Appleby History > In Focus > 4 - Danes, Domesday & a Bequest
Chapter 4
Danes, Domesday and a Bequest
by Richard Dunmore
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 Parvais 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 describea 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.
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Sources and Background
Victoria County History of Leicestershire, II, 1954 (1969 reprint), p 76 (Scandinavian Settlement)
T D Cain, ‘The History of the Shire’ in The Leicestershire Domesday, Alecto Editions, 1990, p 3 (Aethelflaed)
Martin Biddle, Repton, Current Archaeology 100, June 1986 (Viking finds at Repton, extraordinarily including coins dated 873/74)
John Field, English Field Names; A Dictionary, David and Charles, 1972, p 267, Appendix 1, Glossary of Denominatives (name elements)
Jill Bourne, Place Names of Leicestershire and Rutland, Leicestershire County Council Libraries and Information Service, 1981, p 15 (Danish place-names); p 22 (barley)
Domesday Book,1086, Folios 230- 237, Leicestershire and Folios 272 - 278, Derbyshire; I have consulted translations published by Philimore (Derbyshire 1978, Leicestershire 1979) and the companion guide by R Welldon Finn, 1973; also the facsimile copies with introductions and translations by Alecto Editions (Derbyshire 1988 and Leicestershire 1990)
W G Hoskins, The Midland Peasant, Macmillan, 1957, pp 8-10 (double vills)
Will of Wulfric Spot, 1004, held by Burton on Trent Library
C H Underhill, The History of Burton upon Trent, Burton on Trent, 1928 (Burton Abbey)
F R Thorn, ‘Hundreds and Wapentakes’ in The Leicestershire Domesday, op cit, p 29 (Burton Abbey land in Derbyshire)
J. Nichols, History & Antiquities of Leicestershire, Vol. IV, part 2, 1811, p 439 (Appleby Parva)
Victoria County History of Leicestershire, III, 1955, p 180, footnote q (1897 county boundary changes)
Map of the Parish of Great and Little Appleby, 1832 and Reference 1831, held by the School Trustees (field names)
Glebe Terriers: quoted by Nichols op.cit., p.438 (Berihill etc.)
G M Trevelyan, History of England, Longmans, 1937 reprint, p 86 (barley)
©Richard Dunmore, November 2000
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