Medieval Weobley - by Ann Swinfen

The village of Weobley is one of the most beautiful in England.

However, lying as it does a mere four miles from the Welsh border, it has known troubles over the centuries, some arising from Marcher warfare, some due to wider national events. Today Weobley has retained a wealth of black-and-white medieval buildings, although some have been lost, and where the castle once stood on an eminence overlooking the village nothing is readily visible above ground but the castle mound and intriguing humps and bumps. Much of the valuable dressed stone from the castle building has found its way into village houses.

Artifacts from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods have been found in the area, including a Neolithic polished stone axe produced by the Graig Lwyd ‘axe factory’ at faraway Penmaenmawr (North Wales), an indication of long-distance trading contacts. Bronze Age cup-marked stones and small metal objects have also turned up, suggesting that this extremely fertile, sheltered and well-watered spot has been occupied since earliest times. Settlement seems to have increased during the Iron Age, Roman, and Romano-British periods, a number of coins having turned up, mostly in the abandoned castle site. If there is other evidence it probably lies under the medieval houses which stand in the long occupied central portion of the village, and so are inaccessible.

It is in the Saxon period that Weobley truly enters documented history. The name Weobley is of Saxon origin and is recorded in the Doomsday Book as Wibelai, which means ‘Wibba’s clearing’. Wibba may have been the son of Cribba, first king of Mercia (late 6th century). A ‘lai’ or ‘ley’ was a glade or clearing in woodland, used for a settlement. The Ley is a sixteenth century house on the outskirts of the village.
The original form of the name as Wibelai perhaps accounts for the present-day pronunciation, which is ‘Webly’, the ‘o’ not being sounded. The pre-Conquest lord of Weobley at the time of the Doomsday Book (1086) is listed as Edwin. A priest is also recorded, so it seems there was already a church in the village. The Conqueror’s inventory of the lands he had seized indicate a flourishing agricultural settlement.

As a side note – we own a house on the banks of the brook which runs through the village. It seems that this was regularly allowed to flood in winter, thereby depositing silt washed down from the limestone Burton and Wormesley hills to the south, resulting in what is still an extraordinarily rich soil.

Weobley, with the surrounding area, was granted post-Conquest to William fitzOsborn, Earl of Hereford. (The city of Hereford is twelve miles to the south.) The family did not long remain in possession, for a rebellion by William’s son, Roger de Breteuil in 1074 was put down by Walter de Lacy, who then succeeded him as tenant-in-chief of the crown. He himself did not enjoy his lordship for long, as he fell to his death in 1085 from St Peter’s Church in Hereford while it was under construction. (Faulty medieval scaffolding?) His son Roger therefore held Weobley at the time of the Doomsday survey, and may have been the original builder of the castle.

Weobley was to see more war and rebellion. During the Anarchy, the struggle between the Empress Matilda and her cousin Stephen for the crown of England, Weobley Castle was held for Matilda in 1139. Stephen besieged and captured it in 1140, an experience which must have had a serious effect on the villagers. By the late 1180s, the castle was held by Matilda’s son, Henry II. The de Lacy family continued to be prominent in the area, although for a time they were mainly concerned with their lands in Ireland. More trouble was brewing, however.

The second Walter de Lacy married Margaret, daughter of William de Braose, lord of Brecon, who was one of the barons who rose against King John, using Weobley as his headquarters. It was from Weobley that he may have launched his attack on Leominster, burning the town, and it was while he was in Weobley that King John demanded that he should surrender and hand over his son as hostage. As a result of his father-in-law’s activities, Walter de Lacy lost his lands and only regained them in 1213, at which time (wisely) he probably rebuilt and strengthened Weobley Castle. This de Lacy went on to have a distinguished career as Custodian of Hereford Castle, and Sheriff of Herefordshire. In this latter role he implemented the new royal policy (alas, short-lived) of protection of the Jews.

