the bay away from the open fire. Now they could have a hall chamber as well as an upper chamber. The winder staircase might go up either from between the inglenook and the door to the entry passage, or beyond the door into the hall against the rear wall. On the first floor it went on, in Huxeleys house [36], to wind up to the cockloft. Here an elm floor could be used for dry storage or sleeping. As the population grew and there were no more sites available to build on, the inventories reveal that use was made in Cropredy of cocklofts for sleeping areas, which may have been rare in other rural regions. The collars, forming part of the roof truss, were not very high and interrupted the floor space, and at first there was often no ceiling. Having a cockloft did however provide the first floor chambers with a ceiling.

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There were at Huxeleys [36] four possible sleeping chambers which was an improvement on only one downstairs chamber and loft when there were three generations under the thatch. The hall could be kept as the dwelling house for cooking and eating by being free of any beds. Mrs Huxeley senior retired to the downstairs chamber when she gave up the cooking hearth to Valentyne's wife. The rest of the family slept in the upper chambers.

The Tenants.

The landlord had encouraged into the town tenants from other parishes. Each must have been able to pay the entry fine for three lives. It is now possible to trace the families in the long-houses from their first appearance in the Cropredy records. Those on the A manor were at first the only people who escaped the general reconstitution of the families and it was feared that the past occupiers of Monkeytree house [36] were never going to be traced back beyond the 1841 census. It was only after the vicar's Easter lists had been repaired that the Huxeley's, the Elderson's in the smallholding to the south, and the Tanners just round the corner were found to live there. On the B manor the records had already established the Truss's down Creampot Lane and the Devotions alias Dyer at the bottom end of the Long Causeway. Both of these college tenants were born in Cropredy. Thomas Huxeley was married at Wardington, a part of the Ecclesiastical parish of Cropredy, and Edmond Tanner appears to have connections with Horley a village to the west. Many of the long-house tenants stayed for three generations on the A manor and for many more on the College estate as the copyhold properties usually allowed three lives to be entered on the indenture which could be both parents and a child. Entering a new life after the death of one of the three had to be paid for by an entry fine and an inspection on the state of the building, so that tenants had to keep up their repairs. This type of property must have suited them and helped some to survive, even to prosper as Truss did [33], and then a few would work by contract as they grew older. The Eldersons lived at [38] from 1584 to 1661. The failure of the son to produce an heir caused a change in tenancy. The Huxeleys' son passed his goods to his widowed daughter who was then able to remarry even though she was thirtyeight. The family had Monkeytree House [36] from 1574 to 1668 (p396). Truss's [33] were here in 1553 and five generations lived down Creampot until 1671. Devotions [3] were in Cropredy when the registers began in 1538 and after five generations passed the farm to a nephew.

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The Buildings and their occupiers.

1) Huxeley's the Shepherds at Monkeytree House [36].

Shepherds in Cropredy often leave larger amounts in their inventories than husbandmen (p79). They gradually acquired over the years quite sizeable flocks. This necessitated finding spare commons for sheep in other parishes. We do not know who Huxeleys worked for, though they could have been in charge of the town flock. Two of Thomas's children could attend school which meant in his more prosperous days the family could afford to release them from helping with the household purse. What brought the Huxeleys to Cropredy from Wardington, if it wasn't the prospect of the smallholding and the offer of work? Good shepherds were essential for the welfare of the town's sheep which were an investment for the future.

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The site was 200' wide and 100' deep narrowing at the south end and rounded on the north by the Lane turning the corner. The property was built on a slight bend for it followed Creampot Lane as it began to curve, showing the Lane was there long before this building. The house was 34' in front and 32' at the rear. The barn ridge measuring 40' from the chimney to the north barn gable. The outer gable wall being 20' wide. Inside the house was just under 16' deep. The barn inside measured 15' 5."

Reconstruction of Huxeley's House and Barn [36].

The house and barn could not lie in a straight line and the two rectangles of the house and barn meet the middle gable at an angle, leaving a wedge shape inside. This was used to advantage in the entry passage. The door at the front was 3' wide and 5.5' from the inner chimney wall. The rear yard door was 3.5' wide and had only 3' towards the chimney wall. The oven used to project into the entry passage at the narrow end, which is revealed in the large quoin stones near the rear entry door. From the spine beam to the now absent oven wall were ancient hooks and room for shelves put up for the first tiny dairy. The entry partition by the cow stalls did not reach, or leave a mark on the spine beam which supported a loft. Over the stock the beam was left rough, but chamfered over the entry passage.

Rear Entry.

From the rear grassyard the 12' wide barn doors opened out to reveal the threshing floor. Opposite the cart door in the centre of the bay was a winnow door. The cowstalls had a wind hole on the rear eastern wall lighting the south bay before the stalls were moved to the north bay. We know the north bay had two openings, an upper hay door and a lower wind hole on the west wall. There would have been some kind of drainage to prevent the waste water from reaching the house below. There had to be provision for this on the north side. An early sump was known to have been filled in under the yard.

Huxeley's inventory did not survive. What would Thomas have required of his buildings? Apart from his cow and sheep he must store his hay and corn, though he might have had to exchange labour for these.

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The barn seemed large for this small enterprise and more must have been envisaged. As a local man was he trained in caring for sheep only on the Open Common Field system? Or did he take advantage of enclosed land in the neighbouring parishes for his own expanding flock? Huxeleys had commons for one cow which meant she could join the herdsman when on the fallow. They also had the following leyland which was granted to the property:

I ley in Hawtins Piece in the Netherfurlong. 2 Leyes in Overfurlong. 1 ley in Honeypleck furlong. 1 Ley in the same from the Highway downward. All these ran east and west on part of the Oxhay common.

What family accommodation did they need? Had Thomas an apprentice in mind and a large family when the cockloft was added? Did he bring in his tods of wool and carry them up there to await a good price? They would be drier up on the cockloft wooden floors and hopefully free from vermin. The size and weight may have forced him in later years to use the downstairs chamber. The stairs were essential providing they were wide enough to manoeuvre such an awkward sack.

Both Thomas and his son Valentyne lose their first wives and marry again, but only Thomas's first wife of that generation was buried at Cropredy in January 1588. Where did Thomas disappear to? Ann and Thomas had four children, two boys and two girls, and except for the eldest she was able to nurse each one for at least two years. Thomas married again and Agnes joined the family after their marriage in her own parish. She was a widow in the lists of 1613 and had her chamber and maintenance in the house of her stepson. Agnes was still with Valentyne in 1624, by which time her own son John who had been a pupil at Williamscote had long since left home. Valentyne was thirtyone when he married Alyce Hunt and fortytwo when Jane Watkins married him in 1621. Valentyne's first marriage had been with Agnes in the house. There were again four children by the first marriage. Alyce died three days after their fourth was baptised in June 1620. Her first three babies had been given well over a year's nursing, but who would rear this baby boy? He survived until November and was then buried on the seventh. After a decent interval Valentyne marries again and two more children arrive, this time baby William has just over a year of nursing.

It was his second daughter Elizabeth who succeeds to the copyhold so she must have been entered onto the roll. Her father was born in 1579 and worked outside all his life for as an old man of seventytwo the register records that on the 21st of February "Valintin Huxley" was buried "who died suddenly in the fields." Elizabeth had his will proved in London. Did she travel down there by coach or ride side saddle, and who accompanied her?

The family believed in education as two sons were pupils at Williamscote school. Was it a strict puritanical family, or one where discussion of the bible reading was allowed? Why did the second child gain the copyhold? Was she entered late on after becoming a widow? None of the children are married at the church until Elizabeth's second marriage to a shepherd, William Pinfold, perhaps in her father's employ, or having taken over his work?

