OF SELBORNE 351 



place also, and at the Grange in Culver-croft,^ there were 

 dove-houses ; and on the hill opposite to the Grange the 

 prior had a warren, as the names of the Coney-crofts and 

 Coney-croft Hanger plainly testify.^ 



Nothing has been said as yet respecting the tenure or 

 holding of the Selborne estates. Temple and Norton are 

 manor farms and freehold ; as is the manor of Chapel near 

 Oakhanger, and also the estate at Oakhanger-house and 

 Blackmoor. The Priory and Grange are leasehold under 

 Magdalen-college, for twenty-one years, renewable every 

 seven : all the smaller estates in and round the village are 

 copyhold of inheritance under the college, except the little 

 remains of Gurdon-manor, which had been of old leased 

 out upon lives, but have been freed of late by their present 

 lord, as fast as those lives have dropped. 



Selborne seems to have derived much of its prosperity 

 from the near neighbourhood of the Priory. For monas- 

 teries were of considerable advantage to places where they 

 had their sites and estates, by causing great resort, by 

 procuring markets and fairs, by freeing them from the 

 cruel oppression of forest-laws, and by letting their lands 

 at easy rates. But, as soon as the convent was suppressed, 

 the town which it had occasioned began to decline, and 

 the market was less frequented ; the rough and sequestered 

 situation gave a check to resort, and the neglected roads 

 rendered it less and less accessible. 



That it had been a considerable place for size formerly 

 appears from the largeness of the church, which much 

 exceeds those of the neighbouring villages ; by the ancient 

 extent of the burying ground, which, from human bones 

 occasionally dug up, is found to have been much encroached 

 upon ; by giving a name to the hundred ; by the old founda- 

 tions and ornamented stones, and tracery of windows that 

 have been discovered on the north-east side of the village ; 

 and by the many vestiges of disused fish-ponds still to be 

 seen around it. For ponds and stews were multiplied in 

 the times of popery, that the affluent might enjoy some 



^ Culver, as has been observed before, is Saxon for a pigeon. 

 ' A warren was an usual appendage to a manor. 



