Blaca 2

Blaca man of St Alban, fl. 1066
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Blaca

Summary

Blaca 2 was a man of St Albans abbey who held 1 hide worth 20s. of the abbey’s land in south Hertfordshire.

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
Hertfordshire 10,17 Aldenham Blache Blaca, man of St Alban Ecgfrith, abbot of St Albans Paul, abbot of St Albans Geoffrey de Bec 1.00 1.00 0.60 A Map
Totals

Profile

Blaca occurs only once in DB, as the name of a man of St Alban holding 1 hide without power of alienation at Aldenham in Hertfordshire. Aldenham was a large vill 5 miles south of St Albans, in a heavily wooded area on the boundary with Middlesex. Most of the vill, 9 out of 10 hides in 1066, belonged to Westminster abbey (Herts. 9:4), though the monks of St Albans had a long-standing claim to rights over the whole vill. Blaca’s hide was somewhere on the eastern side of Aldenham. The southern part of that area, east of Watling Street, was later part of the manor of Titburst and Kendals, while the northern part formed the manor of Newberries, both of which belonged to St Albans and drew in land which in DB was in the adjoining vill of Theobald Street, historically called Titburst (VCH Herts. II, 149–51, 154–6; PN Herts.: 61–2). St Albans had four separate holdings in Titburst in 1066, three of them held by unnamed sokemen (Herts. 5:2; 10:13; 33:1; 34:2). It is conceivable that Blaca was one of the sokemen of Titburst.

Bibliography


PN Herts.: J. E. B. Gover, Allen Mawer, and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Hertfordshire, English Place-Name Society 15 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938)

VCH Herts. II: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of the County of Hertford, ed. William Page, 4 vols and index (London, 1902–23)