The origins of the
villages of Appleby Magna and Appleby Parva may appear to be
lost in the mists of time, but deductions can be made from the
evidence of place-names from the Anglo-Saxon period and the
information recorded in the Domesday Book.
The arrival of
Scandinavian invaders in the second half of the ninth century
caused widespread havoc throughout northern England.
By the 870s the Danish army was occupying Mercia and it
spent the winter of 873-74 at Repton, the headquarters of the
Mercian kings. The
events are recorded in detail in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle. After
the initial period of devastation, in the latter months of 877
the Danes and the puppet King Ceolwulf divided Mercia between
them and the invading army settled peaceably in the area.
Only forty years later, in 917, the Danes submitted to
Aethelflaed, ‘Lady of the Mercians’ and sister of the
Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Elder, after she had peacefully
obtained possession of the borough of Leicester.
However, in that 40 years northern England was subjected
to the Danelaw with its punitive tax, the Danegeld, and the
administrative structures of the country were indelibly altered.
Jurisdiction was centred on military bases at Derby,
Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford, the so-called
‘five boroughs’, which after 917 became the foundation for
the subsequent Saxon shires, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, etc.
Although the Danes held power for only 40 years, a
strong, even subversive, Danish element remained in the
population for many years to come.
Very little archaeological evidence of them survives
locally (the remains at Repton are exceptional) but their
influence upon place-names was lasting.
Appleby
is a hybrid name, arising from the combination of aeppel meaning apple tree (Old English) and -by, village (Old Danish).
We can deduce from this that Appleby as a settlement
existed at the time of the Danish presence and probably
earlier. There may already have been an Anglo-Saxon settlement,
perhaps Appleton,
whose name the Danes altered.
Jill Bourne has suggested that whether a place remained a
tun (village, Old
English) or became a by
depended on the relative number of Anglo-Saxons and Danes in the
area. The
implication for Appleby is that Danes were sufficiently numerous
for their name to supplant the Anglo-Saxon one.
The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle relates how the Domesday Book came to be written.
In 1085 at Gloucester in midwinter ‘the
King had very deep speech with his wise men about the land, how
it was held and with what men’.
King William sent men of proved discretion and ‘caused
them to write down ... how much each man settled on the land in
England held in land and cattle, and how much it was worth.’
By this means William set about regularising titles to
land, many estates having been exchanged unlawfully at the
Conquest, but above all establishing a value of all the land for
taxation purposes. Because the book became the final
authoritative register of rightful possession of property under
the king, it became known as Domesday Book, by analogy with the
Day of Judgement.
Appleby with its two
villages is of course a twin settlement and this is reflected in
the Domesday Survey. W
G Hoskins in his seminal work The
Midland Peasant discussed such ‘double vills’ and
compared their populations and their holdings as described in
Domesday Book. Typically,
one vill was inhabited by villeins and bordars, all of them
serfs (ie slaves) with little freedom and bound to work their
lord’s land in order to enjoy their own meagre plots.
The villeins each had 1 virgate (nominally 30 acres) of
land and the bordars 5 acres or less. The other vill was occupied by sokemen, who had more land and were relatively free.
Their duty to the lord was limited to paying rent and
they had the power to summon offenders to the lord’s court,
pass judgement and collect fines.
This made the sokemen socially superior but they were
economically superior too, having more ploughs and ox-teams (per
man) to work their land. Hoskins
pointed out that the sokemen were the descendants of the
Scandinavian settlers, whereas the villeins and bordars were of
old English stock, still bound in the Anglo-Saxon feudal system.
Hoskins’ findings are significant for the Applebys.
The Domesday
Book (AD 1086) entries for Appleby are as follows
(1 carucate
was nominally 120 acres):
Leicestershire
THE
LAND OF THE COUNTESS GODIVA
The
countess herself held 3 carucates of land, in APLEBI.
There is land for 3 ploughs. In the demesne [the lord’s
land] are 2 ploughs; and 8 villeins and 6 bordars have 2
ploughs. It [the
land] was and is worth 20 shillings [ie both before 1066 and in
1086].
THE
LAND OF HENRY DE FERRERS
The
same man [Robert, the tenant] holds of Henry 1 carucate of land
in APLEBERIE.
There 4 sokemen have 2 ploughs and 3 acres of meadow.
It was worth 12 pence [before 1066];
now [1086] 10 shillings.
Derbyshire
THE
LAND OF THE ABBEY OF BURTON
In
APLEBY the Abbot of Burton had 5 carucates of land for
geld [tax paid to the king].
There is land for 5 ploughs.
Of this Abbot Leofric leased 1 carucate of land to the
Countess Gode [Godiva] which the king now has.
In the same vill are now 2 ploughs in demesne; and 8
villeins and 1 bordar with one plough. The land was worth 20 shillings at the time of King
Edward [before 1066]; 60 shillings now [in 1086].
The Will
of Wulfric Spot provides the first known written reference
to Appleby. In
founding the new Benedictine Abbey at Burton in 1004, he
bequeathed (with many other estates) ‘that land at AEPPEL
BYG that I bought with my money’.
