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Ælfheah 84

Name

Summary

Ælfheah 84 son of Almær was among 18 minor tenants on the estate of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Great Livermere.

Profile

Ælfheah 84 son of Almær is named in FBB (140; p.37, as Ælfah Ælmeri filius) among 18 minor tenants on the estate of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Great Livermere, 4¾ miles to the north-north-east of Bury, in 1086. The corresponding DB entry records 23 free men on the estate in 1086 and does not include their names; it also notes that 12 of them held from the abbot’s subtenant (and brother) Frodo, but FBB does not indicate as to which of the named men this applied.  Ælfheah 84 held just 1 acre and 1 rod (rendering 1d), which was one of the smallest such holdings there.  It is possible that he is the same person as (Unknown Person), a minor tenant on another of the abbey’s estates only about 2 miles away in 1086; but the name was common, the patronymic was not repeated in the entry for (Unknown Person), the holdings were very small and so the possibility must be left open.  The implicit continuity of holdings between TRE and 1086 in DB does not prove that Ælfheah 84 already held his land before the Conquest, although the possibility cannot be ruled out.

Bibliography

FBB: ‘The Feudal Book of Baldwin, abbot of Bury St. Edmunds, 1065–1098, contained in the Black Book of the abbey, MS. Mm. iv. 19, fols. 124–43b. (Cambridge University Library)’, in Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, ed. D. C. Douglas, British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales, 8 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1932), 1–44