Aelfflaed was the wife
of Brythtnoth, the Saxon hero of the Battle at Maldon in 991.
The following refers to a gift of land, Balsdon in Suffolk, by Aelfflaed's family to a
thegn Seward of Maldon. We can walk the 10th century boundaries of this estate with
confidence.
Balsdon Hall, now little
more than a cottage, stands within and beside magnificent
moated enclosures not far from one of the winding roads that connect Lavenham
with Long Melford. The estate was reckoned at five 'hides' by Aelfflaed.
As described in her
will, it occupies the northern half of the parish of Acton, and there
its bounds coincide exactly with those of the parish. In Domesday Book, Balsdon is
not mentioned, but must be contained in the large Acton estate, twelve carucates,
held by Seward. Here the carucate seems to be equivalent to the hide, and Seward
had added to Balsdon the poorer lands to the south, including Babergh Heath (whose
name suggests that it must have been the meeting-place of the Hundred of
Babergh). Babergh was extensive and counted as a double Hundred, so Balsdon,
with five hides, would have found 'one-fortieth of Babergh's Danegeld'.
These were the boundaries
of Balsdon at the beginning of the second millennium.
We start at the stream
at Humelcyrre. Humol is a rounded hillock, and cyrr, as in the
surviving place-name Stanton Chair, means a corner, or bend. This exactly
describes the location of 'the Humblechar meadows' given in a note in Parker's
History of 'Long Melford (1873), so we know exactly where to start perambulating:
the meadows lie at a pronounced bend in the stream that runs on down past Long
Melford Hall, originally turning the Hall mill at the mill-ford. At this point a tributary
stream runs in from the north- east. Its valley is followed by a path and by the track of
the abandoned little Sudbury-Bury branch-line, whose trains puffed up this old
boundary line for one of its long centuries of existence. As the boundary-path rises
above the gully, it passes the invisible site of the earliest known settlement of
Balsdon, a pair of irregular round ditches with what looks like a native farmstead,
perhaps of the Romano-British period, tucked into the slope just below Hawk's
Grove. The boundary continues to climb between Paradise Wood and Lineage
(formerly Lenynge) Wood until it comes to two concrete strong-points of World War II
and the Lavenham-Bridge Street road. This is where the Gospel Oak stood.
At this point the Acton
parish boundary comes to a head and turns at a sharp angle
to the south-west. We have reached the next point in Aelfflaed's description. It is
Heregeresheafod which means Heregere's headland, a point where the ploughs
would turn. In a conveyance of 1305, two pieces of Humblechar meadows were
described as lying between those of David of Hereford and those of William Bonde.
Ordinarily one would suppose David came from Hereford, but here his name may be
a contraction, after three centuries, of Heregeresheafod. Next year he witnessed
another very local conveyance by Ralph of Dunton. Dunton's Farm is only half a mile
from this point at the head of the Balsdon boundary. Now we follow the Acton parish
boundary along what was already known as 'the old hedge'. Alas, most of it has been
grubbed right out. A bit survives alongside the 'Green Willows' Building Estate, one of
the latest attempts to suburbanise Lavenham a little more. The old boundary wobbles
just here, probably because it was marked only by 'a green oak', which might easily
have been confused with others, and lost over the centuries.
"Then on till
one comes to the paved road", the Roman road. Here its course is still
plain, as a green lane beside School Farm and then as a most impressive hedge
alongside Slough Farm (Acton), which looks for all the world like a Slough factory. At
this point Aelfflaed's Balsdon boundary leaves the parish boundary and runs "along
the shrubbery until one comes to Acton-village", that is, along the present road into
Acton. "Then from Acton till one comes to Roydon." This is still marked by Roydon
Drift. "From Roydon back to the stream." We have completed the parallelogram of
Aelfflaed's five hides. By extending his Acton estate to twelve carucates, Seward
created the complete parish boundaries of Acton as they are today.
When we look, now,
at Domesday Book and find over 400 churches already
recorded, it will be reasonable to assume that many of them will already have
achieved boundaries that are identical with a large estate like Seward's at Acton. But
we shall find some churches that are associated with small farms within a whole
grouping of estates within a vill. How soon the boundaries of such a parish and vill
were established is something that needs much more careful study.
Norman Scarfe