While all this political strife was happening, the people of Weobley were getting on with their lives. By this time Weobley had become a flourishing market town, serving the neighbouring villages, as well as being the centre of a prosperous agricultural district. At some point it must have been granted a charter for an annual fair, since Walter de Lacy petitioned for a change to the date in 1231. The very wide central area of the village would have been eminently suitable for holding a fair, though the slope might have made the pitching of stalls something of a headache! It is likely that this same busy de Lacy may have laid out more properties in the village, to increase his income from rents. Weobley was on the rise.

By 1255 Weobley had its own jury in the court of eyre, which would be presided over by the king’s justices – the mark of its increased status as a borough. Weobley would no longer need to send its cases for trial in Hereford. Even earlier, a case in 1229 cites Weobley as a borough. And from 1295 to 1303 Weobley sent two Members to Parliament.

The powerful de Lacy family was to die out. When Walter died in 1241, his only heir was his granddaughter Margery, now married to John de Verdon, a family which has remained notable in the area down to modern times. The lordship of Weobley passed to John, then to his son and grandson (both called Theobald).When the younger Theobald died in 1316, the heir was again a woman, his daughter, another Margery, thereafter known as the Lady of the Manor of Weobley.
At the time of her inheritance, Margery Vernon was married to William le Blount, who was made joint heir in her father’s will. William died in 1337 and manor and castle passed to Margery and her heirs. As it was not normally the custom for a woman to hold a castle on her own, in 1338 she granted it for life to John le Blount, who may have been her brother-in-law. At some point Margery married a Marcus Husee, then in 1356 married for a third time, to John de Crophull or Crophill. If you do the sums, Margery was quite a remarkable lady. This third marriage was forty years after she had originally inherited from her father, when she was already married. How old was she? There is little information available about her second husband, but the Black Death occurred between 1348 and 1349, so he may have been a victim of it. Like everywhere else in Europe, Weobley is likely to have had a third to half its population wiped out.

On his marriage to Margery, John de Crophull took possession of her property, and on his death in 1383 left it to his granddaughter Agnes. Considering the way the manor and castle of Weobley was passed around, it seems as though Margery had no children, or at any rate none who survived. It would have been impossible (given what must have been her age) for Agnes to have been her granddaughter. It is curious also how often the heir to the manor of Weobley was a girl.

Agnes was under age when she married Sir Walter Devereux – it was not uncommon for a rich heiress to be married off as a child – but in 1386 Sir Walter was able to prove that she was ‘of majority’, so that he could claim ‘livery’ of her lands. As usual, the husbands of these women took control. Weobley therefore fell into the hands of the Devereux family (of whom more later). Sir Walter was killed on 22nd June 1402, fighting under the Marcher lord Roger Mortimer against Owain Glyndwr at the battle of Bryn Glas (not far from Weobley), during the reign of Henry IV – a battle mentioned by Shakespeare. Sir Walter’s tomb is in the church of St Peter and St Paul, Weobley.

Agnes, the Lady of the Manor of Weobley, then married Sir John Marbury (or Merbury) of nearby Lyonshall. He seems to have been living at Weobley Castle when he made his will in 1437. This mentions the ‘king’s chamber’, which suggests that there had been at least one royal visit to Weobley by this time. The tomb of Agnes and John Marbury is also in Weobley church.

Much of the fifteenth century was, of course, blighted by the Wars of the Roses and Weobley was not exempt. Walter Devereux, grandson of the dead hero of Bryn Glas, fought on the losing side at the battle of Ludford Bridge. The enormous fines he was forced to pay were granted to the Duke of Buckingham in 1459. Ten years later, Weobley was to have another visitor, later to become a king. At the age of four, Henry Tudor had been taken captive by William Herbert, and later made his ward. When Herbert died in 1469, his widow, Anne Devereux, took the twelve-year-old Henry home with her to Weobley, where he lived for several months.