The Huxeleys managed to live in Cropredy for almost a hundred years. They were not native to the town, but took advantage of the school being built to educate sons who would have to leave Cropredy, so that Valentyne was the only one with his daughter to remain. They cared for the step-mother who had brought Valentyne up which meant that first Alyce and then Jane must share the hearth with her. His widowed daughter Elizabeth was able to marry having her last child at fortythree. Having again become a widow at fiftyfive she vanishes with the children.

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The property was sold to Thomas Batchelor in 1681. Could the tenants only have the lease for three generations and is this why the sons left?

Very few properties can be studied as well as the one you live in. Especially noticeable are the alterations done to the building which every new tenant or owner continues to do right down to the present day. Between 1681 and 1683 a barn was built in front of the property by the Batchelors. It was not quite parallel to the original barn being farther away at the south end, but was almost as long and rather crowded the front. Thomas Batchelor was a shepherd who came down from Bourton as a tenant on the small-holding before 1681. Having acquired the property he built the front three bay stone barn with a low thatch roof. The middle bay had double doors opening onto the road. After building the barn he finally settled with the bailiff to pay a quit rent for the encroachment, but not before the landlord of the A manor threatened action if he left it standing. Thomas died in 1703.

The Hunts who had lived at [37] were the next to move in. They converted the front barn into a useful blacksmith shop, using possibly the south and middle bay. After the Bortons who followed the Hunts, ceased to be blacksmiths they took down the south bay and all evidence of the chimney vanished. The middle bay continued to hold horses who came to be shod, but where was the fire?

They kept the bottom half of the barn's south bay wall by the road and capped it with stone. The new south gable wall to the old middle bay they put up in brick backed with stone and raised the roof to include a loft under a slate roof. The loft floor was over a spine beam, and reached by a wall ladder. There were two windows of different periods, the eastern being the oldest. Down below apart from the rings to hold the horses there was also in the floor a post hole as though the place had once been divided to make two stalls. The floor in the farrier's shop when it became a coach house had two stone tracks from front to back for the wheels, but brick over the rest. This included a gulley taking water from the outside rear downspout and drain through the wall and along the coach house floor to the front drain. The water went into Creampot's brick culvert. The downpipes were lead. Local information remembered that an anvil stood outside the two farrier's doors before Edward Borton died in 1900 [ Colin Shirley's letter].

The north bay had been two stalls with a crude loft above. The dirt floor was never stoned. A harness room was squeezed between the north window and stable door. Later this was turned into a closet which emptied into a yard sump made for the drainage from the barn stable and cowstalls? The closet's wooden seat and lid remained into the 1990s, but the sump was filled in. A far older toilet had been built in stone under a slate roof at the bottom of the garden, behind the yew trees. In the rear wall, retained as the garden boundary, was a small candle nitch.

The outside brickwork to windows and wall corners in Batchelor's north bay stable are mid to late nineteenth century when the thatch was replaced. The roof was a slightly different height before alterations in the 1970's, but the wooden lining was kept under the slates.

Following the Hunts came other blacksmiths from Chipping Warden around 1839. The last of this family of Bortons was Edward, a vet, who with his father made great improvements to the house. One of these surely was to move the front entrance.

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In the main barn only the north bay was retained for stock. The cart door entrance was filled in leaving a window and a cow door by the long straight join once holding the cart door hinges. There was an older door in the north west corner onto the north yard. The north bay had a brick floor laid in a square pattern, and may have been a replacement for an earlier cobble floor. Next to the north gable was a brick manure passage with a gulley to take the water away, except by the north door where for the width of the smallest of the three stalls the brick had not replaced the earlier cobbled stone floor. The cobbles were placed parallel to the gable, whereas the brick passage was laid at right angles to the cobbles. The larger rectangle of bricks may have been divided into two stalls, for a wooden post hole had since been filled with concrete as well as the central drains leading to the yard pit. The bricks were laid in four triangles pointing at the drain. The smaller stall opposite the north door took up less than a third of the total width of 15.5ft. The brick pattern ended at the middle bay where an older stone cobble floor ran parallel with the rear and front walls. The cobbles were interrupted by the later washroom wall. The washroom doubled as the vets surgery and with the front lobby took up most of the old threshing bay.

An old pear tree had been trained up the eastern outside wall of the north bay. Possibly one of four [two only remain]. Behind the tree, low down, is a curious L-shaped hole built into the original wall with large shaped stones. This is a cool place. Was it used to stand milk in?

Hole in Wall

Bortons had substantially altered the place, repairing, re-novating and recycling. They were not afraid to use the cheaper brick rather than stone to do their repairs. With time this mellowed and always they used Cropredy bricks, so it was all undertaken long before the late 1870's when bricks were brought in from other brickyards. Edward had plenty of buildings to spread into. It was ideal to keep it on for a trade combined with farming. Borton's did acquire other properties in Creampot and bought the demesne field behind called Calves Close. They took over, or built, the Calves Close hovel and moved the cows away from the barn. A brick wall was built at the end of the garden, from the old stone toilet behind the yew trees to the gate into the Calves Close. Edward Borton had horses and pigs on the premises. The original building was of a reasonable size and construction to attract a business up to 1900.

Most long-houses were eventually modernised and the common entrance discarded. Rather than break an entry between the front windows and disturb the balance of the whole elevation, a new entrance was made on the hall side of the inner chimney gable, emerging by the newel stairs at [36]. These then had to be resited. A straight steep staircase was built behind a wall in the hall against the parlour wall. The door at the bottom of the stairs led into the buttery.

One reason this was left until the mid-nineteenth century was the now inconvenient position of the drinking well. It was lined with stone and surely sunk in Huxeley's time, but was right in front of the proposed new doorway. With the original entrance the well had actually been in a good situation. Was this when another well was sunk in the corner of the north yard by the orchard? Perhaps at the same time as the new brick pig sties and hog feed house with its furnace to boil the pigs' smelly gruel. The front well received a stout wooden cover and a new stone flag path was directed from the gate to the new front entrance which had two tall, but narrow doors.

The parlour acquired a brick chimney which also took a flue from a grate in the chamber above. A wooden floor was built into the parlour though stone flags remained elsewhere. The rough spine beam with a metal plate over a join was encased in wood.

Page 399

As the dairy had become the kitchen a lean-to was made behind the buttery and at some time a door had to be broken through the wall to join it to the buttery. The lean-to had an entrance from the garden.

The hall has a window seat under a late three casement window on the back wall. The position of an old salt cupboard can be seen in the wall between the fireplace and this rear window.

Upstairs a way was made through the stone inner gable by the cockloft stairs to reach the new kitchen chamber. This old loft had a wall recess at the front (but no hay hatch unless this was at the rear replaced by the window). By most doorways they made candle shelves inset into the stone wall. Another wall shelf stood just inside the hall on the front wall to light the front half of the hall. Yet another by the barn winnow door could later be used to hold a light for the vet's lobby. After the cart doors were removed and the threshing bay no longer required, a candle shelf with half a stone arch, was placed by the eastern cow door. Above that someone added a hay door. The loft had always had ventilation slits, though one was lost when a north hay door was made.

When a new dairy had been built behind the buttery, the kitchen could take in the entry passage and old dairy space in the first bay of the barn. This meant lowering part of the floor, though it still rises a step up from the hall house. A brick wall was built up to the newly raised and slated roof and was used to hold a chimney. This was put in the rear half of the bay east of the spine beam and took two fireplaces. One for the kitchen range and the other for the new kitchen chamber. A windowless cockloft over the chamber could only be reached by a ladder from the barn. Cropredy bricks were used to narrow the old back doorway, and also to make the former front entry door into a window. The stone kitchen sink was placed near this front window on brick pillars.

