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Ælfheah 85

Name

Summary

Ælfheah 85 was among 5 minor tenants on an estate of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Thorpe.

Profile

Ælfheah 85 and his co-holder Cola are named in FBB (142; p.41) among 5 minor tenants on an estate of Bury St Edmunds Abbey at Thorpe, 13 miles to the north-east of Bury, in 1086. The corresponding DB entry (Thorpe seems to be subsumed in the entry for Hinderclay in DB) records several sokemen, villans and bordars on the estate in 1086 but does not include their names and notes that ‘others have [land] there’.  Ælfheah and Cola held just 1½ acres (rendering 1d), which was the smallest such holding there.  It is possible that Ælheah 85 is the same person as (Unknown Person), a minor tenant on another of the abbey’s estates only 2 miles away in 1086, or conceivably even (Unknown Person), who held land nearby and in the abbot’s lordship TRE; but the name was common, the holdings were very small and the possibility must be left open.  The implicit continuity of holdings between TRE and 1086 in DB does not prove that Ælfheah 85 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