stonehenge - English Heritage

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Table 3
Later medieval settlements
and hundreds within the
Stonehenge Landscape.
and structured system. Bettey (1986) and the papers in the
volume edited by Aston and Lewis (1994) provide a
background to this period and the archaeology of it.
Indeed, Aston and Lewis (1994, 1) suggest that Wessex as a
whole has great potential for the study of the medieval
rural landscape owing to its abundance of documentary
evidence and variety of landscape types. Map N shows the
distribution of recorded sites and finds relevant to the
medieval period.
The Conquest period is represented by a small
horsehoe-shaped ringwork castle at Stapleford in the Till
Valley in the southwest corner of the Stonehenge
Landscape. The ringwork was later expanded to operate in a
manorial capacity with the addition of a fishpond and suite
of paddocks (Creighton 2000, 111). The much larger castle
with its associated royal and ecclesiastical centre at Old
Sarum lies about 6km south of the Stonehenge Landscape
on the east bank of the Avon (RCHM 1981).
All of the settlements recorded in the Domesday Survey of
1086 grew to become established villages in the succeeding
period, together suggesting fairly densely populated river
valleys with more open land between. Table 3 shows the
names of the main settlements and the hundreds within
Modern parish/
settlement
Allington †
Boscombe
Amesbury †
Ratfyn
Domesday
reference?
Berwick St James † – –
Bulford †
Durrington †
Knighton
Figheldean †
Idmiston †
Porton
Milston †
Brigmerston
Netheravon †
Orcheston †
Shrewton †
Addestone
Maddington
Stapleford †
Wilsford †
Winterbourne Stoke †
Woodford † – –
†
indicates modern parish centres.
Place-names in italic are non-parish centres.
Domesday
hundred
Amesbury
Amesbury
Amesbury
Amesbury
Amesbury
Amesbury
Amesbury
Amesbury
Amesbury
Alderbury
Amesbury
Amesbury
Elstub
Dole
Dole
Dole
Dole
Branch
Underditch
Dole
which they lay. Illustration 60 shows the extent of the
identified hundreds around Stonehenge.
Several of the modern parishes have been created out of
the amalgamation of medieval tithings or townships but some
original medieval land units still remain (Illustration 61). As
observed on modern Ordnance Survey maps, Wilsford cum
Lake, for example, was created out of the medieval townships
of Normanton, Lake, and Wilsford. Also, Shrewton
incorporated the medieval townships of Rollestone, Netton,
Shrewton, Maddington, Bourton, Addestone, Normanton, and
part of Elston (Aston 1985, 40–1 and 79–80). Some township
units seem to have incorporated prehistoric features at
certain points on their boundaries, perhaps reflecting earlier
land-divisions. West Amesbury, Winterbourne Stoke, and
Normanton townships, for instance, converge at Barrow 10 of
the Winterbourne Crossroads barrow group. Amongst others,
potential prehistoric boundaries can be found at the bell
barrow Amesbury 55, where Amesbury Countess, West
Amesbury, and Winterbourne Stoke converge, and the north
bank of the Cursus forms part of the Durrington/Amesbury/
Countess boundary (Bond 1991, 394).
Amesbury remained the largest settlement throughout
the medieval period, and the two manors in the town are the
only ones in the area to have been researched in any great
detail (Pugh 1948). During the later eleventh century, the
royal estate of Amesbury was divided into two smaller
manors: one consumed into the Earl of Salisbury’s estate
and the other owned by the Sheriff of Wiltshire and later by
his grandson, Patrick, Earl of Salisbury in 1155–6 (Bond 1991,
392). For some four centuries the Amesbury manors and
associated lands passed through many hands and were
divided, detached under multiple ownership, and finally
reunited with almost all of their lands intact in 1541. Edward,
Duke of Somerset and Earl of Hertford, acquired the manor
of Amesbury Earls in 1536 and Amesbury Priors in 1541.
Until the Reformation, the Benedictine Abbey of Amesbury
continued to flourish as a nunnery, gradually increasing in
size and wealth. In 1256, there were 76 nuns and by 1318 the
nunnery housed 117 nuns with 14 chaplains (Bettey 1986, 74).
By the fifteenth century, the abbey had become the second
wealthiest and fifth largest in England until its dissolution in
AD 1540 (Haslam 1984). The buildings were given to Edward
Seymour who dismantled the abbey (Jackson 1867).
It is likely that the settlement of Amesbury grew up
alongside the abbey during its prosperous years, but little is
known of the town from an archaeological perspective. The
only known surviving domestic medieval building seems to
be West Amesbury House. With a fifteenth-century core,
medieval screens passage with an in situ wooden screen,
arched doorways and a medieval arch-braced and windbraced
roof in the west wing, the medieval building is
proposed to be located within the remains of a grange of
Amesbury Priory (Chandler and Goodhugh 1989).
Throughout the medieval period, Amesbury Hundred
constituted part of the Royal Forest of Chute, the earliest
known documentary evidence for which dates from the
twelfth century (Bond 1994, 123).
Villages, as we recognize them today, appear to have
developed during this period, although some presumably
have Saxon or earlier origins. Settlement has a propensity
to centre along the river valleys, particularly the Till and
Avon. The eighteenth-century map by Andrews and Drury
provides a detailed overview of pre-enclosure settlement
within the Stonehenge Landscape, covering the whole of
Wiltshire. Villages tended to be either compact nucleated
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