Castle Bromwich in the Domesday Book – or is it?

It is not absolutely certain that the Bromwich found in William the Conqueror’s Domesday Survey of 1086 is Castle Bromwich. A manor appears as Bramewice amongst the Northamptonshire entries; this is a mistake as there is no manor of that name in the county.

It is argued by some that the entry refers to West Bromwich which is not found in the Staffordshire entries. They argue that Castle Bromwich is unlikely to have had an entry of its own as historically it belonged to Aston manor. However, West Bromwich itself belonged to Handsworth. Furthermore, Castle Bromwich’s neighbour Water Orton is also found in the Northamptonshire entries and it too was part of Aston.

The Domesday Book was, in effect, an assessment of property for tax purposes. It was compiled with remarkable speed, in less than a year, and is written in abbreviated Latin. The entry for Castle Bromwich may be translated as:

Ralph holds 3 hides from William. There is land for 3 ploughteams. In the demesne 1 ploughteam, 10 villeins and 3 bordars have 3 ploughteams. Woodland 1 league long and half a league wide. The value was and is 40 shillings. Brictwin held it.

The Domesday Book – Some Explanation

Ralph holds 3 hides from William.
Ralph was the Norman lord in 1086. It is likely that he had been given the manor soon after William’s success at Hasting in 1066. Ralph was the tenant of William Fitzansculf, who was the overlord of Castle Bromwich. With his seat at Dudley Castle, William Fitzansculf was directly answerable to the King. Fitzansculf had inherited a large number of manors and overlordships from his father who had died shortly before the Doomsday Survey. It is probable that Ralph had been a captain with William and / or his father at Hastings and Castle Bromwich was his reward.

A hide was a measure of land and was usually reckoned as 120 acres. In Anglo-Saxon times it was originally understood to be the area of land sufficient to support a family, but was later used to calculate a household’s tax liability. Prior to the Norman Conquest the hide was a variable measure of area, depending on the suitability of the land for agriculture. During the Norman period it generally became standardised as 120 acres.

There is land for 3 ploughteams.
An Anglo-Saxon ploughteam usually comprised 8 oxen. However, the term is used in the Domesday Book as a measure of land; a ploughland was the area of land that could be cultivated by one ploughteam. The cultivated land consisted of a number of very large open fields which ran down from the Hall estate to the River Cole at Bucklands End. The traditional crop rotation was to have one field growing peas and beans, a second used for cereal crops and a third lying fallow grazed by livestock. Each field was divided into strips with villagers having a number of strips in each field. This was to ensure that, in theory, everyone had an equal share of good and poor land.

In the demesne 1 ploughteam.
The term demesne referred to the land that the lord of the manor held privately. Each household owed service to the lord and members of the family were obliged to spend time cultivating the lord’s fields.

10 villeins and 3 bordars have 3 ploughteams.
No serfs are recorded in Castle Bromwich in the Domesday Book. They were the lowest class of people and the term equates to slave. Villein was the next class up and comprised the vast bulk of medieval society. They were peasants tied to the manor who rented land from the lord and paid in kind i.e. they gave the lord a percentage of their produce and / or laboured on the lord’s demesne. Villeins generally farmed enough land to be self-sufficient.

The term bordar is usually translated as cottager or smallholder. They were more free than villeins and would have a house and a small amount of land freely rented from the lord. As they might not have land enough to be self-sufficient, they often subsisted either by working on the land of others, or by having a marketable skill. Craftsmen such as blacksmiths, wheelwrights and coopers, were classified as bordars.

At Castle Bromwich there was land for 3 ploughteams and there were 3 ploughteams; all the available arable land was being farmed.

Woodland 1 league long and half a league wide.
Woodland was a valuable resource in medieval England. Trees were used for timber, coppiced trees provided a continuous supply of fencing materials, fallen branches provided firewood, there were a variety of different edible plants and woodland provided pasture for livestock.
A league was 1.5 miles, so the woodland here measured ¾ square mile in area, not necessarily all in one place. Remnants of ancient woodland survive on the north side of the M6 motorway in Castle Bromwich.

The value was and is 40 shillings.
40 shillings is manor’s value for tax purposes. Two values are given in the Domesday listings; the first at the time of King Edward, then the current value in 1086. The Anglo-Saxon king before the successful invasion of William of Normandy was King Harold. However, William held that he had been promised the throne of England by Harold’s predecessor, Edward the Confessor. Harold, who reigned for less than a year, was not recognised as king by William. Because of the disruption caused by the Norman Conquest, the value of many manors was lower by 1086 than it had been 20 years previously. In the case of Castle Bromwich, the value remained the same.

Brictwin held it.
Domesday entries begin with the name of the current lord of the manor, invariably a Norman, and end with the name of the previous lord, invariably an Anglo-Saxon. The manor now held by the Norman Ralph was formerly in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon Brictwin. Few Anglo-Saxons continued to hold onto their lands after 1066. While peasant life must have continued much the same after the Conquest, the quality of life for most of the surviving Anglo-Saxon nobility must have been dramatically worse.

No priest is mentioned. Castle Bromwich church was very likely here at that time but was a chapel of Aston, where the Domesday Book does list a priest. Although the population was small, the priest had responsibility for an area west to east from Deritend to after Water Orton and north to south from Erdington to Bucklands End.

In the Birmingham area the manors were sparsely populated and poor. Birmingham itself, with only some 50 inhabitants, was one of the poorest.

Castle Bromwich – a part of Aston

Manors had generally more than one centre of population, though often these were tiny hamlets. Castle Bromwich was part of the large manor of Aston, which had settlements at Bordesley, Deritend, Duddeston, Heybarnes, Little Bromwich, Park Hall, Saltley, Ward End and Water Orton. With less than a dozen families in Castle Bromwich, a few would have their cottages on the Chester Road near Castle Bromwich Hall, while the others were scattered thinly across the manor.

In the whole of the Birmingham area there was only a population of some 1000 people; Warwickshire had perhaps 24,000, with a majority on the better agricultural lands in the south of the county.

At Domesday the Forest of Arden still covered much of the county north of Stratford-on-Avon and 20% of the Birmingham area was still woodland. Only 10% was ploughland, most of which consisted of open strip fields. The large remaining area was not unused but was uncultivated consisting of common grazing land, meadows, streams and waste.