Below the rear kitchen chamber window part of the wall had to be rebuilt in stone. Local bricks were used above the chamber window to raise the roof. A window seat was made under the three light window which had metal casements and leaded panes. The inside has Victorian surrounds. The old dairy had had few joists supporting the small loft above, so that extra joists were needed. At the front part of the bay the joists were all new and chamfered. There are signs here of a recent hanging ceiling. The joists supported a good elm floor for the bedroom above.

Having used one bay at the nether end of the barn to make the kitchen the middle threshing bay was now turned into a wash house which doubled as the vet's surgery. A bench for dealing with animals was placed in there near the copper. In the kitchen was a cupboard with several compartments for Edward Borton's medicines. To hold the loft over the wash-house a transverse beam was put up. This went over a new three light window which faced the recently walled garden. The wall between the front lobby and the wash house was built in brick with some rows made of wood. The double entrance doors to the lobby matched the front double doors. They replaced the winnow door.

The feel of Huxeley's homestall when completely empty, even though it has been considerably altered over the years, was of a satisfactory building. One where the soundness of the walls and compactness of the site gave off a comfortable aura. There was no doubt that the house quietly dominated the family, but left nothing unpleasant, quite the opposite in fact. All that was missing were the sheep, the smell of new made hay and the warm breath of cows stalled for the winter with the squish squish as their milk entered the wooden pails.

Page 400

The summer sun still rose beyond the yew trees and set between Howses [28] tall building and Cattell's barn [30] opposite.

Monkeytree House was only one of the three long-houses they built on the edge of the A manor demesne close. Next door the landlords had allowed Breedons [37] smallholding to be attached to the south end of Huxeleys (p483). Between Breedons and Eldersons long-house was a space to allow access to their close behind.

2) Eldersons the Carpenters of Creampot Lane [38]

The second long house type was built on the edge of the demesne close between Huxeley's and Tanner's. The tenant had a close and yard at the rear approximately a hundred square feet in size. Their barn was 34 feet long and attached to the house which was 24 feet.

If Elderson's was a type of longhouse then the entry door would be into the south bay of the barn, behind the fireplace on the inner gable. In his hall the stone chimney, which may have had an oven for he had furze in the yard, backed onto the entry passage. The house had four front windows and in the cockloft a south gable window.

Stephen Wass the present owner of the house kindly inspected the front elevation of the original three bay barn and house. There appears to be "sufficient stonework to locate the blocked cart doorway and the entry door and to suggest by careful analysis of the fabric that it was in fact all of one build" (Figs. 26.1 & 26.6). Mr Handley's plan of the cottages made out of the three bay barn confirms that the middle cottage front wall was of brick and the two outer ones of stone. The rear barn wall was all stone with a winnow door approximately four and a half feet wide in the middle of the threshing bay. The cart doors at the front having been replaced by one of the Biddle's brick cottages (p361).

Page 401

The cottage made from the stone barn next to Elderson's house had a door at the front and rear in the correct position for a former entrance. Both doors were filled in during later alterations.

An Oxfordshire Long House Type [38] by S. Wass.

The three bay barn was partly used as a carpenter's shop. Walter Rose describes just such a combination of cows and carpentry in his book The Village Carpenter [Cambridge Univ. Press p12]:

"A dwarf partition of rough boards prevented the chips... from mingling with the hay, the odour of which contrasted agreeably with the fragrance of the wood. No one thought or suggested that cow-keeping and carpentry were other than allied callings."

The north bay housed Elderson's three beasts with a hay loft over. The middle bay had a 14' wide threshing floor and was therefore open to the thatch. The tall double doors opened onto Creampot Lane and the winnow door onto the rear yard to let out the cart horse. The south bay as the carpenter's workshop also stored the "bords," but had to leave room for the entry passage behind the chimney. The carpentry tools were worth £2 in 1625, and in 1661 consisted of two saws, two axes and other small tools.

There is again some doubt that the Elderson's place was a true long house, being more a long-house-type, for he had improved the accommodation by raising the house roof to include an extra floor. The chimney enabled two chambers with ceilings to be made on the first floor. The newel stairs led up to the upper chambers, but the cockloft had only a ladder. At the same time they retained the cow byre within easy reach of the cooking fire. Although they now sat round the table, rather than the fire, they went off to bed in comfortable chambers, and not lofts.

The hall had the usual furniture, the table with form and chair as well as the women's spinning wheel in 1625. The precious pewter of nine dishes, spoons and two salts were worth 9s possibly displayed on a shelf, while the two brass pots and two kettles would be by the inglenook fireplace. The parlour held two bedsteads. Instead of a buttery in this bay there was a boulting house in which they kept the cheese press and salting trough indicating the family made cheese and kept a pig for meat.

Page 402

Over this bay was an upper chamber where the cheese was stored on a rack and two more spinning wheels for the women to supplement the carpenter's wages. There were some goods stored in the hall chamber belonging to Thomas senior, but as this must have been Thomas junior's chamber no mention is made of the bedding. They continued to use the ladder to reach the cockloft where a century later corn and malt were stored. [Plan on p57 in Wass S. The Amateur Archaeologist. 1992 Batsford ].

Thomas had taken his turn as a church warden and sidesman. To do this he was leasing a parcel of strips equal to half a yardland (p27). He left three cows in February so they had no need to sell one before winter (though there is no evidence of this practice in Cropredy). Two of the cows could only be kept while he leased the extra parcel of land. The third went with the smallholding's own cow common. Those rights gave him leyland, but no arable for peas, barley, rye and wheat, which was why they needed the half yardland for there were four adults in the house (1624). His son carried on leasing extra land to have three cows, making cheese and feeding his pigs on whey. The corn provided flour and a little ale and the tail ends provided for their poultry. Their well in the yard was conveniently near the back door.

In 1681 the site had land in Oxhay which was no doubt the same as Elderson's a hundred years before when the reorganisation took place:

"Comon and comon pasture for one cow to goe depasture and feed.

One ley in Hawtin's piece shooting east and west.

One other ley in Honey Pleck furlong.

Two half leys in the same.

Part of another ley in the same."

The Eldersons were not wealthy for they would be paid at the standard rate for carpenters. Thomas senior had a few sheep which made a good investment, but had no chance to greatly increase his flock on only half a yardland. In 1617 he apparently sold five lambs [c25/3], but he is not recorded as having done that again in Holloway's remaining folios. The women spun wool and hemp and may have made candles for sale. Thomas has the occasional gardening job for the vicar, or was he repairing some building in the garden? Judging by his clothes they were fairly frugal and his son was the same (p680). Being carpenters they had a joined bedstead, the pride of the household. Neither leave more than £20, yet they survived on that one site for nearly a century.

Thomas Elderson married in 1584 and Alyce nee Wallis bore him four children before she died, closely followed by her fifteen month old baby Margarete four months later. This was during the years of acute shortage of grain and the number of those buried increased. One strange occurance. Into Alyce's grave went an unnamed baby. Alyce would have had a coffin made by her husband. Was he approached by the child's father William Brockwell, a stranger, to bury the poor child? "Ales Elderson wife of Thomas & at that time was buried in the same grave a child of Wyllam Brockwell," in November 1596. A William and Alice Brockyvee baptised a son Marten on the 30th of January 1595/6, a month after Elderson's daughter Margarete. Was Mrs Elderson feeding them both? A host of questions arise none of which can be answered. The Justices stepped in too late when the wages were insufficient to cope with the high price of flour. It might have been impossible for the Brockwell's to pay for a coffin and then the sexton's fees.

