medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear John and colleagues
None of the usual solutions appears to work: e.g. Holywater as a
district name, tagged on to distinguish the place from others with the
same name. So how about the following for an off-the-wall idea, thanks
to Christine Buckley's reminder, via Maddy, of the large parochia
attached to each of the two minsters:
As I understand it, Winslow had no church of its own, nor did Linton or
Norton, also in the parish of Bromyard, and the same applied to Upleadon
(which I assume is represented by 'Leadon'), Massington, Wellington. The
last two are in Ledbury parish and Upleadon was in Bosbury parish but
possibly in Ledbury earlier.
These were all, therefore, places where the peripatetic ministration of
holy water might have had greater than usual pastoral significance. Is
it conceivable that the affix 'Holywater' represents a late medieval
usage local to these two old minster parishes, near neighbours in
eastern Herefordshire, signifying a township without a place of worship?
Could one go further and imagine that in such parishes the office of
holy water clerk might have evolved from a degraded canonry or prebend?
Already by 1086 Bromyard was served not by a chapter but by two priests
and a chaplain. Moreover, two priests at Avenbury may have represented a
division of a single pre-Conquest parish.
At Ledbury, by 1086, a priest held two-and-a-half hides and the other
two-and-half were held directly by the canons of Hereford. A priest with
a hide at Bosbury may have represented a similar situation to that at
Avenbury.
Bromyard's Domesday priests were the forerunners of the medieval
portioners, clergy who shared the parish tithes. Is it possible that the
tithes of 'Le Holywater' were payable to the parish because 'Le
Holywater' did not contribute to these portions, but rather was a group
of physically separate townships originally under the care of, and
contributing to the maintenance of a cleric whose status had become
degraded and/or his canonry/prebend had become obsolete. Since chapter
members normally provided pastoral care for one or more chapelries, such
a process might explain the unchurched nature of the townships in
question.
Does any of that (pun on the way) hold water? It might be worth looking
at the later tithe history of Bromyard's constituent townships.
Best wishes
Graham
PS: Have you chatted about this with Sylvia Pinches, who has been
writing/editing the recently published VCH volume on Ledbury with
additional archival research by a group led by Janet Cooper (retired VCH
Editor for Essex now living in Herefordshire)? If not, she's currently
abroad but is due back soon and I can put you in touch with her.
John Blair may also have some ideas, having published with Joe Hillaby
on The Early Church in Herefordshire.
A quick search for other Holywaters found Holywater Meadows at Bury St
Edmunds, owned by the Abbey and subject to flooding. There was a
messauge called Holywater at Milton next Gravesend in 1598 (Kent
Archives, CKS-U386, Darell of Calehill MSS, c, 1150-1882).
******************************************
Dr Graham Jones
St John's College (University of Oxford)
Oxford OX1 3JP
Tel: +(0)1865 280146 (with voice-mail)
e-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Senior Research Associate
School of Geography and the Environment
University of Oxford.
Web: http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/gjones.html
Honorary Visiting Fellow
Centre for English Local History
University of Leicester.
Web: http://www.le.ac.uk/users/grj1
******************************************
-----Original Message-----
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John
Freeman
Sent: 15 February 2010 16:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [M-R] Holywater in place-names
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture
Dear All,
Since I was the originator of the question about 'Holywater' in
place-names
on the English Place-Names List, which John Briggs kindly posted on this
site, perhaps I might make a guest appearance to clarify things, as
Graham
requested?
The documents concerned are not testamentary, but are lay taxation
documents
(subsidies/tenths/fifteenths) in NA Class E179 (published in M.A.
Faraday,
Herefordshire Taxes in the Reign of Henry VIII, Hereford 2005) and
muster
documents in NA class E36 (transcribed by Faraday in an unpublished
edition). They list, under each hundred, the townships under which
collection was organized, and under them the names of the people
assessed
and their assessments. For example, in the 1539 Musters (E36/31) we
have
the heading 'The Towneship of Masynton Haliwater'. So they are certainly
names of administrative entities and not, at least directly,
descriptions of
rents/dues etc. I'm sure that the affix has something to do with holy
water,
and not, say, with the names of streams (such as Holywell) (cf. the
Valor
Ecclesiasticus of 1535 (p. 42 of the Herefords section of the Record
Commission text), where the tithes of "le Holywater" are to go to
Bromyard)
But why should the townships be so named, and apparently exclusively in
lay
documents?
Thanks for all your thoughts so far.