The final years of the fifteenth century saw further dramatic events when in 1483 Henry, Duke of Buckingham, attempted a rebellion against Richard III, using Weobley as his base. The rebellion was a failure, and although the Duke fled, disguised as a countryman, he was captured in Shropshire and taken for execution. His Duchess was seized in Weobley, but a Mistress Olliffe, governess to their two small boys, hid them in Weobley, then escaped with them, disguised as girls, to Hereford. Six years later the son of the Walter Devereux who had fought at Ludford Bridge, rode off to Bosworth, and died there. So many of the events involving Weobley seem to have found their way into Shakespeare’s plays!

While all these gentleman and knights were fighting and dying, the ordinary people of Weobley continued to build a prosperous town. It grew rich in the wool trade, and was famous for a number of manufactured articles, principally gloves, ale, and nails. One of its chief agricultural products was fruit, and the byproduct of its apple orchards, cider.

During the sixteenth century Weobley saw few dramatic events – no doubt to the relief of the inhabitants – and the Devereux family continued to hold the manor. From being minor gentry, however, they rose under the Tudors, another Walter Devereux being created Earl of Essex by Elizabeth I, and his son, the second earl, rising to the giddy heights of royal favourite. This Robert Devereux – arrogant, wilful, and (dare one say?) stupid, decided to lead a coup against Elizabeth in 1601 which, not surprisingly, was an abject failure. He was executed for treason and his lands forfeit. His widow was Frances Walsingham, daughter of Elizabeth’s late spymaster Francis Walsingham. Their son Robert was ten at the time.

Frances sought to have her son’s inheritance, including Weobley, restored, and in this was ably assisted by John Swinfen (d.1632), one of my husband’s ancestors. (So the family connection with Weobley goes back a long way. Interestingly John christened a son born in 1603 ‘Deveroxe’, a spelling which suggests how the name was pronounced at the time.) The appeal was successful and young Robert Devereux regained his lands in 1603.

He was to become a general on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War and was yet another to have no male heirs, leaving Weobley to his eldest daughter, called Frances after his mother.

There was another royal visit in 1645, when Charles I stayed at the Unicorn Inn after the battle of Naseby. The building was renamed The Throne in commemoration of the king’s visit, and is now a private house. The ‘new’ Unicorn was built across the road, also in the seventeenth century. The sixteenth century house looking across at the Throne is called Throne View, and was where my parents-in-law stayed when they first came to Weobley.

Weobley church contains a magnificent memorial to Colonel John Birch, a member of the Moderate Party in Parliament during the Civil War, and a friend of John Swynfen (1613-94), grandson of the other John.

Both John Birch and John Swynfen fell out with Cromwell, being opposed to the execution of Charles I, as they supported the peaceful establishment of a constitutional monarchy with greater powers for Parliament. Cromwell had them excluded from Parliament. Birch retired to Weobley, where he purchased Garnstone Manor and became a prominent and highly regarded landowner, rebuilding the church spire in 1675, which had been destroyed in a storm 30 years before. He was MP for Weobley 1679-91.

Weobley had resumed sending two Members to Parliament in 1628, and continued to do so down to the nineteenth century, by which time the once flourishing town had declined drastically in population, so that following the Reform Act of 1832 it was declared a ‘rotten borough’. After Weobley ceased to become politically useful, a number of apparently empty houses were demolished. However, recent research suggests that many of these may have been temporary buildings erected to house a ‘rent-a-crowd’ of voters, imported for elections only.

The nineteenth century saw the erection of a rather fine brick-built workhouse on the northern outskirts of the village. Like other rural workhouses, this did not function in quite the same way as the urban workhouses described by Dickens. During the winter, they served as a refuge for casual farm labourers and their families when work on the surrounding farms dried up for the season. There are even records of entertainments laid on for the inmates, and the contracts for suppliers contain evidence of ample provision of food and clothing.

After the excitements of earlier years, a major event in 1857 was the disappearance of Mr. Ford’s pig. Having searched high and low for her, to no avail, he despaired of finding her. The story had a happy ending: ‘At the time of the disappearance, a steam threshing machine was working outside his house, and it was a full three weeks later that Mr. Ford discovered his missing pig buried under the straw. The poor animal had had nothing to eat or drink, and was heavy with piglets, but with much care and attention she recovered from her imprisonment and soon produced 10 piglets.’

