A History of the Parish of East Woodhay

Tucked away in the north west corner of Hampshire, East Woodhay is rich in history.
From a medieval Bishops' palace to a crashed German Bomber, a wealth of stories wait to be told and many questions to be answered.

What were the Swing Riots?
What is the story of the big houses ?
How much was life affected by events outside the parish ?
How have peoples lives changed over the centuries ?

The book tells the story ofthe Parish of East Woodhay from the earliest time to the end of the Twentieth Century.

The book costs £8 contact Su Elsden for copy

Early Times

TOPOGRAPHY

The Parish of East Woodhay dabbles its feet in the clear water of the River Enborne and has its head in the air at Pilot Hill (286 metres), the highest point in the county. From this 'Northwest Frontier of Hampshire', we look north, out over the Enborne and Kennet valleys to the Berkshire Downs, resisting advances from our northern neighbours even into modern times.
The geology of the area is complex with a number of clays in the low areas changing to chalk downland in the south. A green and pleasant land with woodland and hedges, providing a home for a wide variety of wildlife, and fields large and small. A number of small streams drain the land eventually into the Thames and on to the North Sea. The land is dotted with small hamlets which have gradually expanded over the years. A sprinkling of thatched cottages have survived down through the ages; some stand alone, others in small hamlets which are typical of an area which had been part of a great hunting forest.
The economy of the area relied on agriculture probably since Neolithic days up until the 1950's when the great estates of Stargrove, Hollington, Hazelby, Malverleys, Woolton House, Tile Barn and Hayes were split up.
Woolton Hill took on a more suburban appearance with large housing developments during the second half of the 20th Century, changing the character of the area forever. The south and west of the parish retains the rural landscape that hopefully will last another thousand years.

EARLY HISTORY

The earliest evidence we have of people living in the area goes hack to somewhere between 10000 and 4000 BC. The Hampshire Sites and Monuments Record details a Mesolithic site around Abbey Wells and flint tools from the same period have also been found around Woolton House and in Ball Hill.
The famous local landmark, the Gibbet at Combe, stands not far away on a long barrow which is dated c.3500 - 2,500 BC.
Evidence of Neolithic occupation of this area has been unearthed around Stargrove where a stone axe was found in 1939. Some of the lanes we use today may well have originated in these times but this is almost impossible to establish.
A cluster of Bronze Age burial mounds can be seen beside the A34 road to Winchester at Seven Barrows (there are actually ten) just south of the great Iron Age hill forts of Beacon Hill and Ladle Hill.
Iron Age hill forts are the most dramatic evidence of prehistoric settlement of this area and were built by the people who lived here around 2nd Century BC until the Roman occupation. The earth ramparts and ditches, now mere shadows of their former might, still exist just outside our parish along the chalk downs to the south.

The Romans made their first visit to our shores in 55 BC, their stay was short and it was not until 43 BC that the invasion of England began in earnest. The nearest evidence of Roman occupation is at Littlecote, near Hungerford, where fine mosaics are all that remain from a Roman villa. The major Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum at Silchester, which was built on the top of an existing Celtic settlement, would have been the administrative centre for an area extending north as far as Dorchester on Thames and west to Chute Causeway. The Causeway is part of the Roman road from Winchester to Mildenhall in Wiltshire.
There would appear to have been Roman occupation in the parish, again around Abbey Wells, where Roman pottery, and coins bearing the head of Emperor Divo Claudius (268 - 270 AD), have been discovered. Coins from a later period, 350 AD, were unearthed in the garden of the Coopers Arms (now, Coopers Cottage in Trade Street) which suggests long term occupation of the area.

The Saxons left no evidence of their occupation but some of our boundaries were set at that time and have remained into modern times. Our northern boundary was set, at the River Enborne, in Saxon times and a Saxon charter given to Highclere by King Cuthred in 749 fixed our eastern boundary, Honey Way, which is Highclere's western boundary, along the present Andover road. This remained until the Boundary Commission realigned the boundaries in the 1980s.

The area had royal connections during the late 9th Century, when King Alfred's daughters Ethelfled and Elthrith held land in the Cleres. By this time Christianity had arrived and the Saxon system of 'mother churches ' was established. Our mother church would have been St. Mary's at Kingsclere.
East Woodhay is not mentioned in the Domesday Book, the document produced in 1086 by the new Norman occupiers. Possibly it was part of Ashmansworth which was given to the Bishop of Winchester by the King.
Clere is mentioned as belonging to the Bishop of Winchester and had 20 villagers and 18 smallholders with land for 16 ploughs. There were 24 freedmen and 3 slaves. There was a mill, 6 acres of meadowland and wood for ten swine. The value, in 1086, was £11.

We come then to the Medieval period. What do we know of East Woodhay during that time? We have a few clues which, when placed together, produce a picture of what the parish may have been like. A church has stood on the site of the present St. Martin's since at least the 12th Century.
The Hospital of St. Cross at Winchester by its charter of foundation in 1132 acquired an interest in the church, which had to pay an annual pension of 400 shillings. This sum was paid as late as 1535.
The majority of English parish churches were built by 4200. They were not sited generally on sites of religious significance but on sites convenient to the lord of the manor. An archaeological survey has reported many archaeological features around St Martin's church and suggested that the manor was where Church Farm is to day.