The Huxeleys, Eldersons and Tanners all have the misfortune to lose a wife and needed to marry again. Thomas Elderson married Avis Tymes in 1597/8 fifteen months after Alyce died and then his ten year old daughter Annes also died.

Page 403

Three family members in three years. There were no more Elderson children baptised. The two survivors were Thomas (1585-1661), a carpenter, and Alyce (1590-1632) who remained a spinster. During the years covered by the lists Alyce lived in Cropredy and may never have left, spinning away amongst all her other tasks, day after day with her stepmother. Thomas her brother had gone to school and his knowledge of adding and preparing accounts would help him when he was apprenticed to be a carpenter with his father. How did the younger Thomas use his ability to write? Did he extend his skills beyond helping with wills, parish and carpentry accounts?

Before he died Thomas senior made a will. "My will is that Avis my wief shall have sufficient meate drinke lodginge apparell washinge and wrinking [?] dureinge her naturall life to be provided and allowed her in the house where I doe now dwell by my executors...and if it happen that my said wief doe or shall at any tyme wthin one quarter of one yeare next after my decease dislike the maytenance wch shalbe allowed and provided for her by my said executors then my will further is and I doe give and bequeath unto Avis my said wief the some of five pounds to be paid her by my said executors within one whole yeare next after her dislike." Her stepchildren Thomas and Alyce were the executors and the father left them the rest of his personal estate. One problem with a smallholding is that the tenancy cannot be divided into thirds as farm land could. The extra parcels they lease have nothing to do with the property. This meant the second wife's position was more precarious than most. If no marriage settlement had been made (which were sometimes revoked by a will) then the husband must make it quite clear in the will that his widow must be cared for. Avis does stay and another nine years went by before she died.

Thomas junior had been thirteen when his father remarried and was thirtynine when his father died. He was obviously considered to be the head of the household. Thomas was still a bachelor throughout the list years, but he left as executrix his wife Elizabeth. Although Thomas could write he did not sign his will having become too ill. His wife calls in Elizabeth Howse who witnesses it with an E.H. Thomas's other executor was a relation of his wife's, Thomas Hill of Little Bourton. They had no children christened in Cropredy.

After Eldersons came Thomas Elkington and Richard Watts combining the purchase with William Paris alias Taylor in 1681. William died the following year, leaving his share to a Richard Paris. Richard died worth £478-17s and in his PCC inventory, taken in 1695, the barn was missing and the property had been split up. In the house were the following rooms. A garret storing malt and corn, a hall chamber and little room on the first floor. The stairs reducing the upper parlour bay into another small room. They had a hall, buttery and little room on the ground floor. The new entrance and passage having to be squeezed into the parlour slicing it in half, making it into the "little room." Down the late passage at the end of the nineteenth century went Johnny Smith and his donkey to reach the yard behind. Mr Smith was to turn the little room into a post office.

In the deeds the north and south stone bays of the barn had after 1851 been made into two cottages "out of a barn" by William Smith and his son George [37]. To the north of the building a twentyfour foot gap to the garden close and yards behind was infilled with two thatched cottages. This left only the middle threshing bay behind the two cart doors to be built up by John Biddle of Church Street [47]. He used a flemish bond design of light stretchers and burnt headers [The late Mrs Gertrude Mold confirmed that the 1908 postcard showing the patterned bricks was correct. Her parents had leased Elderson's house during the first world war]. J.Biddle sold the middle barn cottage in 1864 to Mr George Smith for £65 [Deed in Cropredy Chapel].

Page 404

Sumners living at the wheelwrights and building business [18] and Neals at [37], purchased the whole row between them. (Sumners 1-3 Neals 4-10). Although it was Chapel Row after 1881, it was also known locally as Neal's Row.

3) Edmund Tanner and the Mercer's shop [39].

Due to the extensive alterations and the loss of part of the western end it cannot be positively stated that Tanner's was definitely a long house type, but it was still built as a smallholding and the business side of the property was taken from the barn end. If this had three bays then the mercer's shop was next to the entry and the middle bay made into the first recorded brewhouse for Cropredy, while the third bay vanished for an entrance into the yard. The property was built facing south and had more farm land belonging to it than Huxeleys or Eldersons. The plot was also taken off the same A manor demesne close. Edmund arrived in 1584, the same year Elderson was married and ten years after the Huxeleys. Did he replace an earlier shop or was this a new business? Tanners brew house was a great advantage when the rest of the town were still using the hall, or the rarer kitchen chimney. Had they decided to brew for the smaller cottages for they had nine barrels in the buttery? One of his most important buildings was the kill [kiln] house where the barley could be malted. It would also be another means of increasing his revenues by malting barley for others.

How far did the mercer's trade extend to? He bought on credit, but having to pay this off to purchase more he would not wish to extend too much to his own customers. This was confirmed by his lack of trade debts, showing he did indeed supply very little credit in his shop. He asked the vicar to pay off Mr Man's (a curate) debts and those incurred by Wam Reade the parish clerk. The Revd Thomas Holloway wrote [c25/2 fols. 13 & 13v]:

Page 405

"Item payde to edmond tanner for the

debtes of mr man the vth of october to b[e]

repayd uppo. his wages at saynt Thomas day xs."

"Item payd to wam Reade for his debts the

3 of october wch he must repay me at saynt

Thomas day next _____________________vs."

The debts due in Tanners shop book in 1630 were slight compared to others. "Due from severall persons for wares as appeth by the shoppe book" £1-8s-4d. Edmund died with £23 of ready money in his purse which was not a high amount in the 1630's. It was natural for a testator who lay dangerously ill to call in his bonds to pay off the debts. Margaret King had a grocers shop, but she was not able to control the credit as carefully as Tanner had. When she died in 1683 there were £40-9s-8d of desperate debts and £30 of good debts owing. This was again a period when there was an acute shortage of "good English money" and the landlord's letters complain bitterly of arrears (p342). Mrs King's shop had also carried far more stock which came to £62. Did she live at Bryan's cottage [47] in Church Street for a short period before the Watts family of tailors came (p361)?

The first shops often used window boards as counters. Bakers, butchers and shoemakers opened only on the days they were not selling their wares at Banbury market. Tanner had a shop door and an inside counter. Mercers were principally sellers of silk and textiles, but in Cropredy his customers may have only brought more serviceable materials. Possibly bolts of material which Watt's [27] and Hunt's [5] woollen looms could not supply. On his counter he sold spills, candles, starch, sopetar, pitch and all other mercery wares. The goods he had in stock were worth £9.

Many mercers began life as licenced pedlars or roundsmen. Pedlars needed to be strong young men able to carry a heavy pack. Many would purchase their stock in London and once an area had been developed they could afford a packhorse and perhaps later a second horse. Setting up house in a town and putting up a stall at the local market showed they were prospering. They took nonperishable goods out to their customers. Pins, needles and thread being essential to the housewife. In the pack were trimmings of lace, leather laces, strong leather points, and various colourful garnishes. Clothes without buttons required tapes with points and these were essential items from the labourer to the vicar, especially when a gross of braid silk buttons were worth seven shillings at a mercers shop in Banbury belonging to John Vivers [MS.Will Pec.53/5/6: 1637]. Silk for the gentlemen and holland, cambrics and lawns for the women to sew. Ribbons for the girls, gloves, stomachers and girding for the men. Jewellery in the form of bracelets and brooches. A few if they were also chapmen would add the cheaper bibles and chapbooks. The last being too low in value to be found in the inventories. Had Edmund Tanner started out as a pedlar to earn his shop? Even though he sold tapes there was still a pedlar visiting Cropredy, because Thomas Holloway mentions both Edmund and a pedlar. It is not always clear from whom Thomas made the purchase. Did the pedlar sell wholesale to Tanner, or had Tanner to go and collect goods himself? If Tanner no longer went out to customers did he employ someone like James Ladd [40] to work as his pedlar?

