Page:VCH Berkshire 1.djvu/397

DOMESDAY SURVEY were five demesne ploughs and exactly ten * serfs.' For these ploughs the lord must have provided forty oxen, and it is noteworthy that the stock of oxen which the bishops had to keep up there is recorded two centuries later as forty-three. 1 The peasantry were of the usual classes. Putting aside the * serfs,' Domesday reckons about half of them as villeins ; below these came the bordars, and then the cottars, the last of whom were unconnected with the ploughing organization. One must not forget that wine was then among the products of Berkshire. At Bisham, a demesne manor of Henry de Ferrers, Domes- day mentions one of these vineyards in which Norman lords endeavoured to produce the beverage which had been theirs at home. ' The small but interesting class of buri^ burs or colibertij as Pro- fessor Maitland terms them, 1 are represented by 18 ' burs ' (at Letcombe Regis) and 24 coliberts ar Abingdon (' Bertune'). 3 A single ' rachen- este,' with a plough of his own, is mentioned at Goosey ; it is unusual to find one of this class so far east. The Berkshire streams, those English ' bournes ' which gave their names to Lambourn and Shalbourne, to Pangbourne and Hagbourne, and where, in the down region, they ran dry in the summer to Winterbourne, fed those manorial mills which figure so largely in the Survey. The value of the ' multure ' is carefully recorded, for the corn of the peasants had to be ground there, which brought profit to the lord. At times the right to a mill was in dispute ; Charlton and the Hanneys faced one another across what has now become the Wilts and Berks canal ; under both it is recorded that, according to the Hundred (Court) Walter Giffard on the Hanney side was in wrongful possession of a mill belonging to the King's manor of Charlton. At Ardington, not far off, the powerful Robert d'Ouilly held three mills, one of which was claimed by ' Cola the Englishman ' who held land just below it on the stream. But three English witnesses testified that it had always belonged to Ardington. These Domesday watermills can often still be identified. A valuable early charter records the grant of a Berkshire one and helps us to realize their importance. 4 Sheffield in Theale, lying on the Kennet between Burghfield and Englefield, is entered in Domesday as a manor of the Count of Evreux, worth forty shillings a year, the mill alone being worth ten. In 1197-8 Alan de Whitchurch, who held it 6 under the Count's successors, the monks of Noyon, at a rent of forty shillings (the actual Domesday 'valet'), granted the manorial mill 8 to William de Englefield with the ' suit ' and ' multure ' of his men of Sheffield, and several appurtenances, namely the mill-acre (' Mulaker ') of land in front of it and the mill-acre (' Mulnaker ') of meadow at ' Husseie- 1 Sarum Charters, p. 364; 2 Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 36. 3 Their exact position is somewhat uncertain (Ibid. 36-8). 4 See my Ancient Charters (Pipe Roll Soc.), pp. 105-8. 5 It appears as his father's ' Scheaffelda Rogeri de Witchercha '-in 1 167 (Pipe Roll 13 Hen. II, p. 9). 8 It was burnt down in recent times, having been eventually used as a paper mill. 303