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By Frank Sharman

BILSTON AFTER THE NORMAN CONQUEST P2

This page is decorated with line drawings taken from medieval manuscripts.  They have no specific connection with Bilston but do represent typical scenes from the times.

Ladies hunting. In medieval times women could be strong and independant figures.

A rough guess at how Bilston would have been in the later medieval period, with three open fields around a village centred on the church; and meadow lands between the village and the brook. (Based on an adaptation of the 1832 map of Bilston).

Water would have come from wells and, at a little distance, from the brook.  The chief well was known as Crudely or Cruddley Well and was situated, Lawley says, “just off Lichfield Street, near to the entrance to Proud’s Lane”.  There was another well at Spring Vale, known as Lady Wulfruna’s Well.  Both of these wells were considered, from time to time, to be Holy Wells with curative properties. 

The village would have been not unlike that shown on the 1832 map of the town – basically a village spread along a single street with a few branches off it developing over a period of time.  The housing would have consisted of an accumulation of cottages – mere hovels to our eyes – and a wider scattering of the better houses of the better off landowners.  These houses would have been “half timbered” on brick, or possibly stone, bases.

A medieval house of a good class.

The single street layout would have been broken around the chapel, as it is today.  A chapel is known to have existed on the site of St. Leonard’s, in 1090, when the priest was one Robert Fitzstephen.  Lawley describes this as a free chapel, one not allocated to any of the prebends of St. Peter’s.  But a chapel it was and a chapel of ease – that is an ecclesiastical building, with a curate (not a vicar or rector), which was provided for the convenience of people living at some distance from their parish church, in this case, St. Peter’s.

Medieval timber framing, still around at the start of the 20th century. Thanks to Eric Woolley for this.

In theory the curate would be appointed by the mother church; but the practice later developed of the curate being elected by the townspeople. A chapel of ease could not perform christenings, churching of women, marriages or burials.  How it came about that, eventually, all of this ceased to apply to St. Leonard’s, even before it became an independent church, can be read elsewhere.

Reaping the lord's land under his steward	Beyond the village, presumably near the brook, was some meadowland, which would have been used for making hay and grazing cattle. The back yards of the cottages would have been used for growing vegetables and keeping pigs and the pigs would have foraged the surrounding woodlands.	Netting birds.	The main agricultural activity of crop farming would have been carried out in Bilston, as it was almost everywhere else in the Midlands, in open fields.  These were very large fields which were divided into strips (usually about a furlong long and about 20 feet wide) and the villagers would each have held an allocation of strips scattered around each of the open fields.
Bilston had a market, almost certainly on the site where it still is; although the date of its origin is uncertain, Lawley says that a market charter was granted by Edward III.  At some date a “market cross” was erected.  A market cross was, originally, just that:  a large cross, on a plinth, which marked the centre of the market and around which local people came to sell their goods to other locals and visitors.  Later the cross itself might have been replaced by a building, usually in the form of an open area at ground level, with an upper floor supported on pillars.	Milking cows and churning butter.	Bilston seems to have had two crosses: the Nether Cross and the Overas Cross.  The Overas Cross was taken down in 1698 and the materials used to rebuild the Nether Cross.  As was common with such buildings the open area beneath the Overas Cross was bricked in to form a ground floor room.  In 1738 it was leased to a private individual and thereafter disappears from the records.	A tapster. It is reasonable to assume that Bilston would have acquired some beer houses and an inn or two.

Open field systems of agriculture usually had three open fields, but variations on this, from two to five fields, are not unknown.  We do not know for certain how many open fields Bilston had but it seems, from the names occurring at various points in Lawley’s History, that there were three:  Upper or Windmill Field;  Middle Field; and Cole Pit Field.One would guess that Middle Field was to the west of the village (where Middle Field Lane ran); that Upper Field was to the north  and west, it being described in 1458 as lying “near the way from the said Bilston to Wolverhampton”; and that Lower Field was to the south, the eastern side being occupied by the meadow near the brook.

Bilston windmill - a post-medieval construction. Thanks to Reg Aston for this.

The name “Windmill Field” indicates that there was a windmill but windmills did not appear in England before the 13th century;  before that corn was probably ground at a mill powered by the brook.  Certainly there was a water mill, as one is mentioned in a deed of 1378 cited by John Price. It was the chief business of the manorial court to decide on the course of agriculture – what was grown in each field; when ploughing, sowing and reaping took place and when, after harvest, the fields were to be thrown open to all villagers for grazing.  The notes made by the Reverend Ames show that this system of agriculture was still operating, over a greater or less area, in his time.

Pipe Hall, named after a local landowning family; but this was built long after the Pipes had left the area.

How land in Bradley was laid out and used is even more obscure.  Lawley suggests that the area was used mainly as part of the Earls of Dudley’s hunting grounds; and he finds only five capital messuages there (that is, five houses of any size).  There is a reference, in 1378, to Boverbrook Field and a reference to Broad Meadow in 1459 and this may show that there were open fields and a meadow in that manor as in Bilston.   The names of some landowners are known and appear in Lawley, as do the names of many more in Bilston itself.These landowners were all people who, by hard work, wheeling and dealing, or just good fortune, accumulated much of the land into their own hands and built the larger houses in the village.  They were also, as like as not, the leaders in “enclosing” the open fields. Enclosure was the process by which the old strip farming was abandoned, scattered strips were brought together and enclosed in fields of the shape and size with which we are now familiar. This was often done in one fell swoop under the compulsion of an Act of Parliament;  but there is no Act covering Bilston or Bradley. So there must have been what is known as “enclosure by agreement” whereby, possibly over a prolonged period, maybe decades or even longer, swaps and purchases of strips were agreed between their respective owners until everyone had his land in consolidated areas like modern fields.  The written record reflects this process.  In Bradley a deed (said to be of 1479 but strangely worded for that date) mentions an area of land “taken and enclosed before Queen Mary’s time” and that before it was enclosed it was called Broad Meadow.  This is not entirely clear but the early date (if accurate) suggests that this enclosure was carried out by a landowner for the purposes of producing a sheep run.  If this is the case the deed also reflects the undoubted importance of sheep farming to the area.

A medieval town.

Cooking for a feast.

Land in a manor’s open fields was (certainly for the greatest part) not freehold but copyhold.  Copyhold tenure depended on registering one’s title, and all dealings in the land, with the manorial court.  As land was enclosed the manorial court no longer needed to meet to regulate the course of agriculture and, very often, manorial courts fell into decay.  This meant that land transactions in copyhold land became difficult and uncertain. It may be that this happened in the whole of the Black Country area, with prime land within and immediately around the villages becoming enfranchised as freehold land, and the rest remaining copyhold.  It is possible that much mining and other industrial development could take place between the villages because it became uncertain who owned the land or had any form of control over it.

A stag hunt.  This sport would have been the preserve of the nobility.

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