There were two references to silver buttons given to the vicar by William Shotswell and the tithe was "a garnish/ of gowd buttons" so they were made in Cropredy during the second decade of the seventeenth century [c25/6 f4v].

Page 406

In 1619 another tithe from "Wam Shoteswell a garnish/ of sylver buttons for gowd [?]" [c25/6 f10]. Was he making them for Tanner to sell, or taking them to Banbury?

[c25/6 5v] [torn page] 2 poyneth -iijs iiijd/[ ] of pynes -xvjd/

for a gross of roundman/ yeicester laces - ijs ijd/

somas viijs vd/

 

"more bought from edmond/ tanner of poynts laces &/

gyrdelings wch... viijd"

 

[f7v] "Charges against/ new yrs day anno/ 1617/

In primo a paire of coro/nation tape tagged payd/

to edmond tanner xixd,

Item for a gross of thredd poynts/ to a pedlar..xxd

Item a second pare of corination/ lace...xixd

Item 2 dosen of grene gyrding /....ijs iiijd

Item more 3 yerds/ .....iijd

Item a dosen of coronation gyrding/....xiiijd

Item 2 dosen 3 yerds of gyrdinge of/

coronation.....ijs viijd

a gross of thread poynts to [---] xxijd

Item half a gross from a pedlar xd"

 

[17ultv] "...of leather laces/ iiijd

Item more of leather laces/ halfe a gross..xd

Item leather poynts (halfe a gross)/..xd

Item half a pare more/ for gyrdinge...xxijd"

 

New year presents:

 

[f16v] "memo That Tho gardner of/ lyttell borton sent me a/

fayn payre of gloves to / whom I send a garnishe/

of gent lasses for a/ handkerchefe.

Item sent my sonne clerson a/ dosen of sylke poynts/

to his wife vjd.

Item to my sone gorstelow who/

sent me a cloke[?] & sent him/ a dosen sylke poyt-."

They were exchanging gifts for the New Year on March the 25th. Silk used to be for the nobility, but by this time other lesser gentlemen had items of silk clothing. The Thomas Gardner of Little Bourton mentioned above lived in the manor farm, though there was another family of Gardners, sons of Richard. Thomas Holloway mentions too his son-in-law the Reverend John Clarson, vicar of Horley, who had married his daughter Hester whom he calls Clarson's " wife" and sends her 6d. Elizabeth Holloway another daughter who married Leonard Gorstelow (p547) was sent nothing by her father.

Page 407

D26.7Tanner's House and possible barn.

In Edmund Tanner's inventory of September 1630 the following rooms are mentioned:

Hall (4) ..............................Chamber over the hall

Plor (6) ..............................Chamber over the plor & dairy house

Buttery (2)........................ Chamber over the butry

Dairyhouse (5)

Bruehouse (1).................. Mill house

Stable & cow house .......Kill [kiln] house

The Shopp (7) .................Roome over the shopp

Tanner's property had lost the third bay of the barn to allow an entrance into the yard behind. Tanner made the byre and other farm buildings to the west of the yard. The connection with the long house type was now reduced to the extra work areas attached to the south facing house. Again there was an entry passage (3 on Fig.26.7), four front windows to the house and a cockloft window high in the eastern gable. On the photograph showing the property when it still had stone walls under a thatch, the only door was into the passage. There were also two extra upper windows for an Over the Entry chamber and a Shop chamber. These upper windows had the thatch coming well down over the casements. Both these chambers could have a higher ceiling for there was no cockloft above them. The stone wall at the rear of the building belonged to both the house and the shop end.

The Tanners used coal in the hall fireplace and for this he had installed a grate (p625). Edmund's inventory was taken in September and he had already collected his first load of fuel. They had two lots of fire equipment, one for the hall, the other for the brewhouse. His wife used wood and coal for a cooking fire, but furze to heat the oven which projected southwards, beyond the front building line, between the hall window and the entry door.

Page 408

This brought the inglenook forward and gave room for the possible site of the newel stairs beyond the fireplace, reversing Huxeley's plan. Did this mean the parlour door was next to the dairy door rather than further forward?

After entering the house, the shop was to the left and beyond that the buttery in the same bay with a door by the exit to the backyard. The hall was to the right and reached at the end of the entry beyond the chimney which backed onto the passage. Tanners chamber-parlour was still the main bedroom with an extra table to retire to from the hall. They had a set of curtains and a valance for the four poster as well as plenty of bedding. Here is a case where the warming pan may have been purchased to keep Isabell's bed aired. Upstairs in a store room they had a light wicker chair which could have been used to carry a sick person about. They also had a chamber pot, which could again mean illness in the household. As Tanners had eighteen pairs of sheets, did they have lodgers, or a particularly industrious first wife, who spent her childless days spinning? He had the only hanging press, a word which still lingers locally for a wardrobe. After 1616 the maids slept in the hall chamber with the children by Tanner's second wife Constance. The parlour and dairy chambers were kept free for stores, implements, blankets and wool, and in the smaller rear store, the corn and three important spinning wheels. Constance had "milke pans, creame potts, shelves, one cheese rack, cheese vats and cheese" worth £7 in the dairy below. Her cheese press was in the kill house. What was the "hmmy" press used for, unless to crush the awns from the barley getting it ready for the kiln house?

In the yard were other farm buildings including a barn. We cannot tell from the order the inventory is taken whether the stable or cow house were part of the lost byre next to the brewhouse, or a separate building. In the stable he had a mare which would be needed to collect and deliver his mercer's goods as well as forming part of a plough team. Besides managing the shop they might need help on their quarter yard land. It was possible that on most years they could do everything themselves with perhaps a day labourer, or a youngster under eighteen. The lists show that they also had adult staff, either a maid or a man living in, but not every year.

In 1681 there was land attached to this property [Bodly: Box 4939-4959. Deed 4950]:

In the South Field: 4a 2r of arable and 1a 2r of leys:

2 lands in Bottome of Breach furlong shooting into Oxhay...

[with Lambscote furlong on the east side]

2 lands in the furlong at Arboyle stone [Arbwell] [42] S, [23] N

2 butts in furlong above the furlong against the hill [25] N, [4] S

4 butts in upper Hagthorn furlong [50] S, [15] N

4 butts in upper Landimore [8] S, [4] N

3 leyes in Hanging Leyes [26] N & S

 

In the North Field: 1a of arable and 2r of ley land:

Half the hadland that hades the Netherfurlong in Towne Hill [41]W

2 lands in furlong against the Hill [23] W [4] E

One ley by Elbow Ham [Washlands] [43?] N [16] S

 

In Oxhay 1a 1r of leyland:

1 ley in Netherfurlong in Hawtins piece

1 ley in Honey Pleck [?] N [52] S

Half a ley in Honeypleck [?] N [36] S.

Common for one cow.

Page 409

The names of those farming the strips alongside have been replaced with site numbers used in this book. They had a third of the land as leyland which was normal, but the crunch came with the grossly uneven distribution of arable between the two fields allowing no rotation unless they used peas as the fallow and cropped yearly (ch.20).

Edward Tanner had received some education. He was called out to help with at least three wills, fourteen inventories (p161) and asked six times to be an overseer including once for Suttons [42] and twice for the Robins [26] (p159).

