Obligations to the Community

Although there was no Town, District or County Council before the late 19th century, local government has always existed under one umbrella or another. Earlier communities were generally well-governed by a range of courts, old and new, and by the church and the parish itself. One difference between a manorial or civil ‘court’ then and a public meeting called by, for instance, our town council today, is that the former was compulsory for all tenants while attendance of the latter is voluntary for eligible local residents and is usually attended by only a tiny fraction of them. Both were/are run by panels of elected local people, with a handful of permanent paid staff doing the background administration. In early days it was the manorial steward and his clerks who were paid. Now it is the Help Point staff. In the manor and hundred courts, the decision-makers were elected on the day to deal with the business of the day and to follow up on it. Our councillors are elected by local people in advance, to hold office for a number of years. They work within a prejudged framework set by a higher body or  custom. Our medieval and Tudor forebears were restrained in much the same way. History always brings us back to the general observation that human nature doesn’t change and, if the principle worked then, it is also likely to work today!

There are, of course, two critical differences between then and now. The right to participation in any form of local government was dependent upon a land qualification and upon being male, or a widow. Simply to ‘hold’ (as a tenant) an ordinary customary, or ‘copyhold’ piece of land was enough to give that tenant a say over matters affecting his livelihood and his neighbourhood. This was far more inclusive of the general populace than later. Once people had been persuaded to sell their holdings and the rights which went with them, which they frequently did, it was often disastrous for their local status. The village of Stanmer near Brighton is a case in point where, by the early 18th century, apart from the very elevated lord of the manor and a well- heeled farm bailiff, all the other inhabitants had become agricultural labourers with no stake in the land on which they spent their working lives. See notes below.

This court was one of the earliest ‘local authorities’, going way back into history, well before the Norman Conquest and they therefore had a long pedigree. Their main purpose was to safeguard local customs of land use and to govern their farming tenants (the copyholders), in life and death, by customs which ensured that the manor continued to uphold its capital value. While the lord had an interest in the overall value of the manor and was the sole beneficiary of its capital value, the ordinary copyholders had ‘customary’ access in use to around two thirds, between them, of its entire land area, giving them the opportunity to grow crops, to gather a range of materials from hedgerows and commons and to keep different types of animal which could feed seasonally for free on the commons. The custom of the manor could often be upheld in a number of different ways in favour of the tenants, even when it went directly against the lord’s wish or interests.

In the Burgess Hill area, which was part of the Barony of Lewes, the courts of Clayton, Keymer and Ditchling manors governed all rural land use throughout almost the entire countryside, excluding the lords’ own home farms and woods, from Clayton, Keymer and Ditchling villages right up to Haywards Heath; and in its outlying farmland in Balcombe and Worth, as far as Tinsley Green and Copthorne on the Surrey border. In early times, all the farmers up there were expected to come down to the courts, usually held three times a year, in the south of the manor. By the late 16^th century, the courts were generally being held in local inns up and down their areas. In the ‘Earlier History’ article on our town’s names, I have explored the question whether the top of the hill at Burgess Hill may have been a ‘moot’ for Keymer manor in early times. But whether it was or not, by the mid-14^th century, the outlying tenants in the north of the County had generally stopped bothering to attend and preferred to pay the fine for non-attendance instead.

One function of the manor courts was to regulate the inheritance of tenants’ holdings. By the ‘custom of the manor’, in all the ‘customary’, or ‘copyhold’ farms and cottages of the manor it was the youngest child who inherited. This is an ancient form of inheritance, prevalent in Sussex and similar to that in the Celtic regions of Britain. Its purpose was to provide continuity at the home farm, often through guardians of the young heir, while elder brothers were away at battle. By request however, and payment of a fine, a tenant could make a will and declare whoever he wished as his heir. Countless instances of this are recorded throughout the period for which manorial records exist locally, from the early 1300s to the 20^th century. Widows were entitled to their late husband’s property for life, a custom which generated a steady flow of suitors for their hand and marriages frequently taking place after a spouse’s demise with what looked like undue haste! In other manors the custom was to throw the wife out of the house if she remarried, which made her far less desirable.

