Boundaries between
fields and communities form the ancient social topographical
scaffold of the countryside. In the days before maps, these
compartments were established and maintained by a process known as
perambulation. This term refers to the actual process of
marking out these important land divisions, a description that was
written down for future reference, and also describes the actual
actual process of reinforcing ownership. For village boundaries,
the latter was an annual ceremony organised by the parish officers
to ensure that all the inhabitants knew the limits of their
homeland in relation to the lands of adjacent communities.
This ceremony was also known as 'beating the bounds', and was
attended by customary events, such as upending children of the
community, at particular features used as markers.
Parish boundaries
still snake across the British countryside, following hedgerows,
roads, footpaths, streams and rivers. Often they cut across
the landscape with no apparent reference to the lie of the land or
to features of the human landscape. They create a pattern of
considerable complexity and raise numerous questions. Why does a
boundary which has been following a particular stream suddenly
swing away to follow lanes and hedgerows for a couple of miles
before rejoining the stream? Why was a Roman road used to mark the
limits of parishes in one area but totally ignored by the
boundaries a few miles further on? Why do parishes vary so much in
shape and size between different parts of the country?
As represented by
dotted lines on the Ordnance Survey maps, parish boundaries are
some of the most durable legacies from Anglo-Saxon England.
The Hundred boundaries defined groups of parishes that represent
civil estates of Saxon times. As a medieval network, the
village boundaries formed an invisible web which knit families into
communities and divided communities one from another. These
boundaries also divided the landscape of local administration,
which was both ecclesiastical and civil. The former defined
the church in which people could be baptised and buried and to
which they had to pay tithes and other dues. At the level of
civil administration they dictated the official to whom they were
responsible for payment of taxes and rates. Therefore,
boundaries of parishes and other units of local administration
mattered greatly to past generations. Before the local government
reforms of the nineteenth century, the parochial basis of poor
relief and many charities and schools were centred on the parish in
which a person was born.
Today, most
inhabitants would not be aware of where their village ended and
another began. However, parish boundaries still form the
basis of the political divisions for county and district, and those
created to define the voting arrangements for the British and
European constituencies. In this modern context the old
Hundred divisions take on a contemporary significance.
Today, some
footpaths follow the ancient parish boundaries and allow walkers to
follow these footmarks of villagers of ancient times. An
ancillary footpath network was a system of roads and footpaths used
by villagers to attend their local manorial court. Now, the sites
of some of these courts are farmsteads off the main roads, and it
is possible to follow in the steps of named individuals who's
attendance at the court was recorded in the medieval court
rolls.
Angus Winchester
See also 'Hundred
Lines' in the library section ofwww.otohydra.org.uk
