Ælfrun 4

Ælfrun ‘of Afflington’ (Dorset), fl. 1066
Female
DWP
4 of 5

Name

Ælfrun
Ælfrun 3

Summary

Ælfrun 4 held an estate in south-east Dorset TRE assessed at 2 hides and with a value of 50s.

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
Dorset 28,6 Afflington Alueron Ælfrun 'of Afflington' - Roger de Beaumont - 2.00 2.50 2.50 C Map
Totals

Profile

Ælfrun 4 is identified because her estate was more than 60 miles from those of Ælfrun 3 in Devon and passed to a different post-Conquest successor; despite the rarity of the name Ælfrun, therefore, there is no reason to connect the two women.

Ælfrun 4’s estate was at Afflington, to the south of the little Corfe River that runs through the Isle of Purbeck in south-east Dorset.  The place-name Afflington derives from Old English Ælfrūne-tūn ‘Ælfrun’s estate’ and there is a general consensus that the place-name derives from that of the TRE holder, Ælfrun 4 (e.g. von Feilitzen 1937: 180 n.4; Mills 1977: 6-7; Thorn and Thorn 1983: DB 28,6 Notes).  That DB gives the name of her estate as Alvronetone shows that the name was already extant by 1086.

If so, however, then this presents us with a problem of interpretation because Ælfrun 4’s estate was only one of Dorset five estates at Afflington and called Alvronetone or similar in DB.  Together, these five estates amounted to about 6 hides in assessment, had at least four different holders TRE (one entry does not give the name of the TRE holder) and had four different successors TRW.  Ælfrun 4’s estate was not quite the largest of the five estates (that was a holding of nearly 2½ hides held TRE by Beorhtric (Beorhtric ) ) nor is there any obvious pattern in the assessments, values or resources to indicate a recent or simple division of a single original estate to form the five recorded in DB, although the estate held TRE by Leodmær 11 did pass to the same post-Conquest successor as Ælfrun 4’s estate. 

What are the alternatives to the likelihood that the name derives from Ælfrun 4?  The rarity of the name Ælfrun means that even were the five estates named from an earlier bearer of that name there is a stronger probability that she was related to Ælfrun 4 – that the name recurred in two generations of the same family – than that the coincidence of names was simply by chance.  It remains likely that all five estates called Afflington derived their name from a direct or indirect association with Ælfrun 4, therefore, but the precise process by which this naming occurred is a matter of speculation.

Bibliography


von Feilitzen 1937: O. von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book, Nomina Germanica 3 (Uppsala, 1937)

Mills 1977: A. D. Mills, The Place-Names of Dorset: Part One, English Place-Name Society 52 (Nottingham, 1977)

Thorn and Thorn 1983: Domesday Book 7: Dorset, ed. C. Thorn and F. Thorn (Chichester, 1983)