His first wife had no surviving children and she died after a long marriage of thirtyone years. How had they coped with this lack of children? Isabell was a Lamprey some of whom were also mercers. Her sister Anne married Thomas Fenny [43] and lived at the top of Church Street by the north gate into the churchyard. One of the Fenny's children was called Isabell, perhaps after her aunt. Edmond was in his fifties when he decided after only three months as a widower to marry Constance Tustin in November 1615. At last he was able to have children for six arrive over the next twelve years. Three daughters and two sons survived, but the Tanners like the Huxeleys and Eldersons do not remain in the town registers into the next century.

Edmund Tanner left £5 to each of his five children. He had no freehold land and had apparently not entered any survivors onto the copyhold. His goods were shared amongst them. Constance would have the seven years left of the lease. These legacies were to be paid over to the overseers if his widow remarried. He expected the two boys to be bound apprentices. They could inherit at twentyone, but the girls at eighteen or marriage. The girls had the eighteen napkins to share and all five had two pairs of sheets and a coverlet or blanket. The eldest boy having a pair of yellow blankets. The feather bed went to Edmond, and the other two beds (mattresses) to two daughters. Having then run out of mattresses, John had one coffer and the malt mill and Hannah two pewter platters and a porringer. This left the greatest brass pot and another pot to the boys, and the greatest brass kettle and two others to the girls. "My great chest" must go to the eldest daughter. As executrix the wife had the rest which included the main bedstead. John Clarson, clerk, and Edmunds brother-in-law John Goodwyn both of Horley, were appointed as overseers.

They had been married for fifteen years and Edmond must have been around seventy when he died. His youngest girl was buried two years later. Constance remained a widow for four years and then married Nehemiah Gardner who was only twentynine years old. Their marriage lasted for two years then Constance died leaving the children aged eleven, fourteen, sixteen, and twenty. Nehemiah lived on and married again, a marriage which lasted for thirty years and produced Samuel in 1645. In 1673 the Gardners still pay the cow tithe, but William Toms, who may have been a maltster, is also connected with the place from 1677. In 1681 it was sold to William Toms. Was that when the Gardners moved, or had they already departed to another site? William Toms had only one daughter Rebekah. After she had married William Faux there began the three generations of William Faux's to own this homestead. In 1761 they sold to Hemmings, a carpenter, who ran it as the Rose and Crown. He fell ill and had to give up the business and retire to his cottage built on the corner of Tanner's [39] old plot. He attached it to the extra bay that had been built at the south end of Elderson's [38].

Page 410

The homestead returned to being a place of business for carpenters, butchers, bakers and grocers as it began, but the farming side became increasingly important as it passed through the family from Checkleys to Allitts and on to Lamberts.

This house has never been divided up into cottages, but a massive overhaul was undertaken with the renewal of the front wall and roof in Lambert's time. The close was however split up in 1763 when Hemmings sold the western part next to the pond to Edward Shirley the wheelwright. Two cottages were built on the close, behind which the first chapel was built by 1822. In 1881 the second chapel took up the wheelwrights end of the close.

What kind of people had these properties? Many have had an education, or encouraged at least one child to school. Some could not write as well as Edmund Tanner, but they have bibles which they or someone in the house could read. It was a period of reading and absorbing the teachings of the bible. The bible being constantly searched for answers to questions relating to family discipline, dress, finance, politics and neighbourly conduct and those who could read had many advantages from using this knowledge. John Truss, shepherd, had two bibles at his home down Creampot Lane.

4) The Truss family of Shepherds in Creampot Lane [33].

Page 411

John Truss (1553-1614), the son of William, was possibly the first or second occupier of this small-holding. Behind the house was a close of half an acre. In the north west corner of the close Truss's had four more bays of building, used partly as a stable, under a long joint roof with Redes [32] next door (Fig.36.2 p598). It may be this older building was once part of the timber house built right up against the arable land. Truss's close had been split off from Rede's just as Devotion's [3] was once part of the B. Manor meadow land [8]. The new stone house and barn had been built in the southeast corner of their close, right next to the road with the garden plot behind. John's mother Constance had remarried in the 1560's and his step-father Henry Wilson had leased the smallholding plus one yardland. After Henry died in 1574 widow Wilson carried on farming and was still doing so in 1578 (p209), although John was now twentyfive.

In 1588 John had taken over for he appears on the vicar's list (p212). He had been twentynine when he married Alice Steele and they were to be together for thirtytwo years. They had three sons and three daughters, three of whom were able to remain in Cropredy. Ellen having married William Bayley moved to Church Lane [19]. The youngest son and daughter remain on the smallholding, but were left with the responsibility of bringing up Dorothy the illegitimate child of the second daughter Annes, who had gone to live in Ireland.

Reconstruction of Truss's House and Barn [33].

Page 412

The Truss [33] family had a one and a half storey house and barn with a road frontage of 62 feet. The property was all one build and again one common entrance door. The three bay barn to the left of the entry and the hall to the right. The site sloped so that the entry passage floor would have been twentyfour inches below the west barn gable. The drainage could have gone onto the road and into the ditch flowing down the lane. Like Huxeley's, Elderson's and Tanner's houses the pattern of the four windows was repeated on the front elevation lighting the hall house, inner chamber, and two upstairs chambers. The buttery behind the chamber had no window, in fact there may have been no windows at all on the north wall, nor a door at the end of the entry passage, only the double cart doors into the barn.

Two inventories were left for this property:

John Truss February 1614...................... John Truss February 1633/4

Hall house .................................................Hall

Chamber

Buttrey

Chamber where hee did lodge ................Low Chamber

Chamber above

The chamber above the Entry ................Upper Roome

In 1614 when John was sixtyone and not long a widower he asked the vicar to help write his will. Two weeks later he died. John was anxious to make sure his grand daughter Dorothey was provided for (p217). John Truss's goods were assessed the day after his funeral. Richard Hall [34], Edward Tanner [39] and William Lyllee [29] were asked to come round to make an inventory. They began in the byre finding two beasts and a calf with twentyseven sheep. Over the cows John had built a scaffold for hay. The eldest of two sows recorded in his will was somehow overlooked. They moved through to the hall house with its stone floor. Truss's still held onto the trestle table, and although they are one of the few to lack a chair there is a bench, a form and stools. The chimney fireplace with an oven on one side had all the necessary equipment including a spit to roast the meat. The "coffer wherein I usually putt cheese" was downstairs in the "chamber where hee did lodge." The cowpery ware they used for making butter, cheese and brewing. The pewter ware kept for visitors and special occasions when the wooden utensils were put away. "Eight Pewter dyshes, five Saucers, four poringers & three/ pewter Cupps, on[e] quart Potte" [the last four items being unusual], one "Salt and two candlestikes" worth £1. This collection was well above the average and the brass and pewter were the second highest in the nine inventories for the second decade of the seventeenth century. The brass which included the kettles and pans passed to Elizabeth. Like Hurst's [53] in Round Bottom only eight other inventories had more than their four bedsteads. The bedding was probably adequate for them and Truss had two presses, a new piece of furniture for Cropredy. He left the "grettest of the two" to his youngest son, John. Either up a ladder from the hall, or a newel stairs were two more chambers. The east chamber over the parents had the cheese rack for the turning of cheeses made by the women in the family. The appraisers descended to the hall and then climbed a second ladder up to the chamber over the entry and there found "certayne corne" and "certayne small Bedes."

Page 413

Both shepherds, father and son, are described as labourers, working on another tenants farm for a wage, though still managing their own smallholding. In 1614 before John senior died he had paid a 5d tithe for two commons to the vicar. One of these was Sutton's horse common, though he had no horse in his inventory. In the Easter lists son John (1591/2-1633/4) was serving his apprenticeship as a shepherd on Robert Robins farm [26] until 1617. By the following year he was working from home. He manages to lease commons from Woodroses (p271), while letting his own cow common be used by his sister Elizabeth and later by her husband William Tustain who had moved into the Truss household.

