A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



cheese (suche as it is), and of the curdes of the whey they make butter once in the 

 yeare, which serveth the clothier. 1 



Of the rich marshes in Dengie Hundred, which about a century 

 ago were deemed ' better than any,' 2 and which at the time of Domes- 

 day seem to have swarmed with sheep, Camden wrote as follows : 



The hundred of Dengy, formerly Dauncing ; a abounding in pasturage and 

 cattle, but both the soil and air unhealthy, whence the chief manufacture is cheese, 

 and the men, instead of the women, milk the sheep. They make cheeses of an un- 

 common size, which are sent not only over England but abroad, for the use of the 

 peasants and labourers. 



It is to this that Drayton alludes when writing of the Colne in his 



Poly-olbion : 



Or Cheese, which our fat soyle to every quarter sends ; 

 Whose tacke the hungry Clowne and Plow-man so commends. 



Norden also alluded to these enormous cheeses, produced along the Essex 

 coast : 



The hundreds of Rocheforde, Denge, Dansye, or Dansing, 3 which lye on the 

 south-easte part of the shire, yelde milke, butter and cheese in admirable aboundance : 

 and in these parts are the great and huge cheeses made, wondred at for their massive- 

 ness and thicknes. They are made also in Tendring hundred, 4 where are many 

 wickes or dayries. 6 



A welcome phrase in a document at St. Paul's carries back this in- 

 dustry at a bound more than half way to the date of Domesday Book. 

 It occurs in a lease of the Heybridge estate belonging to the Dean and 

 Chapter, where the inventory (1301) includes 'a building for making 

 cheese from sheep.' " Here we have one of these ' cheese-sheds ' spoken 

 of by Camden as used for the purpose on Canvey Island. Domesday 

 enters this Heybridge estate as affording ' pasture for 1 60 sheep,' which 

 the Survey of 1222 identifies as a marsh of sixty acres. 7 



Lastly, we are enabled by another record to trace the cheese of the 

 marshes to within a century of Domesday. In a plea of 1201 Thomas 

 de Camville (lord of Fobbing) claimed against Robert de Sutton the 

 marsh of ' Richeresnes' that is, ' Richernesse ' in Bowers Giffbrd, 

 seen, I believe, in the frontispiece to this volume 8 alleging that, 

 in the time of Henry II., his grandfather had taken ' issues thereof, 

 as in cheeses, and wool, and rushes.' 9 Here, precisely, as in Domesday 



1 Ed. Camden Society, p. 10. a Young's Agriculture of Essex, ii. 122. 3 This is an error. 



* The peninsula at the north-east of the county. In this hundred Morant speaks of 'the Marsh 

 farm, or Dairy-house, standing among the marshes ' (now Great Marsh farm) in Thorrington, and ' Old 

 Dairy-house ' is still the name of a farm in Foulton marsh, where Domesday records ' pasture for 1 60 

 sheep,' and in which ' feed for 50 sheep ' was part of the endowment of Foulton chapel. 



6 Entries of December 10, 1461, November 3, 1466, and of May i, 1480 on the Patent Rolls 

 speak of ' a dairy alias " a wyk " called Dangeybrigge in Dengey ' (Calendar of Patent Rolls). 



6 'Domus ad caseum faciendum de bidentibus' (<)t6 Report on Historical MSS. part i. p. 37). 



7 Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 52 : 'In marisco sunt Ix. acre et possunt sustinere duodecies xx. [240] 

 oves.' 



8 It is mentioned in a fine of 12 Hen. Ill (1227-8), No. 59. 



9 Select Civil Pleas (Selden Society), i. 36. The making, at this date, of cheese from ewes' milk is 

 confirmed by a charter of Adam de Poynings (at the foot of the South Downs) giving to Lewes Priory 

 ' decimam totam caseorum meorum de Berchariis meis de Puninges et de Pingedena ' (Cott. MS. F. xv. 



372 



