BOLDON BOOK 



The stock of the home-farm consisted of tools, furnishings, and buildings. 

 The ploughs, as we shall presently see, were home-made, and were not always 

 the heavy affairs that required the full team of eight oxen to draw them. 

 There is evidence, indeed, indicating that a light plough drawn by two horses, 

 or even by one, was sometimes made use of. The farmers of Morton were 

 obliged for every 2 bovates to harrow eight days with one horse, and ' for 

 every plough of the vill they plough i acre at Houghton.' At Wardon, a 

 vill of the same group, the farmers harrowed with a horse, but thev had 

 ploughs as well, for we read that the pinder of Houghton had thraves of the 

 ploughs of that vill and of Wardon and Morton. There is no co-aration ; 

 clearly this work must have been done with the horses used in harrowing.' 



The farm buildings, consisting of the grange, the byre, and perhaps the 

 hall and other buildings, were enclosed by a hedge and ditch, and known 

 collectively as the court (curia). In picturing their general appearance we 

 ought to keep in mind the relation of the word ' curia ' to the modern French 

 ' basse-cour ' rather than the current English court in the sense of a country 

 house. The grange or farmhouse was technically the place where the crop 

 was stored.' The ' aula ' or hall was the principal structure of the group, and 

 may be regarded either as a dwelling-place or as the building in which the 

 meetings of the manorial court were held, although the two functions are not 

 of course incompatible. Still the word ' hall ' seems generally to have had 

 the sense of a building which the lord provided to shelter the halmote, which 

 had previously been held in the open air.' The word, however, presents 

 several curious little difficulties. In Domesday Book it appears to be used as 

 the equivalent of ' curia,' and occasionally even of ' manerium,' and Pro- 

 fessor Maitland has argued that in a general way we should understand it to 

 mean the house which was the focus or representative of the tax-paying 

 capacity of the whole agrarian complex.'' In Boldon Book the 'aula' is clearly 

 a material fact ; it is the structure itself that confronts us, and here is a plain 

 distinction between the ' aula ' and the ' curia.' The villeins of Bedlington 

 must enclose the court and roof the hall. At Haughton there is a grange, a 

 byre, and a ' curia clausa,' and at Ketton there are ' a grange and a byre and 

 other houses which are in the court which is enclosed with a ditch and a 

 hedge.' Then the bishop's temporary hunting lodge or encampment, with 

 its various chambers and conveniences, which the villeins had to construct for 

 the ' magna caza ' is described in the Aucklandshire entry as the hall, but 

 in the Stanhope entry is called the bishop's lodging. There is a record again 

 of certain lands which lay in the open-fields of Darlington ' contra aulam,' 

 and the same entry mentions the bishop's houses and court at Darlington. 

 There is, however, one case where the word 'hall' might conceivably be under- 

 stood in the sense of manor or local community. The villeins of Heighington 

 render 64 chalders of oat-malt ' ad mensuram aula: de Heighingtona.' This 

 occurs again at Killerby, which was a member of the manor of Heighington. 

 This does not, however, affect our main position, for the hall as the adminis- 



1 On the use of the light plough for individual villein services on the demesne and the introduction of 

 co-aration into France and Normandy, see Kovalcvski's instructive volume, Die ockonomhche Entwkkelutig 

 Eurofas, ii. IIJ-II", 370-385. 



' Gamier, Landed Interest, i. ch. 14. Cf. VinogradofF, Growth of the Manor, 224-225. 



' V'inogradoft', Villainage in Eng., 367-368. 



♦ Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 109-1 10, 125, where the passages from Dom. Bk. are cited. 



299 



