THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



Lastly, when Wallbury thus first comes before us it is spoken of, we 

 see, as if imperfectly detached from Hallingbury rather than a separate 

 place with a name of its own. The identity of name however is so 

 much in Morant's favour that one is loth to reject his view. But we 

 can now assert that his ' Thunreslau' was at the other end of the county, 1 

 and that ' Walla,' following as it does Loughton and Theydon Bois, 

 must be assumed to have been probably in the same Hundred as they 

 were, that is, in Ongar. This is only an assumption, but if we act 

 upon it, and search for such a name in that Hundred, we find that 

 North Weald Bassett itself lies in it, though nearly half the parish is in 

 Harlow. And of North Weald Morant could find no mention in 

 Domesday. Its Domesday equivalent however should be ' Walda,' and 

 the area of meadow land assigned by the Survey to ' Walla ' suggests that 

 it lay in a river valley rather than on Cripsey brook. 



Reviewing all the evidence the case stands thus. We have to find 

 a Domesday equivalent for North Weald Bassett, a parish of more than 

 3,400 acres almost equally divided between the Hundreds of Harlow 

 and of Ongar. In the former we have in Domesday two entries under 

 ' Walda ' and one under ' Walla ' ; in the latter apparently we have a 

 great manor entered as ' Walla ' and held by Peter de Valognes. One 

 cannot assign much importance to the actual form of the name, for the 

 Rodings not far off occur in Domesday as ' Roinges ' and as ' Rodinges.' 

 Of the ' Walda ' entries in Harlow Hundred Morant assigned the 

 one on the fief of Peter de Valognes to Wallbury and the other to Weld 

 in Harlow, an arbitrary and inconsistent identification. He appears 

 to have overlooked the fact that almost half of North Weald lay in 

 Harlow Hundred, for he deals with it only under that of Ongar, and he 

 consequently pitched upon Weld in Harlow itself as ' Walda.' But the 

 form ' Weld ' appears to be of rather doubtful authority, and North 

 Weald itself (to which ' Weld ' adjoins) is a more likely equivalent for 

 both the ' Walda ' entries. The real difficulty is the ' Walla ' which I 

 take to be in Ongar Hundred. If it was so, it must have been the 

 Ongar portion of North Weald, and this conclusion is strongly supported 

 by the fact that North Weald was held of the heirs of Peter de Valognes, 

 the Domesday holder of ' Walla ' ; but even the evidence for this is not 

 so clear as could be wished. 2 Looking at the whole of the evidence at 

 present available, it appears to favour the identity of ' Walla ' with 

 North Weald, although the extent of its meadow-land strongly supports, 

 on the contrary, the view that it lay in the valley of the Stort. 



The labour expended on identifying the manors named in Domes- 

 day will often prove of the utmost value for the right ascertainment of 



1 See p. 405 below. 



1 It consists of (i) an Inq. p. m. of 1291, showing that North Weald was held by the successors 

 of the ' Essex' family, as five knights' fees, of the Castle of Benington (i.e. the head of the Valognes 

 barony in Herts) ; (2) a return in the Testa de Nevill (p. 263) showing that Henry de Essex held five 

 knights' fees of the Valognes barony (compare Ancient Deeds, A. 768,774). But these five fees were 

 located by the Inquisition in places which cannot be connected with the Valognes fief (compare Morant, 

 i. 149). 



397 



