Ælfheah 78

Ælfheah ‘of Syderstone’ (Norf.), fl. 1066
Male
DWP
4 of 5

Name

Ælfheah
Ælfheah 77
Ælfheah 79

Summary

(Unknown Person) was a free man with several estates in Norfolk TRE, assessed at more than 8½ carucates and with a value of about £12, although the details are incomplete in DB; his lordships over 14 other men amounted to slightly over 2 carucates with a value of about £1.

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
Norfolk 4,17 Syderstone Alfah Ælfheah 'of Syderstone' - Alan, count Fanceon 3.00 2.57 2.57 B Map
Norfolk 4,17 Rudham - Ælfheah 'of Syderstone' - Alan, count Fanceon 0.50 0.43 0.43 C Map
Norfolk 4,2 Narford Alfahcus Ælfheah 'of Syderstone' - Alan, count Fanceon 0.00 4.00 5.00 C Map
Norfolk 4,29 Lyng Alfah Ælfheah 'of Syderstone' - Alan, count - 3.00 3.38 4.23 C Map
Norfolk 9,233 Beechamwell Alfeih Ælfheah 'of Syderstone' - Roger Bigod Robert de Vaux 2.02 1.60 1.60 D Map
Totals

Lord 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
Norfolk 4,2 Narford Alfahcus 4 free men Ælfheah Alan, count Fanceon 1.00 0.00 0.00 C Map
Norfolk 4,29 Bawdeswell - 1 sokeman Ælfheah Alan, count - 0.25 0.28 0.35 D Map
Norfolk 4,29 Lyng - 5 sokemen Ælfheah Alan, count - 0.20 0.23 0.28 D Map
Norfolk 4,29 East Tuddenham - 1 half-sokeman Ælfheah Alan, count - 0.10 0.11 0.14 D Map
Norfolk 9,233 Beechamwell - 3 free men Ælfheah Roger Bigod - 0.50 0.40 0.40 E Map
Totals

Profile

Three moderately-sized Norfolk estates – at Syderstone, Lyng and Narford – were each held by someone called Ælfheah TRE and each passed to Count Alan 1 after the Conquest (two also went to the same subtenant, Fançon, on which name see von Feilitzen 1976: 147; Dodgson 1985: 49).  Since these estates were of similar size and were between only 12½ and 19 miles of each other, the close proximity and the shared successor provide a prima facie case for regarding their TRE holder as a single person, (Unknown Person), despite the name being fairly common.

Syderstone manor lay in north-west Norfolk near the source of the River Tat, a tributary of the Wensum, while its berewick at Rudham lay a couple of miles to the south on another branch of the river.  Ælfheah held both manor and berewick with assessments of 3 and ½ carcucates respectively, making it his largest holding, and for that reason it has been adopted as his identifying byname here.

Lyng was further down the Wensum, 17 miles south-east from Syderstone, and here too the main manor was assessed for 3 carucates.  Attached to this manor and its outliers at East Tuddenham and Bawdeswell were the lands a number of sokemen (including one listed in DB as a ‘half sokeman’) who were presumably under Ælfheah’s lordship although DB does not say so explicitly.

Narford was an estate close to the northern end of Devil’s Dyke, an early medieval linear earthwork, and about 12½ miles south-south-west of Syderstone.  Its assessment was omitted from DB, perhaps because the scribe was distracted by correcting an error (the letters Alf were erased before qua’ ten’ Alfahc’ was written instead), but its TRE value of £4 suggests that it too had an assessment of about 3 carucates for the main estate; there was also a carucate held by four free men, again presumably under Ælfheah’s lordship.

These three estates and their outliers and lordships account for all but one of those in Norfolk held TRE by someone called Ælfheah.  The exception was an estate of slightly more than 2 carucates at Bycham, identifiable as Beechamwell and only 5 miles south of Narford at the other end of Devil’s Dyke (called Bicchamdic in the mid-eleventh century: S 1109; Watts 2004: 185).  Although it passed to Roger 6 Bigod rather than to Count Alan after the Conquest, its size and proximity render it more likely than not that it too had been held by (Unknown Person) TRE.  Attached to this manor were three free men, of whom Ælfheah appears to have had the commendation while Earl Harold 3 had the soke (cf. Fleming 1998: 343 no. 2402).

While his estates seem to have been predominantly arable and that at Lyng exclusively so, Ælfheah’s other estates had a little pastoral farming as well along with woodland, mills, a fishery and even some beehives.  He had a total of eight ploughs on his demesne and the peasant population who provided the workforce for his estates had a further dozen or more.  The peasants comprised twenty-three villans and forty bordars and their households, a substantial population augmented by nine slaves who were presumably on the demesne. 

There is no obvious reason to associate (Unknown Person) with either of the TRE landholders of that name in Suffolk, each of whom held very small estates under the lordship of others, and there is no reason to consider him in connection with any other estate or person.

Bibliography


Dodgson 1985: J. McN. Dodgson, ‘Some Domesday personal-names, mostly post-Conquest’, Nomina 9 (1985), pp. 41-51, at p. 49.

von Feilitzen 1976: Olof von Feilitzen, ‘The personal names and bynames of the Winton Domesday’, in Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday, ed. Martin Biddle, Winchester Studies 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 143–229

Fleming 1998: R. Fleming, Domesday Book and the Law: Society and Legal Custom in Early Medieval England (Cambridge, 1998), p. 343 no. 2402.

Watts 2004: V. E. Watts, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004), p. 185.