THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



At the extreme east of Rochford Hundred lies Foulness (Island), 

 which although now a separate parish, ' was originally no distinct parish, 

 but the tithes of it belonged to the neighbouring parishes of Rochford, 

 Sutton, Little Wakering, Shopland, Little Stambridge, and Eastwood,' 

 in Rochford Hundred. 1 If Foulness was once in six parishes, Wallasea, 

 to its west, was in five. When Morant wrote, six of its marshes belonged 

 to Canewdon parish, two to Great Stambridge, two to Paglesham, one to 

 Little Wakering, and one to Eastwood.* This division still prevails, and 

 the island contains no fewer than three detached portions of the parish 

 of Canewdon. On the opposite bank of the fleet which divides it from 

 the mainland is a detached portion of Hockley seven miles away. The 

 same distance separates a detached portion of Eastwood, in the north of 

 Wallasea (Island), from its parish church. In 1618 this was held with 

 a manor in Eastwood as ' Alford-nashe-marsh ' (now Alfleet's farm), and 

 as early as 1 246 it belonged to the Countess of Kent, then lady of East- 

 wood. We have now seen why these marshy flats had no recognized 

 existence in 1086, and are consequently left without a name on the 

 Domesday map. 



But they were the home of the sheep. And even as the cow was 

 then valued not only for its milk, but for its flesh, 3 so was the sheep ex- 

 pected to supply not only mutton and wool, but, above all, milk. The 

 production of cheese from sheep's milk was a recognized Essex industry, 

 even though William Harrison, that quaint Elizabethan chronicler, 

 seems to have been somewhat strangely ignorant of the fact. But then 

 his parsonage of Radwinter was at the other end of the county.* We 

 are fortunate in obtaining contemporary glimpses of this curious and 

 ancient practice in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Of Canvey Island, 

 over which we look in the frontispiece to this volume, Camden wrote 

 that 



It is so low as to be frequently under water, except a few eminences to which 

 sheep retreat. It feeds near 4,000 sheep of a delicate flavour, which I have seen 

 milked by boys instead of women, on little stools, who also make cheeses of the milk 

 in the cheese-sheds, called there 



Norden's Description of Essex (1577) contains a similar picture : 



Near the Thames mouth, below Beamflete, are certaine ilandes, called Canvey 

 Ilandes, low merishe grounds ; and for that the passage over the creeks is unfitt for 

 cattle, it is onlie converted to the feeding of ews, which men milke, and therof make 



1 Morant's Eiiex, i. 314. 



* Ibid. pp. 325-6 (see map facing p. 369). 



3 Fifty salted cows were bought for Warwick Castle and forty for that of Kenilworth in 1173 at 

 the high price of two shillings each (Pipe Roll). 



* He writes that some farmers, he believed, added the milk of five sheep to that of ten kine, 

 adding : ' I am sure hereof that some housewives can and do add daily a less portion of ewe's milk unto 

 the cheese of so many kine, whereby their cheese doth the longer abide moist, and eateth more brickie 

 and mellow than otherwise it would. . . . Only this I know, that ewe's milk is fulsome, sweet, and 

 such in taste as (except such as are used unto it) no man will gladly yield to live and feed withal ' (A 

 Detcription of England [ed. Withington], p. 1 57). 



6 Britannia, ed. 1586. Compare the illustration facing p. 369. 



371 