John Truss junior was apparently a good friend to Richard Hall, at the Watt's farm next door, who had a large flock. Did he become their shepherd, or did they share an interest in sheep? Truss senior had twentyseven sheep in 1614 and his son was to increase his own flock to a hundred and thirtysix, one of the largest in Cropredy.

The copyhold land belonging to this site remained with it constantly, passing down from Truss to Truss [33]. In a 1668 terrier the strips (2a 3r) belonging to them were in

The South Field:One land in Jayhole [Hillington in the Hayway Quarter]

One butt in Over Copthorn [across the Broadway]

The North Field: "On the other side by fielde...One hadelay and its felow att shuting fordway" [towards Clattercote ford on the south side of the lane] [BNC:552].

In 1704 this was called: "Two lays in Oathill" [below Oathill Piece] and one acre in West Meadow marked with "the horse shooe and calkin" and a common for one beast" [BNC:554] (p212). The arable land in the South Field could only be planted on uneven years. According to Truss's will of 1632 he had leased half a parcel and planted 3a 1r in the North Field.

John's inventory was taken on the 5th of February 1633/4. He had increased his leased pasture to feed the hundred and thirtysix sheep which in February would still be in lamb. He had eight sheep racks to feed his sheep during bad weather. Once it was believed that shepherds on the Open Common Field system did not feed hay to their sheep in winter for all the sheep ran together. However a shepherd was quite capable of placing hurdles, which he owned, to feed his own flock or else remove them to a rented enclosed field. He knew of enclosed land to let in Prescote, Williamscote and Clattercote which were all bordering on Cropredy parish. From time to time a record mentions Cropredy tenants leasing them. His will refers to "sheepe at Bylton," but where was that? John junior remained a bachelor and his married sister and family of eight children, lived with him at the family home. John went on increasing his flock while he could obtain land. The tools for his trade included a pitch pan, a sack and pitching forks.

In the barn John had two cows, a heifer coming up and two yearling calves. Just before he died he sold one black cow to Palmer who kept three cows. Was this a small Welsh black? There were two hoggs fattening in the yard. John's will mentions a very important point. He leaves his brother William not only his two cows, but also forty sheep and twenty lambs. A flock which will remain on the site as William, or his son, takes over the lease. Most important of all though are the ten butts of barley out of the Oland Quarter [Downland] and three of wheat. This was the first mention of the Quarters.

In the room over the entry they still stored their wheat and kept the malt for brewing made from the barley which was not needed for bread. He also grew peas, probably 3 butts to equal his wheat. Out in their backside was a rick of hay.

His father's press, the hall table (now with a frame) and the greatest of the two benches were valued as belonging to John. He had slept in his father's lower chamber. The two upper chambers belong to his sister's family and are not viewed for his inventory. The hearth has been handed over to Elizabeth which meant there was no reference to any of the pewter, brass or fire equipment.

Page 414

Taken alone this would indicate a house with only three rooms and no fireplace. Fortunately his father's inventory had covered the whole house.

Although John does not appear to write he could read. He was one of several who read their bibles and as he had two in his possession perhaps one was a pocket one. Remember he was asked to see that Dorothey was educated, an unusual request for a girl, but perhaps to safeguard her future. He was well able to cope with finances lending out his surplus money. He died at fortyfour the ninth richest Cropredy man in the surviving inventories from 1570 to 1640. He was worth £128. He was buried less than ten days after his neighbour Richard Hall [34]. What fever had they caught?

After the Truss's came William Bloxam who married another Elizabeth Truss. They farm for three generations leasing extra parcels of land. The fourth generation had to surrender in 1788 for the Enclosure of the fields made leasing strips of land out of the question. The fourth William Bloxham moved to Claydon.

The front of the house was altered by Spicers before 1833 to make five cottages. These were reduced to four when the College again took over the property. They made the two west end cottages into one for the blacksmith family of Kings, famous for their ringing of handbells. The original entry now opened into a 10' wide middle cottage. The original hall house and parlour each acquired a new front door. Possibly the parlour cottage had to have the window moved to allow for a doorway as this bay was only about 11' wide. New chimneys were added. Each had a modern window with an arched brick lintel replacing the old wooden lintels at the house end. They were now stone cottages under a thatch roof with small garden plots at the rear and a shared toilet at the top of the garden. A row of brick woodsheds under a slate roof were put up in the close to the west of the barn. Until the college tap appeared the farm well was used. Each of the cottage doors had a drain in front for the household's waste water. This led into the Creampot Lane culvert.

The other longhouse type belonging to the college was a small farm on the Long Causeway [3]. To introduce the Devotions is an extract from widow Em Devotion's [3] inventory which was taken by John Claridge and John Hunt on the 5th and exhibited on the 6th of October 1634. The total came to £44 -2s -2d (Em's carts and tools can be found on page 328).

"All her wearing Apparell ---------------------------------------------------------------£2 10s/

In the hall a table and forme and/ two benches a chayre two little benches----- 5s/

in the low chamber a bedstid a Cubbord/ a chest a forme" (etc)------------------ 10s/

"in the dayryain buttree too churnes/ a cheesepresse too shelves three kivers/

one cobole too barreles milk vessell and/ a bolting huch a wollin wheele." £1/

"in the Chamber over the hall too beds/stides one Coffer too barreles a kiver/

and sertayne Corne and Cheese"------------------------------------------------------£2/

"eyght payre of sheets halfe a doz of nap/kines to table Cloath too toweles and/

other small linnes --------------------------------------------------------------------------£2- 3s 4d

the brasse and pewter --------------------------------------------------------------------£2- 2s 6d

too beasse-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------£6/

one mare and Colt------------------------------------------------------------------------- £4 -3s- 4d

sixteen sheepe-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---£5- 6s- 8d

too hogges------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13s- 4d

the pultrye--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8s- 0d

the Croppe of haye and Corne----------------------------------------------------- - £15- 6s- 8d"

Page 415

5) Devotions Husbandmen on the Long Causeway [3].

This house really belongs with the rest of the husbandmen, but the information from the College records makes it worth while to put it with the long house types where it also belongs.

The Devotion's [3] long-house was situated on the Brasenose estate on the edge of their Manor farm meadows. The grass yard and orchard, of just over an acre, were barely above the flood line, surrounded by a mound and fence in which the tenant must plant trees every year. In 1766 this still applied and the orchard and rickyard hedge contained twentyfour elms, twentytwo ashes and fifteen elm and ash weavers. Over the road the small farm had half an acre of "Coppus" whose hedge contained thirtyseven elms, nine ashes and eighteen elm and ash weavers. There are no records to say what kind of underwood was being coppiced, but hazel was always in demand. Alyse left iron wedges and a hatchet, their tools for tree felling and coppice work (Fig.26.10 p419).

Page 416

The long-house was about a hundred and twentyfour feet from gable to gable, which was an unusual length. Each bay would measure 11.6' with 2 or 3 inner walls and two gable end walls. The first college terrier [BNC:552] to survive for this site, described a house of four bays, a barn of four bays, a stable and cowhouse of two bays. All stone walls and thatched. In 1704 the house is described as "The dwelling house and buttery three bays. Barne and gatehouse five bays. Stable and Cowhouse two bays" [BNC:554]. The gatehouse being now included with the barn and not the house as before. The barn's four bays and gatehouse may have had three tie-beams and two barn inner gable walls to support the roof? The last two bays for horses and cattle were divided by a wooden partition. With the deep Causeway ditch a bridge would be necessary to reach the gateway and the barn's double doors opening onto the yard. The gate also serving to keep driven stock going to market out of Devotion's yard. Which of the four bays would they use for the cart doors and threshing bay?

