EDWINSTREE HUNDRED 



was apparently standing in 1602. A free school 

 existed in the parish before 1 700.' 



Beyond the church Willow Lane, styled in the 

 15th century Willow Street,^ leads in a south-easterly 

 direction towards Mincingbury manor-house. It 

 meets the Bogmoor Road at the hamlet of Shaftenhoe 

 End, called in the i 3 th century ' Scarpenho.' ^ Here 

 a few cottages dating from the early part of the 1 7th 

 century are clustered about the Big House or Free- 

 man's, built about 1624 and said to be the manor- 

 house of ' Burnels.' It is a timber-framed building 

 covered with plaster and stands on foundations of thin 

 bricks ; the roofs are tiled. The house is of two 

 stories with attics and is F-shaped on plan ; the main 

 building runs east and west and measures about 5 3 ft. 

 by 19 ft. 6 in. On the south side at its eastern end is 

 a wing with a brick chimney at the south end ; in 

 the centre of the south side is a small projecting stair- 

 case wing of two stories. The hall, which occupied 

 a large part of the main building, is now divided into 

 rooms, but the wide fireplace remains with carved 

 wood lintel and bracketed shelf, also a little 17th- 

 century panelling. The ceiling joists have moulded 

 edges. The exterior of the house on the east, north 

 and west fronts has been modernized and the central 

 chimney on the main block rebuilt. At the end of 

 the south wing is a chimney built of 2-in. bricks, the 

 sloping offsets of which are masked by bricks crow- 

 stepped, in a manner similar to many other chimneys 

 in Hertfordshire ; the chimney stack has two square 

 shafts set diagonally. The staircase projection on the 

 south side has a single window under a projecting 

 gable with a moulded beam supported at either end 

 by a carved wood bracket representing a satyr playing 

 on a long pipe ; between the window and the pro- 

 jecting beam above is the following inscription carved 

 in raised letters : — 



' So God may still me blesse 

 I care the lesse 

 Let envy say her worst 

 And after burst.' 



At one end of the inscription are the initials W.L. 

 and at the other the date 1624, at which date the 

 house was probably erected. An adjoining timber- 

 framed and plaster cottage with thatched roof has 

 worn remains of 17th-century ornamental plaster 

 bands between the windows of the ground and upper 

 stories externally ; one band consists of alternate 

 squares and ovals, another has a row of lozenges with 

 a half-circle above each. 



The farm-house of Mincingbury, about 300 yards 

 to the east, has been almost entirely rebuilt, but 

 adjoining it is a large mediaeval barn about 82 ft. 

 long by 33 ft. wide. It is timber-framed on brick 

 foundations and has heavy queen-post roof trusses ; 

 the exterior has been renewed. 



Abbotsbury, a fourth manor-house, lies in an 



BARLEY 



isolated position in the south of the parish. It is now 

 a farm-house, in the occupation of Mr. J. Loder. 

 There are remains of a homestead moat with an 

 entrenchment on its southern side. It was doubtless 

 on his demesne lands here that the Abbot of Col- 

 chester had the ' chapel in Adgareslawe,' which was 

 confirmed to him by Roger Bishop of London in 

 1237.8 



Barley is well watered both by Cumberden Bottom 

 and by a tributary of the Cam called Wardington 

 Bottom. There are numerous ponds and at Mincing- 

 bury is a fish-pond. The Mincingbury oak wood 

 was cut down at the latter end of the i8th century.* 

 The parish is on the border of the Essex woodland, 

 and an early 1 3th-century charter mentions assart 

 called ' Wydeheye ' within the manor of Mincing- 

 bury.'" There are, however, only about 99 acres of 

 woodland out of a total area of 2,725 acres. Rather 

 more than 400 acres are grass and about 2,160 acres 

 are arable land.'"'' The open fields were inclosed 

 under an Act of 1809.'' ' Eldebury,' or ' Oldbury,' 

 was an open field appurtenant to Mincingbury.'^ 



The manor of JBBOTSBURr or 

 MJNORS ROWLETTSBURT'^^ was held by the 

 abbey of St. John of Colchester.'* It 

 is evidently identical with the ' land or manor of 

 Algareslawe or Aedgareslawe ' 

 in Barley granted to the abbey 

 by Hamo de St. Clare and his 

 son Hubert in 1 137.'^ Hamo 

 and his son made this gift for 

 the health of their souls and 

 those of Gunnora wife of 

 Hamo and of Eudo Dapifer 

 and Rose his wife.'^ Hamo 

 de St. Clare had evidently 

 acquired the manor before 

 1 123, when he assigned the 

 tithe from ' his manor of 

 Adgareslawe ' to Colchester 

 Abbey, reserving only certain 

 tithes given to Barley Church 

 ' at the prayer of Uluric the priest.' " Hamo is 

 elsewhere found as successor of Eudo Dapifer ; it is, 

 therefore, probable that this holding is identical with 

 the 2 hides and 20 acres in Barley held by Eudo in 

 1086. Half of this land was then held by Eudo in 

 demesne and was worked with the five ploughs on 

 his neighbouring demesne at Newsells.'* Before the 

 Conquest half of Eudo's holding had been held by a 

 sokeman of the king's, the other half by his brother 

 who was a man of Tochi." 



The Abbot of Colchester obtained papal confirma- 

 tion of his rights in 'Adgareslawe' in 1179,^° and in 

 1253 had a grant of free warren within the manor.^' 

 It was possibly in error that the jurors of 1278 

 returned that the abbot held his manor of Barley of 

 the gift of Ivo the Seneschal.^^ In 1 3 i 5 a messuage, 



Colchester Abbey, 

 Gules a cross or and a 

 border or 'with eight 

 molets gules therein. 



* See below, under Charities, and 

 Chauncjr, op. cit. 98. 



* Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. i. 

 It is probable that this was distinct from 

 ' Wjrnewalstrete ' (ibid.), which may be 

 connected with the chapel of St. Gunwal 

 in Barkway (q.v.) j cf. * Wynnels Grove ' 

 on the borders of Nuthampstead. 



' Lay Subs. R. bdle. 120, no. 2. 

 ^ Cart. Mon. 5. Johannis de Colecestria 

 (Roxburghe Club), 95. 



' Inform, supplied by Rev. J. Frome- 

 Wilkinson. "• Cott. MS. Jul. A i, 141. 



"• Statistics from Bd. of Agric. (1905). 



" Priv. Act, 50 Geo. Ill, cap. 30 

 (not printed). 



12 Cott. MS. Jul. A I, 140 ; Ct. R. 

 (Gen. Ser.), portf. 177, no. i. 



" Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccvi, 3. 



" Mina. Accts. Hen. VIII, no. 976. 



" Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria 

 (Roxburghe Club), 156, 157. 



37 



« Ibid. 



" Ibid. 



IS V.C.H. Herts, i, 329a, 329A. 



1^ Ibid. 329^1. 



*» Cart. Mon. S. Johannis de Colecestria, 

 61 ; for confirmations by the Lanvaleys, 

 Hamo's descendants, see ibid. 197, 198, 

 and for other confirmatory grants see 

 ibid. 67, 87, 95-7. 



" Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 418. 



» Assize R. 323, m. 45. 



