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The
argument in favour of a defensive
bank and ditch around Weobley merits
examination. A linear feature
to the east of the Parkfields
site has long been referred to as
the Town Ditch, and the
earthwork in the field to the
north has more recently been interpreted
as part of the northern line of such
defences.
The
relatively exposed position of the
borough, in western Herefordshire,
close to the Welsh border might seem
to suggest that defences would be
desirable. The Middle March
was not a peaceful place and the border
was not clearly defined.
J H Round in 1908 said of this border
'what Harold had recovered with
his light infantry, what William Fitz
Osbern and his mailed horsemen could
hold at the lance's point, that, at
the moment of the great survey was
all part of Herefordshire - no more
and no less’. There
is good farmland to both the west
and the east of Weobley but Domesday
illustrates an important distinction
between the two. To the east
the closely placed villages with high
densities of populations and plough-teams
stood in stark contrast to the area
to the west where waste was commonplace
and where there was one plough-team
and three persons per square mile
(Aitkin, 1971). The difference
was due to warfare, not geology.
For
the year 1122 the Welsh Brut y
Tywysogyon has the entry ‘a
year in which there was peace’;
this is the only such entry between
1081 and 1246. Following the
Anarchy of the 12th century
the loss of Norman control of central
Wales, where it has been suggested
that in the 1190s no castle on the
Wye above Hay remained in Norman occupation
(Remfry, 1995, p14), would seem to
emphasis the desirability of defences.
Again, in 1262 the Welsh raided as
far as Weobley (Salt, 1953, p20).
In
Wales borough defences were the rule
and those without, such as Newport
in Dyfed, are a rarity (Murphy, 1996).
On the border and its hinterland,
the March in general, many boroughs
certainly did have defences.
The Lacy borough at Ludlow was walled.
At Hay, the castle and borough seems
to have been planned as a single unit
as a classic bastide (Noble,
1964, p67), and where the walls, with
three gateways were built in the 1230s
following a rebuilding of the castle
in around 1200 (Fairs, 1972).
Similarly the eastern bailey at Longtown
Castle may have been the original
site of another Lacy borough, although
other interpretations are possible
(Ellis, 1997, p65 – see below).
However, many of the boroughs seem
to have had little in the way of defences.
They are absent at Pembridge (Noble, 1964, p67)
and Huntington (ibid. p68)
and, although there was a bank and
ditch, no very serious attempt was
made at Leominster where any defences
which had existed seem to have been
abandoned by the early 14th
century (Buteux, 1996,
p9).
With
the exception of some earthworks in
the field to the north of Parkfields,
the evidence on the ground for a town
bank and ditch is limited to the eastern
side of the borough. These earthworks
may represent some entirely different
activity, such as house platforms.
There are some medieval references
to a town ditch at Weobley.
In 1403 land of Roger Herbert extended
on both sides up to the ditch and
rampart (Salt, 1953, p20).
In
1407 there is reference to lands
in the ‘Parkefelde’
extending to the town ditch.
The latter clearly refers to the feature
on the east of the Parkfields property.
It
is significant that there are no records
of murage grants to the borough, and
some writers have expressed doubts
about the existence of defences at
Weobley. Major Salt considered
that this defensive ditch only went
around the castle (ibid.).
Trevor Rowley,
writing in 1986 (p105), says that
Weobley ‘does not appear
to have been fully defended’.
The
problem is not made easier by the
length that a defensive circuit would
have to be in order to enclose an
area which include the main part of
the village and the grounds of Parkfields.
The distance from the north-east corner
of the property, where the feature
interpreted as a defensive bank is
most prominent, to the southern tip
of the earthworks at the castle is
700 metres. The smallest circuit
suggested runs on from Parkfields
west to the brook (200 metres) and
then south to the castle again (another
700 metres). The distance across
the southern part of the castle is
approximately another 100 metres.
This circuit then, which is the
shortest which has been suggested,
is about 1,700 metres in total.
At
Longtown
(Ewyas Lacy) the defences comprise
three baileys. The north-western
bailey contains the keep and there
is another bailey to the south of
this, together forming a rectangle
aligned north to south. A third
bailey to the east of the first two
completes an approximately square
plan for these earthworks. The
eastern bailey may have been the site
for the original borough. The
entire circuit for what may have been
laid out as a bastide
measures approximately 420 metres
(Ellis, 1997). Although another
enigmatic earthwork extending northwards
from the eastern side of the eastern
bailey may be part of a defensive
circuit even this would make a maximum
circuit of only about 700 metres.