In the mid nineteenth century it must have seemed a disaster when the widespread development of railways passed Weobley by. Without easy access to this new speedy form of transport, Weobley declined into gentle decay, but it was almost certainly this which saved all the wonderful medieval houses. There was a further disaster in 1943 when a group of houses (including a bakery) on a small triangular plot in the very centre of the village caught fire and burned down before the fire engines from Hereford could reach them. Looking at the tiny flower garden which has replaced them, it seems they must have been very small.

With the expansion of car ownership since World War II, Weobley’s fortunes have changed again. Once more it outdoes all other villages in the area, with shops, schools, post office, pubs, restaurant, doctor, dentist, museum, library and all manner of social activities. The de Lacy and Devereux families may be gone, along with the threat from Owain Glyndwr, but the people of Weobley have a flourishing community in one of the loveliest villages in England.

Ann Swinfen

http://www.annswinfen.com

Managing a Medieval Nunnery - by Ann Swinfen

I’ve long had a vague feeling, at the back of my mind, that the women’s colleges of Oxfordand Cambridge, as created in the nineteenth century, shared many characteristics with medieval nunneries.

 

Somerville College, Oxford

Vague, that is, until my recent immersion in research for my work-in-progress, The Novice’s Tale, set in the 14th century and partly in Godstow Abbey, near Oxford. This has confirmed that feeling in a number of interesting ways.

I am not saying that those who ran those women’s colleges devoted their lives to worship, like their medieval forebears, but that the way they organised their institutions was remarkably similar. There were other points of similarity, too. When I was a student at an Oxford college, it was still all-female, and was one of the last to admit both sexes. We were, I now realise, at a transitional stage. All of the older dons were unmarried and lived in college, in ‘sets’, consisting of a sitting room cum study, in which they conducted tutorials, plus bedroom, bathroom, and small kitchen. Their rooms were cared for by college servants (‘scouts’), they ate most of their meals in the college Hall, and they foregathered with their colleagues in the Senior Common Room. It was the form of female college life as portrayed in Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Night (without the crime!). She had attended my own college during World War I, and some aspects of that earlier life still remained in my time there.

However, things were changing.

A number of the younger dons were married, and although they still had rooms in college, they had homes outside, inhabited by husbands and children. Some of the very youngest were not yet married, and did live in college, but drove fast cars, instead of riding the ancient upright bicycles, and were sometimes quite glamorous.

It is in the older form of this collegiate life that we can see parallels with medieval nunneries.

When the women’s colleges were set up, they were, naturally, modelled on the men’s colleges. These in turn had begun life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as ecclesiastical institutions, intended to educate men for the church and other professions, men who had taken at least minor orders. They therefore closely resembled monasteries and nunneries in their organisation, so it is not too fanciful to see a direct line of descent to the nineteenth and early twentieth century women’s colleges.

There were even some correspondences in the buildings. The central Hall of a college (like those in the Inns of Court) harks back to the hall of a medieval manor, with a dais at one end for the high table. In the frater or refectory of a nunnery the senior nuns would sit here, as the fellows of a college do now, while the junior nuns and novices, like the students, dined at lower tables. A comfortable Senior Common Room has replaced the hard stone seats of the chapter house, but like the chapter house it is used for meetings.

 

Laycock Abbey, converted into a manor house

Traditional colleges are enclosed within walls and built around a series of quadrangles, sometimes with cloistered walks, again retaining the layout of medieval monasteries and nunneries. There is a gatehouse, generally with a wicket set into a larger gate, which is presided over by a porter, again on the medieval model. At night, the gate is closed and locked.

All the traditional colleges, including the women’s colleges, have a chapel, like the chapel or church or abbey which was an intrinsic part of a medieval nunnery or monastery.

