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Thorsten 34

Name

Summary

Thorsten 34 was a small landowner on the Shotley peninsula in south-east Suffolk, with land in five vills assessed altogether at 2½ hides and worth a little over £2. He was the commended man and under the soke jurisdiction of the great lady Eadgifu the fair, who owned large properties near by.

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 Suffolk	Phil. ref. 3,74	Vill Woolverstone	DB Spelling Turstinus	Holder 1066 Thorsten 'of Woolverstone'	Lord 1066 Eadgifu the fair	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Alan, count	1086 Subtenant Ælfric the priest 'of Woolverstone'	Fiscal Value 1.00	1066 Value 1.00	1086 Value 1.50	Confidence A	Map
Shire Suffolk	Phil. ref. 3,75	Vill Bentley	DB Spelling Turstinus	Holder 1066 Thorsten 'of Woolverstone'	Lord 1066 Eadgifu the fair	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Alan, count	1086 Subtenant Ælfric the priest 'of Woolverstone'	Fiscal Value 0.33	1066 Value 0.27	1086 Value 0.30	Confidence A	Map
Shire Suffolk	Phil. ref. 3,76	Vill Pannington	DB Spelling Turstinus	Holder 1066 Thorsten 'of Woolverstone'	Lord 1066 Eadgifu the fair	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Alan, count	1086 Subtenant Ælfric the priest 'of Woolverstone'	Fiscal Value 0.50	1066 Value 0.40	1086 Value 0.40	Confidence A	Map
Shire Suffolk	Phil. ref. 3,77	Vill Wherstead	DB Spelling Turstinus	Holder 1066 Thorsten 'of Woolverstone'	Lord 1066 Eadgifu the fair	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Alan, count	1086 Subtenant Ælfric the priest 'of Woolverstone'	Fiscal Value 0.33	1066 Value 0.25	1086 Value 0.25	Confidence A	Map
Shire Suffolk	Phil. ref. 3,78	Vill Kalweton	DB Spelling Turstinus	Holder 1066 Thorsten 'of Woolverstone'	Lord 1066 Eadgifu the fair	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Alan, count	1086 Subtenant Ælfric the priest 'of Woolverstone'	Fiscal Value 0.33	1066 Value 0.27	1086 Value 0.27	Confidence A	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

A single Thorsten is unambiguously identified in LDB as the holder of five parcels of land scattered among the vills of the Shotley peninsula, on the south side of the Orwell estuary downstream from Ipswich, none of them more than 10 miles from town. Listed first in LDB is the largest holding, Woolverstone, where Thorsten held 1 carucate ‘in the soke and commendation of Eadgifu, as 1 manor’ (tenuit Turstinus in soca 7 commendatione Edeue . . . pro .i. M). The entries immediately following say that ‘the same Thorsten held & in the same way’, ‘the same Thorsten held . . . as 1 manor . . . Eadgifu [had] the soke’, ‘the same held . . . as 1 manor . . . Eadgifu [had] the soke’, and ‘the same T. held . . . as a manor . . . the soke [was held] in the same way’.

All five holdings, but no others on the Shotley peninsula, passed to Count Alan and were held from him in 1086 by Ælfric the priest. It is at least possible that Ælfric had some connection with Thorsten.

DB allows some sense of Thorsten’s farming operations TRE. Woolverstone, at the centre of his modest estate, was probably where he lived and certainly the only place where he had his own ploughs and livestock: 1½ ploughs, 5 horses, 8 cattle, 20 pigs, 60 sheep, and 36 goats. His outlying land was largely or entirely occupied by villans and bordars; other resources included meadow and woodland at Woolverstone and a saltworks on the upper estuary at Wherstead.

Thorsten was the man of Eadgifu the fair (Eadgifu 24). Although her main landed interests and largest groups of commended men were elsewhere, she owned one big manor (Harkstead) and two smaller ones on the Shotley peninsula (Suff. 3:69; 46:4–5).