Top of page Name Summary Distribution Map Property List Profile Bibliography Bottom of page

Alwynn 6

Name

Summary

Alwynn 6 held an estate in south Essex TRE assessed at 1.33 hides; the TRE value is unrecorded but in 1086 it was worth 40s.

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Holder 1066

Shire	Phil. ref.	Vill	DB Spelling	Holder 1066	Lord 1066	Tenant-in-Chief 1086	1086 Subtenant	Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value	Conf.	Show on Map
Shire Essex	Phil. ref. 24,4	Vill Childerditch	DB Spelling Aluuen	Holder 1066 Alwynn 'of Childerditch'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Swein of Essex	1086 Subtenant Osbern the Frenchman	Fiscal Value 1.33	1066 Value 2.00	1086 Value 2.00	Confidence B	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Alwynn 6 is identified because her estate was of only slightly more than 1 hide and, at more than 50 miles, was too distant from any other held TRE by a woman of that name for any connection between them to be considered.

Alwynn 6’s estate of Ciltedic was one of four TRE estates at Childerditch in south Essex, an area of high ground between two streams feeding down into the Mar Dyke, a tributary of the Thames; the name Childerditch may derive from a pre-English *kiltā ‘steep slope’ with Old English dīc ‘ditch’ (Reaney 1935: 123-4; Smith 1956: 1 88; cf. Watts 2004: 129, s.n. Cheltenham). Alwynn’s land lay mainly at Tillingham, in the southern and lower part of Childerditch parish, although it probably included outlying woodland on the higher ground to the north (Powell et al. 1983: 17-18). 

DB provides some details of the pre-Conquest resources of Alwynn 6’s estate as well as those in 1086. Understandably, given its location, her estate had a mix of arable and pastoral agriculture, with sheep on the pasture and one plough on her demesne. The households of her dependent peasants, who comprised one villan and one bordar, had half a plough (presumably with a team of four oxen rather than the usual eight) to work their part of the arable. These peasant households, together with Alwynn’s two slaves, presumably worked her land as well as their own.

DB records Alwynn as lib[er]a femina, a ‘free woman’. In 1086 Alwynn’s former estate was held by a subtenant of Swein 9 but the DB entry notes that ‘it is not known how [Alwynn’s land] came to Robert fitzWimarc’ (Robert 14), Robert being Swein’s father and the pre-Conquest holder of most of Swein’s fief. The implication of this note is that Alwynn had not been one of Robert’s dependent tenants but had instead held her land as the tenant of another lord or, perhaps more probably, that she held her land with the power of alienation. However, further details are not forthcoming.

Bibliography

Powell et al. 1983: A History of the County of Essex: Volume 8, Victoria History of the Counties of England, ed. W. R. Powell, B. A. Board, N. Briggs, J. L. Fisher, V. A. Harding, J. Hasler, N. Knight and M. Parsons (London, 1983)

Reaney 1935: P. H. Reaney, The Place-Names of Essex, English Place-Name Society 12 (Cambridge, 1935)

Smith 1956: A. H. Smith, English Place-Name Elements, 2 vols, English Place-Name Society 25-6 (Cambridge, 1956)

Watts 2004: The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, ed. V. Watts (Cambridge, 2004)