The medieval rolls of our local manors call the meeting a Halemote, meaning – a meeting in the ‘hall’ or manor house. As well as relating to the land, our local Barony of Lewes manors, also contain records of personal civil cases between tenants. For example, a tenant who had sold an ox for an agreed sum but had not yet been paid, would seek redress against the buyer through the court.   This sort of business properly belongs to the Hundred courts (below). The circuit of manors that the Barony officials had to do was so long that it took several days to get round it all. See note below. Combining the business of the manor and the hundred was sensible since the Earls de Warenne of Lewes were lords of their manors and the King’s deputy in the region. The latter gave them authority to hold the Hundred court.

By the 16^th century the Hundred courts dealt with a far narrower range of civic duty, as we can see from the examples discussed below. Regrettably not many Hundred Court records survive for our area.  Decisions at the manorial courts were not made by the chief official, the lord’s steward, but by a panel of ordinary tenants. A different panel was sworn in at each court, referred to as the ‘Homage’ and morally obliged to make judgements in accordance with usual custom and practice. It was a court of peers in a barony whose chief lord was so remote that he never attended. In general, all the court official had to do was to take the minutes and record the ‘fine’ appropriate to any wrongdoing that had been found. One suspects that the Steward, the chief court official, had guided the homage if a case was unusual, but written records of this are rare.

Certain ancient holdings within each manor were obliged to act as ‘reeve’ each year, meaning that they were responsible for presenting the annual accounts of profit and loss of the whole manor each Michaelmas. If the owner was a woman (usually as a widow) then she would bear this responsibility just the same as any man and her name would be recorded as the reeve for the following year. Again, by the later medieval period I believe most farmers would have paid a small fine to shift the burden onto a paid court official but in early days (up to the Black Death of the 1340s) they had to accept the duty. Generally unable either to read or write, they used ‘tally sticks’ – matching sticks of wood kept by receiver and payer, on which paired notches recorded monies given or taken. In a dispute their tally sticks were examined in court.

Examples of Burgess Hill farms in Keymer manor once liable for the office of reeve are Sheddingdean, Leylands, Grovelands (Potters Lane area) and Burgess Hill farms; and in Clayton manor, Peppers alias Tibbalds (Factory estate area) Fowles farm (in Westhill Drive), and Lowlands with Freeks farm (all originally a large holding known as atte Ferghthe, on both sides of the lower part of Freeks Lane). None of the Ditchling manor farms now in Burgess Hill were part of this old agricultural system, nor did they have rights of pasture on the local commons, as they had been created after the Norman Conquest out of the lords’ former private woods under terms which excluded them from using the pre-existing commons. The officers who posted notices and collected cottage rents were the beadles, one in each manor. Their rent-free homes (so long as they carried out their tasks) later became Bedelands Farm (Keymer manor) and Poveys Farm (Clayton manor).

Every tenant had to abide by ancient codes of practise designed to keep the land in good heart. No one was allowed to ‘make waste’, or to make too much personal profit.  Timber throughout the manor belonged strictly to the lord of the manor. Tenants were allowed timber from their own holding to repair their house and farm buildings but they were not allowed to fell trees for personal profit. If they did, with permission, the Lord had a half share of the gains. Meadows, the source of the precious hay crop, were not allowed to be ploughed up, whether they were common meadows (usually in the old village area) or privately held on stream side tenements like Burgess Hill farm or Freeks farm.