This is clearly the origin of Burton Abbey’s Domesday
estate at Appleby. Because
the majority of Burton Abbey’s land was in Derbyshire, it was
convenient to regard this land as part of Derbyshire too.
Abbot Leofric was the third and last of Burton’s Saxon
abbots (1051-1066).
Well before 1086
therefore, the original Saxon vill
(manorial territory) of Appleby Magna had been divided between
the two counties, Burton Abbey holding the Derbyshire half, APLEBY,
and Godiva the Leicestershire half, APLEBI
(we can discount the difference in spelling).
The fact that Godiva leased 1 carucate of the Derbyshire
holding from Burton Abbey shows how close was the link between
them. It is a moot
point as to whether Godiva’s half should be regarded as part
of Appleby Parva. The village at
Appleby Magna, where the peasant workforce lived, continued to
be a single unit, although it remained invisibly divided by the
county boundary until 1897; but the farm
land did become part of the Appleby Parva estate.
APLEBERIE,
the third Domesday entry (in Leicestershire), refers to Appleby
Parva. Establishing
the direct equivalence of the Apleberie of Domesday to the
medieval manor of Appleby Parva
is not easy. Nichols’ account is very complex, but the
argument seems to rest on continuity of overlordship by the
Ferrers within the Honour of Tutbury.
There were clear
differences of manpower and resources between the two vills, as
Hoskins’ work suggests. Although only a small holding, APLEBERIE was
clearly more prosperous. Two
ploughs were shared by four men, which compares very favourably
with the situation in the two APLEBY holdings, where 14 men had
two ploughs and 9 men had one.
As sokemen, the workers of the Ferrers land were also
socially superior and relatively free. As Hoskins suggested, they were almost certainly
the descendants of the Danish settlers.
The word ending -BERIE
given in Domesday Book to APLEBERIE,
Appleby Parva, distinguishes it from APLEBY,
Appleby Magna. Among
the (later) field names of the Leicestershire half of Appleby
parish, occur Berrill Hill and
Berrel Close. These
fields lay about half way along the present lane to Upper
Rectory Farm on the south side. The name goes a long way back: the 15th century
Glebe Terrier for Appleby Church (listed in Nichols) gives land on Berihill and nygh
Berihill wey and again in
Beryhill wey. Jill
Bourne tells us that the word element bere
is Old English for ‘barley’. (Indeed the clock tower area in
the centre of Leicester was from the 13th century known as Berehill
ie ‘barley hill’). Appleby
has other crops recorded among its field names, eg Rye
Croft and The Oat
Hills. Barley
was of course grown extensively for use in production of beer.
As G M Trevelyan so graphically put it: ‘Saxon
and Dane each came from a thirsty race, and many an acre of
barley went to fill an ale-horn’!
Perhaps barley was grown as a cash-crop by the sokemen on
the Appleby Parva land in 1086.
This, therefore, could have been the means of
distinguishing its place-name from that of its twin.
Apple-tree
barley(-farm) (APLE-BERIE) was being contrasted with Apple-tree village (APLE-BY).
A Scandinavian
influence may be detected also among the field names of Appleby
parish. Although
many fields have relatively modern names, some clearly have
elements which reach back to the time of Danish control.
Flatt occurs
several times, as in The
Flatts the name of the fields between Top Street and Church
Street near the School. Flatt
(Old Norse) was used to describe
a large division of an open field.
Towards the River Mease below the White House is Flitton
Flatt , Flitton itself probably deriving from Flit-holme.
The latter element is also Old Norse and refers to a
piece of riverside land. Holme
occurs again in Ho(l)me
Leys, behind Black Horse Hill and, again, where Appleby’s
brook joins the Mease in Home
Gap Meadow and Home Gap Close. The
word heath, which
occurs in several places in the parish, also derives from the
Old Norse, heithr, meaning uncultivated land.
These words describe features of the natural landscape or
cultivated land and would have been introduced by the newly
settled Danes. However
their location in the parish, as they have survived, appears to
be fairly arbitrary. Near the streams and in low-lying or remote areas,
however, would be where the newcomers first lay claim to land in
the parish.
There is one other
location name of significance which occurs in the 15th century
Appleby Glebe terrier. In the ‘Field next to Snarestone’ (In
Campo juxta Snareston) the Church held six lands on
Baronsheyth furlonge. The
implication of this is that the modern name ‘Barnsheath’ is
in fact a corruption of the earlier BARONSHEATH. Who was the Baron?
There is only one possible answer: Earl Ferrers.
We seem therefore to have further confirmation that the
south-eastern, Leicestershire, half of the parish belonged to
the Ferrers.
So, we may deduce
that Appleby Parva was founded by the Danish settlers in the
late 9th century. Appleby
Magna on the other hand already existed as an Anglo-Saxon (Anglian)
village well before that, perhaps for two or three hundred
years, but we cannot be precise.
The division of Appleby Magna between Leicestershire and
Derbyshire occurred well before the Domesday survey as a result
of Wulfric Spot’s bequest to Burton Abbey in AD 1004.