John Freeman
----- Original Message -----
From: "Graham Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 3:38 PM
Subject: Re: [M-R] Holywater in place-names
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture
>
> Dear All
>
> Elaine makes a good point. I've argued in 'Saints in the Landscape'
for
> Ledbury church occupying a baptismal site (mother church, St Michael
> dedication, church built on - if not over - a stream), and Bromyard is
> even more intriguing. St Peter's has a curvilinear yard around which
the
> town developed, so presumably represents the ninth-century minster.
> However, it sits uphill from the river Frome. Just a mile south is St
> Mary's, Avenbury ('burh associated with the Avon' - which Ekwall took
to
> be an older name for the Frome but could be the generic 'afon', I
> suppose). It's isolated in a loop of the river. This, rather than
> Bromyard, may have been the earlier, baptismal mother church of the
> district.
>
> Maddy's suggestion is worth taking up, too. John's post set me
thinking
> about Holywells (where 'wealla' is a stream, not just the spring) and
> Holybournes. Holybourne churchyard, Hampshire, is the source of
> Holybourne stream, a short tributary of the northern arm of the river
> Wey. I mention this in Saints in the Landscape, too, but what I hadn't
> realised until now is that near the source of the southern arm, only a
> few miles away, is another Holywater. It takes its name from a similar
> short tributary (or vice versa?). Divided between Headley and
Bramshott
> parishes, it is mentioned in 1350 as 'la Holewatre juxta
Iveleybrigge'.
> The natural mother church would be Farnham, Surrey, another mid-Saxon
> minster.
>
> So, two or three lines of enquiry, but the gap from the early to the
> late medieval is rather large...
>
> Best wishes
>
> Graham
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
> culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Elaine
> Beretz
> Sent: 15 February 2010 12:39
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [M-R] Holywater in place-names
>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> Or, to build on what Graham is saying: could the designation of
> Holywater indicate a mother church [or minster] that retains the right
> of baptism? Certainly baptism -- where, when, how, by whom -- was a
key
> point of contention during the Reformation.
>
>
> Elaine
>
>
> Elaine M. Beretz, Ph.D.
> Research Associate
> Center for Visual Culture
> Bryn Mawr College
> 101 Merion Avenue
> Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899
>
>
> --- On Mon, 2/15/10, Graham Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> From: Graham Jones <[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: [M-R] Holywater in place-names
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Monday, February 15, 2010, 3:48 AM
>> medieval-religion: Scholarly
>> discussions of medieval religion and culture
>>
>> Dear All
>>
>> A quick search of the IHR on-line material reveals 21 cases
>> of the word
>> 'holywater', almost all from the sixteenth century and
>> referring to the
>> water in the stoup or in relation to the parish holy water
>> clerk.
>>
>> Though I have never come across it before (just shows my
>> ignorance), I
>> wonder if these Herefordshire cases refer to land and rents
>> in the
>> specified places (rather than the townships themselves
>> [Massington is a
>> farm, I think, rather than a township]) devoted to the
>> upkeep of the
>> stoups or perhaps towards the payment of the holy water
>> clerk. I'm
>> thinking obviously of a comparison with land whose income
>> was given for
>> the upkeep of lights, images, chantries, etc. and/or their
>> attendant
>> clergy.
>>
>> Could we be told the actual passages and contexts, please?
>> Are they
>> testamentary in the main?
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> Graham
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval
>> religious
>> culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> On Behalf Of John
>> Briggs
>> Sent: 14 February 2010 17:01
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: [M-R] Holywater in place-names
>>
>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval
>> religion and
>> culture
>>
>> Another query from the English Place-Name List:
>>
>> "Could anyone suggest a reason for a curious place-name
>> usage found in
>> documents at the time of the Reformation?
>>
>> In certain documents written between 1523 and 1547, several
>> townships
>> surrounding Bromyard and Ledbury in Herefordshire are
>> fairly
>> consistently cited with the affix "Holywater" or
>> "Halywater", usually -
>> but not always -- with the main name in the possessive,
>> e.g. "Winslow is
>> Holywatir" (= "Winslow's Holywater"). They are "Linton
>> Holywater",
>> "Norton Holywater" and "Winslow Holywater." (near
>> Bromyard), and "Leadon
>> Holywater.", "Massington Holywater." and Wellington
>> Holywater." (near
>> Ledbury). Also, in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535 , the
>> tithes of "le
>> Holywater" are to go to Bromyard. The usage has not been
>> found before or
>> after this period, and the documents were created at
>> different times and
>> by different persons during the reign of Henry VIII. Both
>> Bromyard and
>> Ledbury were collegiate churches, and Bromyard certainly,
>> and Ledbury
>> possibly, were Anglo-Saxon minsters. The named places were
>> townships in
>> Bromyard and Ledbury parishes."
>>
>> John Briggs
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