All manures had to be returned to the land and not sold off the manor. In the Hassocks area of the manor of Keymer, where the common arable fields lay, the tenants who had a share in these fields would have to help with the muck-spreading, communal ploughing, weeding, bird-scaring, harvesting and other tasks that cropped up. Manorial accounts show that these tasks  occupied the Hassocks and Ditchling village tenants for several hours a week, most weeks of the year. There were also the tasks of being the shepherd of the tenantry sheep flocks or oxherd of the plough teams.  Clayton’s common arable fields were over the hill at Pyecombe (on the hillside west of the A23 opposite the Plough Inn), for reasons I have not yet fathomed. The Clayton villagers were presumably equally bound to play their part in their arable fields and I doubt they received any concession for the uphill trudge before they could get started.  Tenants living in the Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath areas did not have to routinely work in the arable fields but it is likely that they had to provide winter pasture for the tenantry sheep flocks  on their Wealden commons in periods of inclement weather.

The up-wealden tenants in the large manors of Sussex did not get off entirely scot-free as to harvest tasks. They generally seem to have been expected to go down to the manorial home village on certain specified days of the year and help with the hay and the corn harvest. It was usual for the food and drink for these occasions to be provided by the lord of the manor. Though they were work days, they would have been socially cohesive, allowing folk to meet up after long intervals and ‘catch up’ during meal and rest times. The annual Midsummer fairs at St. John’s Common would also have brought the manorial communities together in a similar way.  Our few surviving early medieval documents don’t make it very clear but it seems that the distant tenants in Balcombe and other northerly parts did not have to participate in that way. Their duties seem more to do with timber and carting.

The photos below show:

The Rugby Club field at Poveys Close whose north and east hedges still retain the old lay-out of a thicket hedge for managing livestock, gathering fruits and nuts etc., with standard oaks at intervals from which the timber for house repairs would be allocated to the tenant.

A streamside meadow at Lowlands/Freeks farm, not allowed to be ploughed as its main value was for the hay harvest; and former common arable fields in Hassocks (Keymer), adjacent to Oldlands on the hill (right). Other common arable fields of Keymer manor stretched across towards Friars Oak.

This ‘common field’ arable system, with its rights and obligations, ceased when the common fields were done away with and sold off, which seems to have been in the late 14^th century on our local manors. Adjacent landowners then had the chance to better themselves by buying them up, now free from any communal restraints. In Keymer the owners of Oldland were among those who benefitted in that way, extending their private estate into the old common arable. By the mid-1600s the laws about timber began to be relaxed and many copyhold farmers in the Burgess Hill area did buy the rights to their own timber. This gave them a good, profitable sideline in timber, coppice and brushwood sales for the local building and brick-making trades.

Though they had gained the right to their own timber they generally chose to remain as copyholders rather than buy their freehold, because that would have lost them their rights of common. By those rights they could put out on to St. John’s and Valebridge Commons the same number of animals in summer as they could keep on their own holdings in winter. This prevented overgrazing of a communal asset. It was all actively policed. The commons were ‘driven’ at Michaelmas, to round up the animals and deliver them back to their owners for the Winter. It was a great community occasion. The drive or ‘drift’ was usually organised around a cocal inn. In Ditchling it was the Royal Oak at the north end of Ditchling Common and in Keymer it was the King’s Head Inn on Fairplace Hill.  Stray animals, whose owner was absent or was not a legal commoner, were put in the adjacent manor pound. No one could reclaim a beast without paying a fine. The Keymer pound had occupied a space beside the old King’s Head Inn, in what became the pub car park; but as that important building was sadly demolished in 2013, the site of the pound will now be under a house or garden at the north end of Kings Head Court.

While the manor court was concerned with land use, the ‘Hundred’ courts were a court of civil jurisdiction. This court also dated back to the Saxon period or earlier and its purpose was to  protect the King’s interests locally by ensuring that folk were ‘keeping the king’s peace’ throughout his realm. Based on a concept of ‘100 good men’ of the general area, the ‘suitors to’ (attendees of) the court were all local landholders, copyhold and freehold, regardless of which manor their land was in. The court organised the collection of the King’s taxes and it also had power to pursue, and hopefully prevent, wrongdoing or unneighbourly behaviour, in both criminal and civil matters. Criminals were sent on to the Assize Courts in the larger towns of the county, but civil misdemeanours were dealt with locally.  Each responsible part of the Hundred, based on a nominal ‘one tithe’ (or tenth) of its area, was called a ‘tithing’, each of which elected a ‘head man’ to present his area’s business. He would also bear the responsibility of carrying out some order or duty that the court put on to his tithing.