Early maps of that area show the field where Rabbit Pit Farm stands as East Field. The tracks that criss cross the fields to the south of Church Farm are shown on the earliest maps of the area, which pre-date any enclosure awards that we know of and the right angled corners in the roads over towards Hayes are typical of tracks skirting around the ends of the common fields. Can we from this rather scant evidence suggest that the original settlement of East Woodhay was centred on the church and the manor ?
The large fields to the south may have been the common fields with an East Field, perhaps a Middle Field directly to the south and a West Field out to the west towards West Woodhay. These fields have been heavily cultivated and alas there is no visible evidence of ridge and furrow cultivation. The tracks that still remain today, of which only one is a public right of way, were probably the access tracks to these fields.

We have another possible medieval site in a field to the west of Park Lane at Heath End. Local legend has it that this was the Bishop's Palace. Documentary evidence found to date is almost non-existent. The Rev. Hodgson told the Newbury Field Club on a visit in 1879 that it was stated in some records in Winchester that William of Wykeham left Winchester for his palace at Wodehaye. Edward III appointed William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester in 4376. Archaeological surveys have not revealed the true purpose of the site. There were extensive buildings and a road that runs through the centre.

A close look at the Ordnance Survey map shows that many of the roads and footpaths of today converge on the site which was obviously of importance at some stage in the history of the area. Close to the Bishop's Palace site are the remains of ridge and furrow cultivation at Northenby and in a field south of Woolton House Farm, the latter is almost obliterated by modern farming methods. We have no evidence that proves their medieval origins, they may well be post-medieval. Examples of ridge and furrow are rare in Hampshire and it might be significant that we have two examples within half a mile of each other.

In the first half of the 13th Century the Bishop of Winchester was active in the assarting or enclosure of land. Assarting means to clear waste or forest and cultivate the land. The population at Burghclere, Highclere and above all Woodhay increased considerably.
From 1209 to 1255 there was a six-fold increase in rent from £4.4s.l0d to £29 and an increase in new land of 800 acres. By 1275 the rent roll stood at £36.lOs.8d, which represented a further addition of 300 acres. In view of the very small size of the original settlement at Woodhay it is possible that the colonisation of the manor provided an outlet for the whole of the Clere group and it was settled by peasants coming from the surrounding manors.

The farming in the manor of Woodhay was almost entirely arable, the crops grown were wheat, rye, moncorn or bere (a mixture of wheat and rye), or wheat and winter barley, barley, drage (a mixture of barley and oats). Beans, peas and vetches were grown beside the cereal crops.
The yield declined over the years and this is attributed to the declining quality of the soil. There were no cows kept on the Bishop's land at Woodhay, the dairy activities for the Clere group of manors was centred on Highclere, although the grazing was not restricted to this manor alone.

The area around Woodhay and the Cleres was also part of a vast royal hunting forest. Woodhay was in Digerley, which was part of Chute Forest, and Highclere Chase was in Freemantle. Later Highclere Park became an ecclesiastical park. The fact that the area was a hunting park probably accounts for the pattern of settlement, with small hamlets set in forest clearings.
The forest was not as we understand the word today, but an area which was conducive to supporting deer and other wildlife suitable to hunt. This could be said of much of the area today. Forest law would cover the parish and the poor unfortunate residents of Woodhay would be subject to the common laws of the land - forest law, and being in an ecclesiastical manor, Church law. Forest law was strict and governed such things as the size of dog that could be kept, where you could go and what you could take from the forest. At certain times of the year the residents were allowed access to gather fruits of the forest.
A park pale surrounded the boundaries of hunting parks and the bank and ditch of this can still be seen today in Highclere Park if you know where to look. As the Middle Ages advanced, the hunting forest beloved of the early medieval kings, became less important, but was slow to disappear. The Bishop at an early period granted the greater part of the estate to various tenants retaining only a small portion for his direct use. In 1428 Thomas Byfleete, John Herries, John Sterregrave, Edmund Lynche, Nicholas Jurdan and John Att Sele each held a separate part of the parish. Perhaps Stargroves is a derivative of Sterregrave, and Zell House once Sele. Nicholas Jurdan was probably descended from the John Jurdan who in the early part of the 14th Century was cited to appear before the Bishop of Winchester to answer for his troublesome behaviour in keeping the Rector and his servants out of his fields, which paid tithes to the church.

The plague of 1348 - 1350, later to be known as the Black Death, spread through Hampshire and devastated the southern part of the county and areas served by navigable rivers. The death toll was as much as fifty percent of the population. The pestilence knew no boundaries and affected all classes of society. The clergy was particularly badly hit and some churches were left without a parish priest due to the high mortality rate.
We have no records for our parish but we do know that Inkpen lost twenty seven percent of the population and must assume that the death toll for this area was similar. This brings us to the end of the Medieval period; our evidence is inevitably limited. We know nothing of how other great events of the Medieval period affected our parish such as the abandonment of the site we call the Bishop's Palace at Heath End. These are questions we cannot answer at this time, leaving a fascinating mystery to be researched for future books.