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| The Origins of the English Village |
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The hamlets before the village
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The habitative field names
The position of the old church revealed the position of one of the hamlets that was abandoned with the new village was laid out. But where were the other hamlets? A clue lay in examining the old field names recorded in the survey of the village made by Abbot Bere, of Glastonbury Abbey, in 1515. These revealed a number of 'habitative' field names, that is field names indicating habitation which no longer survived: these were field names ending in 'wick' worthy' or 'chester' . A good example is a field known to the present day farm as 'Henry' which turns out to be Enworthy. Field walking revealed that some of these had been occupied down into the middle Saxon period.
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Bridewell Lane
The final clue came from an excavation in the village in Bridewell Lane, on the site of a house abandoned in the 13th century. This produced pottery of the Cheddar E variety - very coarse, which appears to date to the 10th century. Thus at present all the evidence points to a tenth century date for the foundation.
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This fits in well with the historical evidence. In 940 The great St Dunstan was abbot of Glastonbury and busy reforming English monasticism, introducing the ideas of the Benedictines, and ejecting all the clerks who refused to become celibate monks. We can perhaps imagine the more go-ahead monks visiting the Benedictine houses in the continent and returning full of the latest agricultural ideas. "Remove all the peasant farms, set up cereal factory farms instead. Move all the peasants off their scattered land holdings into villages. You think you can grow cereals - but you ain't seen nothing yet"!
Was this how the typical English village was founded?
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