As our early monarchs and their Assize judges were peripatetic, the upkeep of main roads, known as ‘the King’s Highways’, was paramount. Burgess Hill was part of the enormous Hundred of Buttinghill, stretching from Hurstpierpoint to Crawley and local residents were expected to attend, wherever the courts were held, usually in inns. The ancient mound where the early Hundred is assumed to have met in the Saxon period is in the back yard of The Ham farmhouse at Stonepound in Hassocks. Later on, the King’s Head and the Friars Oak Inn would have regularly hosted these courts. What is now the garden of the Friar’s Oak public house was once a tiny field called the ‘Hundred Acre.’ Hugh Matthews and I were of the same opinion, that the name here, as in other examples elsewhere, indicated the small plot where people’s horses were allowed to graze while the Hundred Court was in session.

Several people sent in excuses, but had then to pay a fine for non-attendance. Burgess Hill was represented by the tithings of Clayton and of Keymer, each covering exactly the same areas as the parishes of the same name. At the court held in April 1617, we find that the head men for these tithings both lived in Burgess Hill, Henry Homewood from Beddells (later Poveys farm now Southway School) and Richard Jenner from Lotmotts. His house and land was at the Hill, later developed as a large house called Woodside, just west of the junction of Keymer Road and Folders Lane.

A jury of twelve men was chosen from the attendees in court, sworn in and became the decision-making body. Records show that, as in the manor courts, different people were chosen at each court, so it was not a ‘stitch up’ with the same few select people acting each time. Trial by one’s peers did really pertain throughout rural society in those days. The jury, expressed as the ‘twelve to enquire for the king’ in September 1613 included Thomas Averye (ancestor of local historian Fred), Stephen Anstye of Bridge (Bridge Hall) and at least four other persons whose surnames connect with the Burgess Hill area.

Each tithing had to pay its ‘common fine’ to cover court expenses and costs. These included some small remuneration for the expenses of the ‘Constable’ and the various ‘inspectors’. Apart from the occasional pursuit of thieves or miscreants, most of the work was centred on trading standards and weights and measures. Officers of the Hundred would follow the fairs and markets of the neighbourhood, checking for ‘scams’. Leather had to be cured and produced by strict procedures, so there was an ‘inspector and stamper’ of leather goods. Ale conners checked against watery beer and there were inspectors looking for impurities in bread.  There would be arbitrary inspections in alehouses, and in workshops. Unpaid fines and any serious offences could be reported to the constable of the tithing, who had power of arrest.  Many of the ale house keepers were women but, regardless of sex, any unlicensed ale-house might be suppressed if it was an ‘unruly house’ or if its owner refused to pay a fine.

As well as ‘weights and measures’ and ‘trading standards’, both destined to be taken over in the fullness of time by County Councils, a third area of supervision was destined to end up the same way – Roads and Bridges.  The upkeep of roads, which had once been vital for our peripatetic medieval kings, became even more urgent in a place like Sussex which, with its Iron industry in the High Weald, had become a heavy industrial area by the early 17^th century. But unfortunately, the old Hundred Courts were fading out, crippled by non-attendance just at the time when this industry was at its height. Not only the Iron industry but also the new brick and tile industry was churning up the deep clays of the Low Weald carting heavy loads of brick and tile to outlying customers.

It was the Hundred Court to which our local 16th-century brickmakers were referred for illegally digging clay on the common (giving us the name of our very first known brickmaker in 1575, whose working life was otherwise completely unrecorded!). Fifty years later the records tell us that, not unsurprisingly, problems with the roads occupied much of the business. It was the locals who lived nearest to a dilapidated bridge or a stretch of faulty main road who were responsible for doing the repairs.  As it was a civic responsibility, to be done for the common good and not for money, it is no surprise to discover that no one did much until pushed.

