Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

THE MANOR OF MANORBIER, PEMBROKESHIRE, IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HE medieval manor of Manorbier comprised the two parishes of Manor- bier and Penally. The crest of the Ridgeway formed the northern and the parish of Hodgeston the western boundaries of Manorbier. On the south the Bristol Channel bounded the manor, though it did include the little island of St. Margaret's. What is now Tenby South Beach formed the short eastern boundary, while the northern boundary of Penally followed the shore of the tidal inlet to the south of Tenby and then the old course of the Ritec stream to the edge of St. Florence village, whence a short western boundary ran up to the Ridgeway. In the early seventeenth century the manor was surveyed three times, in 1601, 1609 and 1618. The original surveys are in the Public Record Office1 and the National Library of Wales has a copy of the 1601 survey2 and two copies of that of 1609. The existence of these surveys has been long known and over the past thirty years valuable evidence has been extracted from them by B. E. Howells, who has concentrated particularly on the survey of 1609. It might well be thought that this rich seam has now been worked out, but this proves not to be so, especially when the three surveys are seen side by side and are studied in conjunction with contemporary law suits and later court rolls. The surveys, spanning seventeen years, not only define tenures and tenements and name tenants but show how tenements descended, either according to the custom of the manor or otherwise. From the details of houses and outbuildings and of types of land farmed given in the more informative surveys of 1609 and 1618 it is possible to reach some conclusions about the relative size of the settlements of Manorbier, Jameston, Manorbier Newton and Penally and about the sort of farming that was practised. While the surveys do not, unfortunately, give a clear indication as to whether open-field husbandry was still practised, there is some compensation to be found in the topographical detail given in 1618 in the longest and most interesting of the surveys. It should be said at once that there is one marked difference between the first two surveys and the third. The earlier surveys record what certain tenants would have liked to have seen established as the custom of the manor: the survey of 1618 puts the record straight, very much in the favour of the lord of the manor. From the twelfth century to the late fourteenth the manor of Manorbier and Penally constituted a barony held of the lordship and earldom of Pembroke by the De Barry family, by the service of five knights. The last De Barry of Manor- bier, David VI, died in 1392 having already conveyed the manor to William de