Ruins and Romans, Fonts and Furrows. Anything Old in Lancashire

[Maggie.]

.....cont

The Domesday Book was compiled some 15 years after the genocide, but it shows that estate after estate throughout Lancashire, Yorkshire and Co. Durham still remained as barren wasteland.

Eventually some of these wastelands attracted a new breed of churchmen who saw no moral difficulty in evicting an improverished community  or removing a hamlet so they could build monasteries and use the land as a farm for their own ends.  A village would be acquired, peasant farming practises were abolished and wholesale eviction of the original tenants ensued.  Monastic sheep farms were established.  An example in Lancashire is at Rossal - the Cistercians at Dieulacres in Staffordshire owned lands in the then thinly populated Lancashire and at the village of Rossal the peasants were removed from their homes and made to work on the Rossal estate.

Only at the time of Dissolution, when the sheep farms were dismantled and the land shared by lay landlords to be divided amongst keen tenants were villages and houses re-built, unlike in the south of the country where so many medieval examples remain.

Info. gleaned from 'The Lost Villages of Britain' by Richard Muir

[Maggie.]

Getting away from the plague aspect and back to old things in Lancs.

I have not yet found my pics of the Euxton stocks I mentioned much earlier, but have located this one which shows the stones in their original location before being moved for 'progress'.

Copyright: Lancashire CC

Su - I've just been reading an article in an ancient copy of 'Lancashire' magazine about Euxton - it sounds an interesting village.  Reputedly it had one of the earliest paper mills in 1611.  It also says it has a haunted pub.  The re-located stocks are on the Millennium Green aren’t they?

It says one of the village churches was built around 1573.

[Ashgard]

Following this thread from exile in Somerset and hoping I'm not adding something you all know.  Reading J. Lofthouse's  'Lancashire Countrygoer ', she says that Slaidburn Church has a cylindrical Norman font , smoothed' by an 'improver'.  Is that anything like yours, Maggie?  Also, same area,  (p.134) she mentions 3 types of building sone - gritstone, limestone and a rosy pink stone from quarries on Kitcham and Birkett.

p93 She has a picture of your beautiful farmhouse dated 1592.  It reminds me of an early home of the Peel family who moved from that area to Blackburn in 1640 and prospered from generation to generation, finally producing Robert  Peel as P.M. I wonder how much social mobility there was in the area.

[Maggie.]

Hi Ashgard,

So sorry for the delay in replying.  I've only just spotted your interesting information as for some reason I don't get email notification of posts made on this thread.

Is this the font?  If so it's in St Andrew's Church, Slaidburn. 

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/PhotoFrames/WRY/SlaidburnStAndrew.html

It certainly appears to have been smoothed - rather a pity that the 'improver' didn't leave in alone I feel.  The 'improvements' make it difficult to say whether it would have borne any similarities to mine, although this one appears to be taller.  Apparently the the font-cover is Elizabethan and is lifted by means of weights and pulleys, the screen is Jacobean and the three-decker pulpit is Georgian.

Kitcham and Birkett quarries are near to Slaidburn aren't they?  That is some distance away from the ruined cottage, where there are examples of pink sandstone.  Incidentally since talking about this rosy coloured stone I'm now noticing how much of the stuff has been used in the walls of the stone cottages around here.

[Wiggy]

most interesting reading when following this thread.  Thanks folks for the history lessons!

Wiggy

[BashLad]

Eventually some of these wastelands attracted a new breed of churchmen who saw no moral difficulty in evicting an improverished community  or removing a hamlet so they could build monasteries and use the land as a farm for their own ends.  A village would be acquired, peasant farming practises were abolished and wholesale eviction of the original tenants ensued. 

They did this at Accrington. But the locals got their own back by burning down the church buildings and killing a few of the monks who were working there.

At least they didn't just lie down and accept their eviction!

[charlotteCH]

I'd always understood that in the Doomsday Book the population of Yorkshire  was much diminished.  I'd thought the Normans had knocked them off for refusing to submit tomthem.  Now it seems that plague had had a big  part to play.

charlotte 

[youngtug]

The harrowing of the North.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrying_of_the_North

[Maggie.]

Eventually some of these wastelands attracted a new breed of churchmen who saw no moral difficulty in evicting an improverished community  or removing a hamlet so they could build monasteries and use the land as a farm for their own ends.  A village would be acquired, peasant farming practises were abolished and wholesale eviction of the original tenants ensued. 

They did this at Accrington. But the locals got their own back by burning down the church buildings and killing a few of the monks who were working there.

At least they didn't just lie down and accept their eviction!

That's Accringtonians for you, BashLad 

I'm just reading from an Accrington Jubilee Souvenir 1878 to 1928 book that used to belong to my mother and it mentions the incident against the monks.  Accrington had been given to the abbot and monks of Kirkstall in 1200 and they didn't treat the inhabitants well, dispossessing them of their dwellings etc.  They burnt the new Grange and murdered the 3 lay brothers in charge of it.  The abbott appealed to his patron, Robert de Lacy, who meted out punishment in true 13th century fashion and 'peace was restored'.