In 1614, all the parishioners of Clayton were ordered to turn out and repair a long stretch of what is now the A273 south of Burgess Hill and in 1615 Sir Edward Michelborne of Hammonds was ordered to repair two bridges on the same road, one near his house (over the Pookbourne Stream). The other was over the ridge to the south, where John Haselgrove, the miller at Hammonds Mill had caused damage by allowing his mill pond to overflow. In 1618 Nicholas Jenner of Keymer had waterlogged the highway by not cleaning out his ditches at the ‘fayer place’. There would be penalties in all cases if they failed to carry out the work. Among the few entries that are not to do with roads, one Henry Smith was accused in 1613 of breaking the pound on St. John’s Common (at the King’s Head) and making off with several animals. He was fined 3s. 4d, a hefty sum in those days.

The photos below show:

Baldings Cottage in Keymer Village, which would have housed a tenant of the Manor who held a share in the common arable fields there.

Bridge Hall, its owner Stephen Anstye alias Holcombe was one of “the jurors to enquire for the King” at a local court in 1613. He lived at Bridge Hall, just over Fairplace Bridge, where his forbears had lived since 1400 when an ancestor married a de Stuttesford heiress.

Hammonds Mill, in 1615 John Haslegrove, the miller, had allowed his mill dam to overflow and flood the road (now the A273 south of Clayton Priory). Sir Edward Michelborne of Hammonds was liable for the repair.

Hammonds Mill Deed, a deed of  an earlier mill on the site, along with a transcription of the wording.

Common arable land Keymer

Translation of Hammonds Mill Deed: “I, John Capenore of Clayton have given in this my present charter and I confirm to Robert my son and to John Wood of Dychenyng, Trustan Wood of Perpointeshurste, William Wycham, John Norton the elder and Robert Cobard of the same all my lands, rents and services and the third part of the watermill which stands in the parish of Clayton aforesaid, with all their appurtenances, to have and to hold …..to their heirs and assigns from the chief lords of the fee by the customary services”.

Capenore then appends his seal and the deed is witnessed by other locals:  Walter Flood (Floods Farm West of Burgess Hill, off the link to the A23), Stephen Luggesford (later Luxford) of Perpointeshurste, James Wycham (Ham farm at Wickham by Stonepound crossroads), Ralph atte Wood of Kymer (probably at Burgess Hill farm), John atte Wood of the same (most probably of Ockley manor] and many others.

One wonders who owned the other two thirds of the mill. A field near the mill stream was called the Capenors’ on a later map of the Hammonds estate. In 1482, however, it seems that the mill was not part of that estate. The atte Woods were a large local family originating from the woodland north of Burgess Hill, specifically perhaps from Heaselands and Hesewood (now Kleinwort estate) which was then a detached part of Clayton manor consisting of a large wood with attached farmland. Members of the Wood family are known to have owned Burgess Hill Farm from 1465 to around 1610, latterly through the names of married daughters. The first member of the family known to have owned Hammonds we believe to be the John Awod whose memorial of 1509, in Sussex marble can be seen on request in Clayton church. The Hammonds estate was based in the next valley north, beside the Pookbourne stream and, presumably, had not expanded down to the mill stream by 1482. We assume, however, that the mill which is the subject of this deed will have been on the same site as that later owned and developed by the Michelborne family.

A companion deed by the same grantor bequeathed his other third of the mill to his wife Agnes for life; then to pass to his son Robert heirs. Ref: ESRO SAS/WH 35-36. We do not know who owned the final third. It was usual, for major enterprises like building a water mill, to raise the capital through shares.

