i] An Elizabethan Survey and Domesday Book. 5 



The present area of the parish of Forncett St Mary is 760 acres. 

 In the section of the Survey relating to that parish 751a. i r. are 

 described, exclusive of the commons, whose area is not given. The 

 parish of the Survey had somewhat different limits from the parish 

 of to-day, and its acres were medieval acres, averaging in this parish 

 less than the statute acre, although the average arable acre was very 

 nearly statute size\ 



The Surveyor divided the parish as follows : 



Messuages, crofts and gardens 52 a., 3 r. 



Arable 479 a., ^ r. 



Meadow (io6 a., \ r.), marsh and low pasture ... 1 14 a.j i^ r. 



Wood (75 a.) and hill pasture (30 a.) 10 5 a. 



751 a., I r. • 



But using the map as a basis of measurement and computing in 

 statute acres we reach more complete and somewhat different results : 



Messuages, crofts and gardens 28 a. 



Arable 473 a. 



Meadow, marsh and low pasture ... 84 a. 



Wood and hill pasture (114 a.), and land east of Tas, 



probably wood or waste (25 a.) ... ... ... 139 a. 



Commons ... ... ... ... ... 102 a. 



826 a. 



St Mary's, stood next to the manor house; the church in Twanton, known later as St Peter's, 

 had been endowed by the villagers with 60 acres of glebe. At least as early as the thirteenth 

 century and until 1845, the two rectories were held together under one rector, whose residence, 

 in 1565, was close to St Peter's Church in Twanton. 



^ The area of the commons was about 102 acres. The Survey omits the tract — 25 acres — 

 lying east of the Tas and in the parish of St Mary, and also some six acres south of the church. 

 On the other hand it includes the so-called ' lost-lands' — 66 acres (IV. i, and part of IV. 2, 

 and IV. 7) which were later transferred to Tacolneston parish. 



As is well-known, medieval acres were of four variable rods in width, and of varying 

 length, with only a general tendency to conform to the normal length of 40 rods. Many of 

 the meadow ' acres ' in Forncett were not half that length ; the length of some of the arable 

 strips in IV. i near Stixford Way was, and is, nearly twice that of other strips further east in 

 the same furlong. The Forncett rod was doubtless 16J feet ; for about 1308 this was the length 

 of the rod of Clavers manor, which was originally part of P'orncett manor and much of which 

 lay within Forncett vill. (Blomefield, v. 259.) As the area of St Mary's in 1565 was about 

 826 acres, as 751^ acres are described and more than 130 acres are omitted from the description, 

 it follows that the ' acres ' of the Survey average less than the statute acre. The object of the 

 Survey was to register tenures, rather than exact areas. Hence the Surveyor, as a nile, gave 

 the acreage of the strip as it was given in the copy of court roll or other title deed. But 

 sometimes an obvious discrepancy between the actual and the recorded size of the strip 

 occasioned some such comment as : ' T. B. tenet per nomen iii. ac. tamen patet esse iiii. ac' 

 In describing Sandwade meadow (St Peter's) the Surveyor departed from his usual custom 

 and gave the dimensions of the holdings in perches instead of in rods and acres, thus: 'R. B. 

 tenet 24 perticas prati.' 'E. A. tenet 3 perticas prati.' 'W. B. tenet. ..unam peciam prati in 

 fine aquilonari continentem 7 perticas et in australi fine 10 perticas.' The perches evidently 

 measured the width of the pieces, and were less than half the length of the normal arable rod. 

 The length of the pieces was also far below the normal. 