Reconstruction of Devotion's House and Barn [3].

With only one farm entrance the full harvest cart must enter under a high gatehouse lintel because of the loads swinging round to at least bay (4) to the barn's double doors. After unloading they would reverse out and leave by the gatehouse (7) for another load. There are no references to a gatehouse loft, but why did they need the gatehouse in the first place? It is not mentioned in the early inventories as nothing belonging to the tenant was kept there. Was the house planned to be separate from the barn? It was more likely, due to the nether bay in the house that the barn once had two doors and (8) was then part of the huge barn. Or was it conceived as two joined smallholdings so that (1 and 2) were the other house?

Only the Brasenose properties went in for gatehouses (though Hunt's [16] on the A manor could have had one) and this may have been something to do with whoever was responsible at the College for development of the estate. It would be interesting to check if another manor on the College estate also had gatehouses. Besides Devotion's they had one next door at the manor farm [8], though this was part of the stable and more an entrance to the walled farmyard. In Church Lane the present old Bakery [19] also had a gatehouse with a later chamber over (p428).

Page 417

The two inventories reveal the following rooms:

Thomas Devotion May 1631................ Em Devotion October 1634

Neather Chamber ................................... Low Chamber

Hall........................................................... Hall

Chamber over ye Hall ............................Chamber over the hall

Boulting house....................................... Dayryain buttree

The house had a hall and a low chamber off it where the parents still slept. There was also a combined buttery and dairy. In 1631 they mention a nether chamber which was usually below the hall, but was it the same room as the low chamber? Upstairs there would be two chambers, though only the one over the hall was recorded. George the eldest son would have settled in an upper chamber and this would not be mentioned. The corn was stored upstairs as well as the hard cheeses put to mature on racks. The well was to the rear of the house.

The house and barn were built almost against the causeway ditch, presumably the highest and driest part of the acre. The property was demolished in 1898 and a new row built behind the original. Local knowledge had the two best cottages made from the house at the southern end (bays 7- 10). Presumably there were two more cottages taken out of the barn and two small one bay dwellings out of the stable and cowhouse at the northern end. The six cottages were made out of the smallholding before the 1850's and the better off tenants had the house end, one of them having the old hall inglenook fireplace. This was paying a hearth tax in the 1660's for the tenant was still a husbandman paying rates. The whole land in 1754 was revalued at £13-12s-10d for the 26.5 acres. After Enclosure this went down to 20.5 acres, but by 1810 they had barely 13 acres.

Devotions were sometimes called Diers sometimes Devvys or other various spellings. Who were Thomas Devotion's ancestors? His grandfather, another Thomas, had married Grace and they had at least five children, four boys and a girl by 1549. The eldest George was born before 1538. Their father died in 1551 and his widow remarried two years later. Her husband John Smythe managed the land during the minority of George, but the lease was in Grace's hands. She had it as a sub-tenant to Richard Leashe a Berkshire yeoman. He had taken out the lease in 1574 and could have been responsible for the rebuilding, but we do not know. Grace (why not her son George?) must keep the house in repair and the mounds and fences. The lease ran for twentyone years.

Grace's son George married Alyse in 1564. They had at least two sons, Thomas in 1567 and William. George was farming two and a half yardlands in 1578 and after he died in 1582 his widow Alyse continued on two yardlands. Like many widows she managed with the help of her fifteen year old son. He courted Em Whitinge on the Green and they were married in 1591 (p532), rather young for Cropredy, while his mother still farmed. Thomas was twentyfour and Em twentythree and this allowed them time to have nine well spaced children.

Alyse Devotion died in March 1594 leaving to William's "gyles" her clothes, and the rest to Thomas. Her inventory was taken a fortnight later by John Russell [13], Thos French [4] and Edward Lumbert [14]. She had a half share of some goods, but had kept the kitchen utensils, her cow, a pig and hog fed from her cheese or butter whey, three hens and a cock. In March two small lands of maslin were hers besides half the barn corn worth 13s-3d.

Page 418

Alyse had still been helping to farm and had not retreated to being in her room entirely. Why was she not on a third part of the farm instead of a half, as her son already had three girls to feed? By then the farm was down to one yardland.

The following year the two eldest girls died leaving the third daughter Em as the eldest. In the eight years covered by the Easter lists Em junior was at home for four of them and when her sister Ursula was nineteen she too was at home. The brothers George, William, and Thomas are away gaining experience for they were over eighteen. The holding could not support them all. In 1614 Thomas was fortyseven and Em fortysix, yet she was apparently expecting Anne their last child, twenty four years after their first was born (or could it mean that the last child, Anne, was really Em junior's daughter?). No adult staff were employed to help, just various members of the family, probably taking it in turn.

Thomas Devotion died aged sixtyfour. His inventory taken in 1631 adds only a few more details about the house. The nether chamber had one bed and upstairs were two more. All the cooking was done on the hall fire and the churn, cheese press, barrels and kivers went into his boulting house. His widow Em farmed on with George, but he did not become the tenant in his own right while his mother was alive. Em's "wollen wheel" had not been on Thomas's inventory although there was 10s of yarn and wool in the farmhouse.

This time Em's harvest was in and as George had not married and no marriage contract had had to be made, dividing up the land, it was all assessed as hers. George was thirtyfour when his father died and thirtyseven when his mother died leaving him to pay the legacies to all the children at their marriage. His mother had increased the legacies (p179). George remained a bachelor and the three surviving girls may have remained spinsters.

Thomas and Em's third son Thomas married and had at least five children in another parish, according to his sister Em's will made in 1662. One of her nephews, George, who called himself a yeoman, married Katherine Wilkes of Wardington in 1669. Theirs was a short marriage for by 1673 he made a will asking her to take over his estate. It was one of Katherine's relations a Thomas Wilkes who with his wife Ann had the small Cropredy farm [3] from 1678. The Wilkes were still tenants a hundred years later when the land was enclosed. The property being described as three houses and a close. The land belonging to the holding had now shrunk and become too small to farm separately. The College added it to Springfield Farm [6] and the long building was turned into six cottages. These were found by the architect W.E.Mills to be beyond repair in 1898 [BNC. 217]:

"The cottage with the best accommodation, namely that at the end, furthest from the village, is in a dangerous state, and if the roof timbers were removed the greater part of the front and back walls would fall outwards.

"The outer walls of all the cottages are very much out of the perpendicular, caused mainly by the sinking of the roof timbers....None of the cottages have more than two Bedrooms, and one possesses only one and a fair sized landing, which is used as a bedroom.

"The floors are all very much worn and uneven, and the ceilings exceptionally low.

"The walls are damp, and the living room floor is about a foot below ground level...They are evidently wanted, but I feel sure they have had their day...there is no alternative but to pull them down.."

The Devotions house lasted three hundred years. Houses that become cottages are the first to suffer from lack of repairs. The rents barely covered the outlay.

Page 419

While most husbandmen could thatch, or employ a thatcher to keep the roof watertight and prevent the timbers rotting, various records show that landlords or sub-landlords put repairs off until to-morrow. Truss's house and barn, once they were turned into cottages suffered the same fate. With perhaps no extra land in Cropredy, though Wilkes had connections in Wardington, the farm's produce would hardly keep up with inflation in the early nineteenth century. The coppice across the Long Causeway was taken into Springfield's garden and all the valuable underwood vanished.

Reconstruction of Devotion's [3].