By the early 17^th-century a new body had become established as a higher court of referral. Known as Quarter Sessions, because it met four times a year, its judges were an appointed body called Justices of the Peace, drawn from the gentlemanly classes. Their sessions were held at various towns around the county, by turns. The participative structure of decision-making in the court of the old Hundred was cast away in favour of an impersonal, class-based judiciary, largely disconnected from the people over whom it presided. In the 1680s, when John Turner, the brickmaker at Dunstalls had been digging clay out of St John’s Common, rather than from within his own land, it was the Quarter Sessions at Lewes where the case was heard.  His inconvenience is history’s gain because, while the names of Dunstall’s owners had been registered at the manorial court, the name of the tenant (the working brickmaker) had not. Through this one record we can connect the early years of Dunstall’s yard with the Turner family of Oldlands in Hassocks. After a small amount of further research, it turned out that John was a family member. A marvellously detailed tithe account for the combined parishes of Clayton cum Keymer, circa 1690s to early 1700s, has given us several further names of the actual working brickmakers at St. john’s Common, since it was the tenant, not the owner, who was liable for tithes. A tithe was a tax in favour of the local Church, of one tenth of one’s profits.

Such great powers of civil administration had been put upon the parish in 1601 (see The problem of the poor) that the JPs looked to the parishes to put all orders into effect. The old hundredal office of constable ‘morphed’ into the role of ‘parish constable’. The upkeep of roads and bridges was devolved to the parish who were enabled to appoint ‘surveyors of highways’. But the latter had no authority to raise money at that time, so the good folk of each ‘tithing’ were still expected to do it for free. Some farmers might provide stones and horse teams in lieu of a discount from their normal rates and the parish poor could be set to work on road mending but, overall, the roads carried on getting worse rather than better!  It was not until the Highways Act of 1835, when the surveyors were at last empowered to raise a rate for road repair, that the situation could begin to improve. Eventually, in the late 19th-century, this and the other responsibilities of the old Hundreds slid seamlessly into the hands of the various new Local Government authorities.  People nowadays tend to think that the creation in the 19^th– century of the Rural, Urban District and County Councils in England introduced a completely new form of local government. In fact, the essential object of their work load, that of keeping civil society running smoothly, had passed to them seamlessly, under various titles, since the Anglo Saxons and earlier.

The manor court records are as cited in: Origins of settlement and farming. On the possible existence of a manor moot or meeting place at Burgess Hill, see the discussion in: Burgess Hill Town’s name.

The circuit of the Barony of Lewes manors began at Allington (a few miles east of Ditchling, also known as Lewes, St. John without), then to Houndean by Lewes; next, via several Ouse valley manors, to Newhaven (then called Meeching); over the Downs to Rottingdean and on to Brighton; north to Patcham and Clayton; east to Keymer and Ditchling and finally, north to Cuckfield where the Earls de Warenne had a house in the village and the circuit staff no doubt had a well-earned rest.

The few surviving Hundred rolls for the Hundred of Buttinghill are in ESRO/ The Keep, reference /-. The published roll I have quoted from is printed in SAC vol. 58, pp. 6-20.

The various ways in which the Parish and Quarter Sessions began to take over the former role of the Hundred courts are covered in Tate, The Parish Chest as cited in: The problem of the poor and Hugh Matthews. Burgess Hill, has further examples of Quarter DYK Sessions orders.

The Rector’s account book is at WSRO at Chichester, ref: PAR 294/6/2

While working as archive researcher on the East Sussex Archaeology Project in 1986-7, I was asked to do the documentary background history on the ‘deserted village’ site at Stanmer, on which the rest of the team were doing the archaeology. It proved to be a mid-17^th centur crash in local population as the then Lords of the manor (the Michelbornes) bought up all the copyholds in the village and, in so doing, acquired the rights to all the sheep pastures the tenants had formerly held in the parish, as well as their arable land. This meant, with his pre-existing manor court land, he had come to own virtually the whole parish. It created a lovely big house and a park we can enjoy today, but a village of agricultural labourers, with no land; and upwards of 270 years to wait until anyone in the estate workers’ families got ‘the vote’. It is an interesting tale, recounted in SAC vol. 127, (1989) pp.,189-210. Sussex Archaeological Collections (SAC), which are now on line.