Æthelwulf 53

Æthelwulf ‘of West Grimstead’ (Wilts.)
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Æthelwulf
Æthelwulf 52
Æthelwulf 54

Summary

Æthelwulf 53 was a small landowner in south Wiltshire whose single manor of 1½ hides was worth £2. Later evidence hints that he was a royal official.

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
Wiltshire 67,59 West Grimstead Aiulf Æthelwulf 'of West Grimstead' - Edmund son of Æthelwulf - 1.50 2.00 2.00 A Map
Totals

Profile

West Grimstead, in the heavily wooded south-east corner of Wiltshire, was divided into two manors of 1½ hides apiece in 1066. The more extensive and valuable of the two belonged to Æthelwulf 53. There are no links with the other distant estates in western Wessex which belonged to the other Æthelwulfs.

West Grimstead passed after the Conquest to Æthelwulf 53’s son Edmund, who also in 1086 held four other manors in the immediate vicinity (Wilts. 67:55–58). One of them had definitely not belonged to Æthelwulf; the other entries do not name the TRE holder.

Æthelwulf’s male descendants, who took the surname Grimstead, retained the manor until the 1340s, and by the 1270s held it by the service of keeping the king’s park of Melchet, which operated as a timber reserve rather than a place for deer (VCH Hants, IV, 542–3; Mileson 2009: 65). His son Edmund was a king’s thegn in 1086, but DB does not spell out Æthelwulf’s own status. Since valuable rights to take timber and underwood and feed pigs in Melchet wood already existed in the later eleventh century and were attached to manors some distance away (Wilts. 13:10, 18), Edmund, and perhaps his father Æthelwulf before him, may already have been in charge of the king’s woods at Melchet.

Bibliography


Mileson 2009: S. A. Mileson, Parks in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

VCH Hants, IV: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, ed. William Page [and H. A. Doubleday], 5 vols and index (London, 1900–14)