The wealthiest colleges – primarily the older men’s colleges – are supported by the endowment of property from benefactors through the ages, as the monasteries and nunneries were. The nineteenth century women’s colleges were less fortunate.

When we look at the occupations of the nuns in a medieval nunnery, we can see further parallels to a woman’s college. A nunnery of medium or large extent was a major institution, involving not only the professed nuns but also novices and often schoolchildren (including young boys), lay sisters, male and female servants, some senior male staff, and a home farm with a full complement of agricultural workers. To manage such a large institution, the senior nuns were required to take on managerial roles which would not seem out of place in any similar modern institution, including women’s colleges.

At the top of the hierarchy, if the nunnery had the rank of abbey, was the abbess. In the smaller nunneries she was a prioress. Under the abbess was the prioress, and there might also be a subprioress. The abbess was the overall head of the institution, supervising her ‘obedientiaries’ or senior nuns, chairing meetings of Chapter, dealing with senior figures outside the nunnery, and corresponding with the bishop and other important men. Abbesses also had the right to sit in the House of Lords, the only women to sit in Parliament until the twentieth century.

Reporting to the abbess, a group of obedientiaries had defined roles in the organisation. One of the most important was the treasuress, who handled all income and expenditure. Her role corresponded closely to that of the bursar of a college. Agreement would be reached amongst the ‘managing committee’ of senior nuns as to what proportion of the budget should be allocated to the various spending departments, for example to purchase food or clothing. Some of the endowments granted to the nunnery would have been ear-marked for specific purposes, and these would be taken into account in the planning. A modern parallel might be scholarships restricted to students from a particular county or to the offspring of indigent clergymen.

My college had both a treasurer and a bursar, the bursar and her assistant having taken over a number of the roles below, including those of fratress and cellaress. A housekeeper in charge of the scouts (who replaced the lay servants of the past) took the place of the kitcheness and had some of the duties of the cellaress.

The care of the church in the medieval nunnery was in the hands of the sacrist. This meant not only being responsible for the fabric of the church and arranging for repairs when necessary, but also caring for the valuable church plate, altar clothes and vestments, and providing the candles for both the church and the nunnery generally. She would purchase wax and tallow and arrange for candle-making at least once a year, either by a local candle-maker, or by one of the itinerant makers, who would come to the nunnery for the number of days needed to make the supply.

The precentrix or chantress was in charge of all the music and the church services. She would train the novices in the complex singing of the services, arrange for the copying of music, and usually also served as the librarian in charge of the institution’s books. If the nunnery had a scriptorium for the copying of texts, this would come under her care.

The chapel in a modern college clearly does not play anything like so important a part in the lives of the members as it did in the medieval period. The chapel and choir in my college was a personal interest of one of the dons. In some of the men’s colleges nowadays, of course, especially those with famous choirs, there will usually be one or more organ scholars, a chaplain, and a choirmaster, as well as teachers in the choir school. Now that colleges have much larger collections of books than a medieval nunnery, the role of librarian has assumed a correspondingly greater importance.

The frater or refectory was run by the fratress. This involved responsibility for all the tables and chairs, the dishes and table linen, the cleaning of the frater and the lavatorium where the nuns washed before eating. She would supervise the laying and clearing of meals by the servants, but was not responsible for the food itself.

The cellaress carried a particularly heavy burden. It was she who was responsible for seeing that the nunnery always had sufficient stores of food and drink, no simple task in the days before refrigeration. She arranged for supplies from the home farm and bought in anything which it could not supply, and as a result also supervised the home farm. She was in charge of hiring and firing servants, allocating their duties and overseeing their behaviour. As a result, she carried out most of the duties undertaken in a country manor by the steward, housekeeper, and butler.

The actual preparation of the food fell to the kitcheness, although she probably did not do much of the cooking herself, but managed the kitchen staff, mainly seculars, who could be male or female. She reported to the cellaress, and must have worked closely with her.

