A miracle of administration

DOMESDAY was a national audit, dreamed up by King William the Conqueror at Christmas 1085, so he could put a value on his new country.

He wanted to know who owned what and who owed what to whom. His men were famously thorough -- to the extent that, according to the historian Oderic Vitalis "there was no one ox or one cow or one pig left out." The whole survey was a miracle of administration.

But not in our part of the world. In the north-west of England (which was not yet called Lancashire), William's men seemed to have slacked off. One historian says straight out: "The Domesday Survey for Lancashire is minimally informative in every respect."

Another notes the "absence of regularity in the later part of the great survey. "

It can't have helped that the boss man of the North West, Roger de Poitou, appointed by William in 1070, was deposed from his estates in 1086 because of his support for the rebellion of the Conqueror's son, Robert, Such a background may explain our omission from the record.

Or perhaps the commissioners did visit our town and collect the required details, and then filed the return under the wrong heading. It happens. On the very last page of the Domesday Book, in a section labelled "Agemundrenesse" (that is, Amounderness) appears the following entry:

"In Bodeltun, (Bolton) 6 carucates. In Dene, (Deane) 1 carucate".

Now we know that the names of Bolton and Deane go together like fish and chips.

We know that Deane is the site of a lovely old church, and that Deane Clough has produced evidence of occupation going back to the Stone Age. Seeing those two names together is enough to convince us that we are in the Domesday Survey.

Why are we squeezed into the returns from Amounderness, next to Ulverston, the birth-place of Stan Laurel? Well -- it could be an oversight, a mistake, or perhaps the fellow got his report in too late to fit into the rest of the survey.

The "carucate" mentioned in the entry is the amount of land a single plough team could handle in one year, and was perhaps equal to 100 acres.

Records from this time are full of similarly odd terms -- "oxgangs", "Knights' fees", "advowsons", "sockage", "vaccaries", and you can come across a sentence like: "the remaining two oxgangs at Rumworth must have been the glebe at Deane Chapel" and still be none the wiser.

Let's start with Great Bolton, at the heart of the matter. As early as 1192 the manor, along with Little Bolton, was owned by one Roger de Maresay. He gave the right of advowson, or patronage over the Parish Church to a Priory which he had established in Nottinghamshire.

What this means is that from 1192 until 1556, the vicars of our Parish Church were selected by the Prior of the Abbey. The first such parish priest we know of is simply referred to as Alexander, and was active around 1292.

At this time Bolton was part of the see of Lichfield, and the Bishop built a vicarage for our incumbents around 1253. The church was the predecessor to the one demolished in 1866, and probably incorporated those strange carvings which I described in a previous instalment.

In 1228 Roger de Maresay sold his estates to Ranulf de Blendeville, Earl of Chester, and possession of the manor descended through his heirs, the Ferrers, who were Earls of Derby.

In 1251 William Ferrers obtained the King's Charter to allow a market to be held in Bolton every Monday, and a yearly fair around St Margaret's Day (July 19-21).

This does not mean that markets were not held before 1251 -- they almost certainly were, and the charter was merely a recognition of an established practice.

Every Monday the town must have filled up with all sorts of people. Along with divine service on Sunday, it would have been the centre of the social week, a time to meet friends, flirt and escape from the hard grind of daily life.

In 1253 William Ferrers, a public spirited and tidy-minded earl, made the town a free borough and granted rights to his burgesses -- each was to have an acre of land, the right to gather wood and have his corn ground at the lord's mill.

The de Bolton family is the oldest known in our town. We have seen William de Bolton active in 1202. In 1212 Roger de Bolton was leasing the manor of Little Bolton from De Maresey for 1/12th part of a Knight's fee.

A knight's fee is how much land it took to support one fighting man and his horse, and was perhaps 24 curucates or 2400 acres. The de Boltons continued as lords of the manor of Little Bolton down to the 17th century and they lived in Little Bolton Hall, a black and white postern painted mansion house which stood in wooded land on the banks of the River Tonge.

The de Boltons weren't the only big noises in town. In 1212 Gilbert Tonge had 15 acres in Tonge for which he paid 4s (20p) a year rent. Roger Salmesbury and Alexander Harwood shared 15 acres at Sharples and split the rent of 3s (15p), and they jointly owned the same amount at Harwood.

Adam Redcliffe leased land in Little Lever in 1227. As early as 1180 a man called Augustin held land at Breightmet, but by 1212 it had passed to his son-in-law, William Notton.

Richard Lathom held the manor of Turton in 1212. Lord of the manor at Edgworth in the same year was William Radcliffe, while Robert Entwistle, Radcliffe's brother-in-law, was the big wheel in the manor which bore his name.

At Rivington, 90 acres of land were occupied by the Pilkington family, for which they paid 10s (50p).

The master of Lostock and Rumworth in 1180 was Thomas Pierpoint, and he was succeeded by his son Richard. The plough-land at Blackrod was leased by Hugh Norreys at the steep rent of 20s (£1) a year.

There were also Hultons in Hulton, Peel and Heaton, Pendleburys in Halliwell and Snydle, Seftons in Westhoughton, and Redfords in Farnworth and Kearsley.

Of course these people were well-off. Their names have survived because they owned or leased land, and engaged in frequent law suits.

Under this layer of landowners was another, larger, poorer class of people who have left no record, who drove William de Bolton's ox teams for him, mucked out the Pilkington's pig styes and tugged their forelocks hard if William Ferrers came cantering past.

These were Feudal times, and society was a pyramid -- King on Top and Jack the Swineherd's mate thankful to have a roof over his head and food in his belly.

But we're getting closer. Some of the people have names which wouldn't look out of place today. And every so often you find a little gem that makes the past come to life.

As when we read the details of a grant of land made by Thomas Pierpoint in Deane in 1276. The boundaries of the land to be donated were "From the chapel cemetery as far as the Kirk Brook, then by the Muckle Brook to the east side of the cemetry".

If you go to Deane today, you can find not only the old cemetery but also the Middle (Muckle) Brook flowing down Deane Clough, and a few hundred yards to the south, Kirkebrok Road commemorates the lost Kirk Brook.