Longtown had 100 burgesses in 1310.
The walls of Brecon describe a circuit
of some 975 metres (Thomas, 1991).
In comparison, the medieval walls
of Hereford, which was one of the
largest cities in England when the
earliest post-Conquest circuit was
constructed in the 12th
century, measure about 1,800 metres.
(This figure includes the eastern
rampart of Hereford Castle but does
not include the feature south of the
River Wye known as Row Ditch which
adds another 600 metres to the circuit.
Unlike the larger circuit north of
the river, this was never re-built
in stone and does not seem to have
been a serious part of the city’s
defences by the end of the 13th
century.) That a small borough
like Weobley would be able to construct
a comparable defensive circuit, or
ever imagine being able to man it,
seems inherently unlikely.
A park in Weobley had existed at Domesday.
Parks grew in popularity and there
were ultimately 35 medieval deer parks
in Herefordshire. Poaching in
parks was commonplace. In 1313
a commission of Oyer and Terminer
investigated a complaint of
Theobald de Verdon that persons
‘broke his park at Webbele,
County Hereford, whilst he was under
the king’s protection, and beyond
the seas in his service, hunted therein
and took his deer’.
The park tradition began to decline
in the later middle ages (
Rackham, 1990, p 158). Areas
which had been parkland were given
over to agricultural uses. Even
as early as 1251 a park in Pulham,
Norfolk, had 29½ acres of arable land
in its launds [treeless areas
in parks] out of a total area of 60
acres.
Parks began to be revived again in
the 15th century, when the Yorkist
ascendancy became intrigued by a largely
imaginary vision of the chivalric
culture of their past. On the
western slopes of the Malvern Hills,
Richard de Beauchamp was granted permission
to empark 1,300 acres (
Whitehead, 1995, p201).
In Tudor times the landscape aspect
of parks became of interest to Henry
VII and to Cardinal Wolsey (
Rackham, 1990, p 158). Henry
VIII created at least seven parks
in a pseudo-medieval style, incorporating
old trees (ibid.). These
parks differed from medieval parks
in that they formed the setting for
great houses such as Richmond or Hampton
Court palaces.
Writing in the 1530s,
Leland does not mention a park
at Weobley. He says, ‘The
castle at Linshall of some writen
Leonshaul [Lyonshall] is 2
miles from Webbeley. It longgid
also to the Devereux, and there is
a parke’. In his manuscript
History of Herefordshire in 1675,
Thomas Blount wrote ‘Here
[Weobley] has anciently been
a park, som say two, - for there are
yet certain ground, and the Park meadow
– ’ .
The present park at Weobley is associated
with Garnstone House, to the south
of the village. Garnstone seems
to have been a separate entity from
Weobley early on and there are traces
of a motte and bailey castle near
the site of the later houses (
Shoesmith, 1996). A family
associated with Garnstone is represented
by one Roger de Garnerston in about
1382 (
Robinson, 1872, p291). An
early Garnstone, on the site of an
earlier house, was probably erected
by James or Richard Tomkyns in the
mid-16th century (ibid).
This coincides with the period of
16th century park creation.
More work was done at Garnstone in
succeeding years and in about 1807
John Nash designed a new Garnstone
House, which was known as Garnstone
Castle, for Samuel Peploe (
Colvin, 1995). Garnstone
Castle was the last of John Nash’s
commissions in Herefordshire; his
first had been the new county gaol
in 1793-6 (ibid.). Garnstone
Castle was demolished in 1958.
Although
not absolutely conclusive, Leland’s
omission of the mention of a park
and Blount’s uncertainty leads,
as suggested by Major Salt, to a possible
interpretation. To the east
of Weobley and adjacent to the Parkfields
property, the field name Parkfield
records one of the old open fields.
The fields to the north also have
‘park’ names and
to the east is ‘Park Barn’.
It seems reasonable to infer that
the name is meaningful and that the
original Lacy park at Weobley was
sited in the area which later became
the ‘Park Field’,
that this park fell out of use and
became part of the settlement’s
open fields, and that a new park was
later created at Garnstone.
If this is the case, then the earthwork
at Parkfields lends itself to another
interpretation. The feature,
rather than being the remains an internal
bank with an external ditch around
the town, is in fact the remains of
an internal ditch with an external
bank around the park. |