The chambress was responsible for all the clothes and bedding of the nuns and the servants, which involved buying cloth, employing seamstresses to make it up into garments, sheets, and blankets, in some cases overseeing full cloth production – preparation of the raw wool, spinning, weaving, fulling and dyeing. It should be remembered that in many cases the religious institutions, like the great estates, tried as much as possible to be self-sufficient, so they would have had a supply of wool from their own sheep.

The duties of the chambress have lapsed in the modern world, when students provide their own clothes, and – as far as I know – none of the women’s colleges has ever had its own flock of sheep!

If the nuns fell ill, they were cared for by the infirmaress who would need to combine the skills of an apothecary and a physician. The infirmary was generally a separate building, to avoid spreading infection, and she would prepare her medicines in a still room.

Nowadays this is not a duty undertaken by one of the dons. Members of the college with minor illnesses are treated by the college nurse. Anything more serious falls to the NHS.

The poor who came to the nunnery for help would receive money, clothes, and food from the almoness, while guests of the nunnery (travellers or secular women who retired there), would be in the care of the hospitalless.

Colleges still support charities, and welcome (paying) guests when rooms are available.

Last, but by no means least, of the major officials in a medieval nunnery, was the mistress of the novices. She was responsible for teaching and training the novices, and also supervised their behaviour. Some girls were given to the nunnery as oblates (‘gifts to God’) at a very young age, others joined later, either because they had no marriage prospects, their families wanted to dispose of them, or they had a genuine vocation. If the nunnery had a school, the mistress of the novices was usually in charge of this as well.

Clearly all the dons in a college, apart from those with a pure research appointment, fulfil the functions of the mistress of the novices, teaching the students, while some have a particular responsibility for behaviour and discipline, generally the dean.

A medieval nunnery also employed a great many other people. The steward tended to be an honorary position, often held by a nobleman, more like a patron than the usual idea of a medieval steward. Colleges now often have a ‘visitor’, a similar honorary position, held by some distinguished individual.

Nuns could conduct services, but could neither hear confession nor administer the sacraments, therefore they had a chaplain, generally with his own lodgings within the enclave but outside the nuns’ quarters.

The most important lay officer was the bailiff, who rode around the many properties of the nunnery (which might be scattered) collecting the rents. He might also be in charge of fetching supplies, if these needed to be purchased some distance away.

As well as household maids, and personal maids for some of the senior nuns, there would be a large domestic staff, both men and women: cook and kitchen servants, brewer, maltster, baker, laundress, dairy woman (to milk the cows and make butter and cheese) and grooms to look after the stable. The home farm employed the usual workers: ploughmen, cowherd, oxherd, swineherd, shepherd, carters, farm labourers, and (at harvest and other busy times) casual labourers.

Certain essential craftsmen might also be employed or hired from the nearest village – blacksmith, wheelwright, thatcher, carpenter, mason, and others.

The modern college is spared the need for many of these people, but will still buy in the services of those like builders as the need arises, just as the medieval nunnery did.

What I find most striking is the skill and competence of the nuns who managed a medieval nunnery. These were complex organisations. The nuns needed to be able to read and write and keep accounts. The money management alone was demanding, especially when the income from rents or the produce of the home farm could fluctuate alarmingly. A number of obedientiaries have left behind comprehensive manuals of instruction for their successors on how to carry out their responsibilities.

I suppose the usual general idea we may have of a medieval nunnery is that it was a group of unworldly women, shut away from secular life and contact with the outside world, their lives devoted entirely to prayer. The truth could hardly be more different, although prayer was certainly important. As an alternative to being married off to some distasteful husband and forced to bear child after child, with all the desperate risks of death in childbirth, these women could lead a fulfilling life where they had real careers and responsibilities, beyond anything most of them would have experienced in the secular world. Those early dons in the women’s colleges, fighting for women’s rights to an education and a more fulfilling life, were – in a curious and ironic way – carrying on the work of those celibate and enclosed sisters in the medieval nunnery.

Ann Swinfen
http://www.annswinfen.com