EARLY HISTORY TO A.D. 1300. 23 
taking the survey, two plough teams. The tenants consisted of 
fifty: families of the class known as villans and nine known as 
bordars, who, between them, had seventeen plough teams. There 
were thus 19 teams in A.D. 1085, against the 14 in King Edward’s 
days. In other words more land was being placed under cultivation. 
The villans and bordars were personally free, but only in a limited 
sense to our ideas. The former each held about 30 acres of land, 
but they could not quit their holdings without leave, and they were 
bound to perform many services‘to the Lord of the Manor, besides 
furnishing oxen to drive the ploughs on the demesne. The bordars 
‘or cottagers had smaller holdings of some five acres, and were 
more akin to farm labourers. 
PLATE 6.—VIEW OF A WATER-MILL AT LEWISHAM, 1777. 
There were three families of slaves, who performed the menial 
work about the Manor Court. There are thus 72 families recorded 
in A.D. 1085, or a population of between 300 and 4o0 souls. 
Along the banks of the river would have been the 30 acres of 
meadow, whilst all around lay the woods, which remained at Syden- 
‘ham and Forest Hill until almost within living memory. Their value 
is assessed, it will be seen, by the number of swine (50) which the 
tenants gave the Lord of the Manor for the privilege of turning 
their pigs out into the woods to fatten on the oak and beech mast. 
It would be interesting to know if the assessment of wood included 
the denes in the Weald near Cowden, which were attached to 
Lewisham. 
A point of much interest in the Domesday entry, is the 
statement that there were eleven mills. The number, considering 
the size of the Ravensbourne—for they were all water mills—seems 
very large, and it has been suggested that the entry is an error. 
