THE DOMESDAY BOOK AND NANTWICH
1066 was a difficult year for Duke William of Poitiers who
thought he had been promised that he would be the next king
of England. Instead Harold was chosen. He decided to invade
England and claim the throne. As the seventy-foot long Bayeux
Tapestry shows, William had a task to quell the population
of about one million with his armies of some 20,000 men. He
did this with the superiority of arrows and horsemen over
the swords of the foot soldiers he met.
When his men passed through a district which showed opposition,
he set fire to the place, starved the people, destroyed their
possessions - as the texts say, the country was `laid waste`.
This happened in Cheshire. Whereas Wich (later Nantwich) had
been valued at £21 in King Edward `the Confessor``s
time, that is, 1042-66, in 1086 it was worth only £2.
During the next twenty years the Normans set up their system
of government. William divided a quarter of England among
twelve of his men forming the first baronies. He also gave
land to the church. One of these barons was Hugh d`Avranches,
called `The Fat`, who, in 1071,was given the earldom of Chester.
He ruled for thirty years and had `difficulties` with the
Welsh.
By 1086 William the Conqueror needed to know much more about
the composition of England as regards to its people, estates
and their sizes, livestock, values, in order to introduce
a new taxation system. The administrators who toured the land
had to ask about 25 questions at each stop.
The results, relating to 13,418 places (but not the whole
of England) became known as The Domesday Book. The
idea was that the findings were the judgement of authority.
It has been estimated that Nantwich could have had up to 450
inhabitants and Acton about fifty.
Our interest lies in interpreting the Latin of the original
in so far as it relates to Nantwich and Acton, because William
Malbedeng(later Malbank) was appointed the first earl for
an area in south Cheshire He may have had his manor on or
near the site where Dorfold Hall now stands.
The Survey says that there was a `Wich` (Latin vicus, means
a place of some importance for the kind of business or industry
carried on in that place. In this case that was salt making).
It seems that the first name for the place was Wich Malbedeng
or Malbank`s place, settlement, village. Wich was in the larger
area, called a `hundred`(doubtful origin meaning an area with
a hundred families; or of a hundred `hides` of land, or which
could provide one hundred fighting men when required. The
importance of Wich is illustrated by the amount of detail
in the Survey on the rules governing the production of salt,
number of boilings, tolls,etc. Wich had 8 salthouses; Acton
had one.
King William died in September 1087. From then up to about
1100 some 500 castles of the `motte and bailey` design, were
built as part of the plan to control the country. (Motte =
mound of earth; bailey = ditch or moat).
Further reading
Nantwich, Cheshire, Normandy and the Domesday Book at: http://www.infokey.com/Nantwich/Welcome.html
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