DOMESDAY SURVEY 



parishes, with parts of 7 others. In the Domesday Survey some 652 places, 

 vills, hamlets, and small settlements are mentioned by names which are still, 

 in the majority of cases, fairly easy to identify. Some point to early settle- 

 ment." Hams, tuns, and halls are common ; steads, wicks, worths, thorpes, 

 tofts, and stows occur occasionally ; by only twice, at Wilby in the north and 

 at Risby in the west of the county. Names derived from the natural features 

 of the country are frequently found : fields, leys, dens, dons, and holts, with the 

 fords, meres, brooks, wells, and eys (islands), characteristic of a flat and marshy 

 district. There are several instances of a cluster of two or more vills bearing 

 the same name, which seem to indicate emigration, ' village colonization ' and 

 the throwing off of swarms from the parent stock.®* 



These vills varied greatly in size and character, from the single holding 

 or the tiny group of two or three households to the large village numbering 

 some hundreds of inhabitants. A good general idea of their relative impor- 

 tance and of the distribution of large and small settlements may be formed 

 by classifying the free, sokeman, and villein holdings on the lines adopted 

 by Professor VinogradofF for the vills of Essex.*' Table III gives the 

 summarized results of such a classification. It has seemed well to include 

 freemen as well as sokemen and villeins in the enumeration, since in Suffolk 

 the small freeholders played a most important part in the village economy. 

 It will be seen that large settlements of over twelve households make up more 

 than 50 per cent, of the whole number of households recorded ; small settle- 

 ments of from six to eleven households and hamlets of from two to five house- 

 holds are approximately equal in number, from 1 6 to 19 per cent, of the whole, 

 while the single holdings form about 7 per cent., and the vills without free- 

 men, sokemen, or villeins, with those in which no population is recorded, 

 about 3 per cent, of the total number tabulated.™ Suffolk, then, like Essex, 

 appears as a land of large villages, and the areas of the largest settlements 

 are in the north of the county, in Blackbourn, Bradmere, and Hartismere 

 Hundreds, and in the central hundreds of Blything and Loes. 



Side by side with the ' villar ' system the ' manorial ' or ' feudal ' system 

 was, even before the Norman Conquest, spreading through the county of 

 Suffolk, and the manorial organization cut ruthlessly across the villar organi- 

 zation, as a Gothic arch might cut through a Norman arcade, obscuring but 

 not altogether obliterating the original design. The mediaeval builders of 

 fiefs and manors had as little regard for the work of their predecessors as the 

 builders of churches and castles. Everywhere, in the Suffolk Survey, manors 

 and their berewicks crowd the page, pre-Conquest manors and post-Conquest 

 manors, tiny manors and enormous manors, humble peasant holdings and 

 great aristocratic feudal estates. It is, however, the prevalence of small 

 manors, maneriola, that specially characterizes Suffolk among English counties. 

 Out of a total of 659 manors, 294, or nearly 45 per cent., are under i 



" Cf. Round, Commune of Land. : 'The Settlement of the South and East Saxons.' 



"* Thornham Magna and Thornham Parva in Hartismere Hundred. Whatfield and Other Whatfield 

 (alia Watefelda) in Cosford Half-hundred. Fornham and Fornham St. Genevieve in Thingoe and Thed- 

 wastre Hundreds. Cf. ' Bura ' (Bures St. Mary) in Suffolk and ' Bura ' (Mount Bures) in Essex, on opposite sides 

 of the River Stour, and the South Elmham and Ilketshall groups in Bishop's or Hoxne Hundred. South Elm- 

 ham : AU Saints, St. Nicholas, St. Michael, St. Peter, St. Margaret, St. Cross, St. James ; Ilketshall : 

 St. Lawrence, St. Margaret, St. John, St. Andrew. Cf Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 14, 365, 367. 



" VinogradofF, Engl. Soc. in Eleventh Cent. 264-73, App. v, vi. 



'" Actually : 547 per cent. ; 1 9' I per cent. ; l6'l per cent. ; 6-9 per cent. ; 3 per cent. = 99*8. 



I 369 47 



