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
