Pirton in the Middle Ages (and before (original) (raw)

Like so many places in England, the village of Pirton is first mentioned in Domesday Book, where it is called Peritone. Other medieval spellings of the name include Piriton, Pyriton, Puriton and Pyrtone. These spellings show that the name contains the Old English words pirige, 'a pear tree', and tūn, 'an enclosed dwelling or farm'. As we shall see, archaeology helps take the story of the community much further back in time. At the time of Domesday Book, which was compiled in 1086, the manor was held by Ralph de Limesy, a landowner who also had holding in the lost Hainstone (perhaps near Ashwell), Caldecote and Amwell. Before the death of Edward the Confessor in January 1066, it had belonged to Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a big place, with 25 villeins, a priest, 29 bordars, an English knight, a freeman and 12 cottars liable to pay tax (Domesday Book was compiled to help King William I work out how much tax he could extract from the population). A villein was an ordinary villager who farmed land in the community's field; a bordar was another villager who had less land than a villein, while a cottar was someone who lived in a cottage, usually farming someone else's land. Working out how many people this entry implies is not an exact science. It has been estimated that the returns may omit up to 25% of households as being below the taxable threshold. This means that the total of 68 individuals listed might be short by as many as 17 households, so we should be thinking in terms of up to 85 households. The next question is over the size of a household. Historians used to suggest 3½ people in each but this figure is now thought to be too small and that the average ought to be about 5. This would give a population for Peritone of up to 425 people. The village from the hills near Highdown