Uhtræd 19

Uhtræd son of Ulf, fl. 1066x1086
Male
SDB
4 of 5

Name

Uhtræd
Uhtræd 18
Uhtræd 20

Summary

Uhtræd son of Ulf held a single manor of 1 carucate in 1066. Charter evidence shows that he retained it after the Conquest and gave it to St Mary’s abbey in York. In 1086 he also held two manors of 14 carucates as tenant on the Richmondshire fief of Count Alan, where he had succeeded his father Ulf.

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
Yorkshire 1N96 Diche Vctred Uhtræd 19, son of Ulf - William, king - 1.00 0.00 0.00 - Map
Totals

Subtenant in 1086

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
Yorkshire 6N3 Middleton Tyas Vctred Ulf 'of Moulton' - Alan, count Uhtræd 6.00 2.00 1.00 - Map
Yorkshire 6N4 Kneeton Vctred Ulf 'of Moulton' - Alan, count Uhtræd 8.00 2.00 0.00 - Map
Totals

Profile

Middleton Tyas and Kneeton adjoin one another on the main Roman road north from York, at the half-way point between the crossings of the Swale at Catterick and the Tees at Piercebridge. In 1066 both manors belonged to Ulf with sake and soke, and in 1086 to Uhtræd as tenant of Count Alan, lord of Richmondshire. The DB entry for Middleton, which comes first, has an erasure before the phrase Vctred habet nunc; this has been interpreted as ‘presumably a different name, which was subsequently erased’ (Phill. Yorks. II, note 6N3), but seems rather to have read an erroneous Idem (‘The same’), erased as being untrue, since there is no earlier mention of Uhtræd in this or the preceding DB entry.

The 1086 subtenant Uhtræd is identified as the son of the TRE holder Ulf in a lost confirmation charter of Richard I for St Mary’s abbey in York, known only through a Chancery inspeximus of 1308 (Cal. Chart. R. III, 112–19 at 113, 117). Richard I’s charter summarized and confirmed a long list of earlier grants to the abbey, starting with the gifts of William I and moving through grants by William II and Henry I, the early lords of Richmond and Holderness, and several landowners who can be identified in 1086. Among the latter was Ostred, who gave 1 carucate in Middleton (Mideltona) and 1 carucate in Dic. Much further on, the list includes Uctred Ulfessuna’s gift of the church of ‘Middleton (Middletona) in Richmondshire’, which locates the place securely as Middleton Tyas as well as providing the name of the donor’s father. Ostred and Uctred are both acceptable forms of Uhtræd, and the correspondences between the charter and DB have long been recognized as identifying the 1086 tenant of Middleton Tyas as Uhtræd son of Ulf (Farrer 1912: 158).

The charter also clearly involves the DB manor of Diche, where Gospatric and Uhtræd held 2 carucates TRE and which in 1086 was listed among the king’s lands. Uhtræd must nonetheless have retained an interest in half the vill in order to be able to give it to St Mary’s abbey. The charter’s Dic and DB’s Diche are certainly the same place-name, from OE dīc (‘ditch’, esp. ‘drainage ditch’) (PN Elements, I, 131–2). Farrer identified Diche as being ‘near’ or alternatively ‘in’ Sutton on the Forest (VCH Yorks. II, 184–5, 231 note 4), a large parish on the level moorland north of York, where drainage ditches must already have been common in the late Anglo-Saxon period (VCH Yorks. II, 196). Diche can perhaps be located a little more certainly, since it was in Bulmer wapentake (Yorks. SN:B12), and the only interests of St Mary’s abbey there which seem to correspond were in Lilling, immediately east of Sutton on the Forest (VCH Yorks. NR, II, 83–216 at 183). The interlocking boundaries of the later township of Lillings Ambo and its parent parish of Sheriff Hutton hint at a lost vill absorbed by one or the other, on the boundary with Sutton on the Forest at a point which in the sixteenth century was called Hessel Dykes.

Uhtræd can thus be identified as the son of a North Riding thegn who had held a single small manor near York in his own right in 1066 which he retained after the Conquest but gave to St Mary’s abbey in York; he was allowed to succeed his father at two other quite large manors some 40 miles from Diche, but as the tenant of Count Alan. Middleton and Kneeton were in the same parish and continued to be held together in the twelfth century by the English brothers Maldred and Gilmichael of Middleton, who can be presumed to have been Uhtræd son of Ulf’s descendants (VCH Yorks. NR, I, 192).

It is conceivable that Uhtræd son of Ulf was the Uhtræd named at one or both of two groups of North Riding manors not too far from Middleton Tyas which have on balance been assigned to Uhtræd son of Thorkil of Cleveland (Uhtræd 18). One is the group of three manors, also in Richmondshire, about 10 miles down the Roman road from Middleton Tyas towards York which belonged to a Uhtræd in 1066 (Kirkby Fleetham with Fencote, Langthorne, and Hackforth: Yorks. 6N:56, 59–60). The other is Stokesley and its soke (Yorks. 29N:8–9), held in 1086 by a king’s thegn called Uhtræd. Relative proximity to Middleton Tyas is the only reason for thinking that either group might have belonged to Uhtræd son of Ulf, and other factors outweigh geography in both cases.

Bibliography


Cal. Chart. R.: Calendar of the Charter Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols (HMSO, 1903–27) 

Farrer 1912: William Farrer, ‘Introduction to the Yorkshire Domesday’, in The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of the County of York, ed. William Page, 3 vols and index (London: Archibald Constable and Co., 1907–25), II, 133–89

Phill. Yorks. = Domesday Book, ed. John Morris, 30: Yorkshire, ed. Margaret L. Faull and Marie Stinson, 2 vols (Chichester: Phillimore, 1986)

PN Elements: A. H. Smith, English Place-Name Elements, 2 vols, English-Place-Name Society 25–6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956)

VCH Yorks.: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of the County of York, ed. William Page, 3 vols and index (London, 1907–25)

VCH Yorks. NR: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of the County of York, North Riding, ed. William Page, 2 vols and index (London, 1914–25)