In a previous blog I found myself learning more than I ever thought there was to know about fish weirs when I discovered remnants of the forgotten Drake’s fish weir on the River Tavy. This weir, described by William Marshall and the Rev John Swete in the late 18th Century, was a towering structure. At around 12 feet high the weir was designed to be too tall for fish to pass, thus keeping them from swimming up-stream, to be netted, gobbled or profited from by the neighbours.
Drake’s weir, built after the dissolution of the monasteries, originated in the Early Modern period, and was not a medieval weir. It appears to have been a stone construction; certainly by the time that middle-class Georgian travellers record it in their journals. This is different from what is known about the monastic fish weir of Buckland Abbey on the Tavy. It is to this older monastic weir that I wish to focus in this blog.
The Pre-Monastic Fishery
The earliest historical hint of fishing on the Tavy comes from Domesday Book where, in 1086, Buckland [Monachorum] is listed as having a fishery, belonging to the Norman William de Poilley, and formerly to a Saxon called Brictmer (Powell-Smith, undated). Fisheries are inconsistently recorded in Domesday. Cornwall has no fisheries listed and Devon sixteen. A ‘fishery’ implies more than just access to fish-filled rivers. It is therefore likely that Buckland already had a river fish weir and/or several intertidal fish weirs by this time.
The Early Monastic Years
Until the early 12th Century the Buckland fishery was in secular hands when Baldwin de Redvers, future Earl of Devon, gave the right to the tithe of his fishery at Buckland to Tavistock Abbey (Finberg, 1969, p159). This means that Tavistock Abbey received the right to one tenth of the annual produce or earnings from the fishery. The fishery seems to have remained with Tavistock for around one hundred and fifty years. Then, when the Cistercian Buckland Abbey was founded in AD 1278, the new religious house was granted the fishing rights and so management of the fish weir changed hands. In addition to taking control of the fish weir the Buckland monks were also given the entitlement to take timber from the opposite bank – the Tavistock Abbey bank – in order to repair the weir. Predictably, this led to a spot of agro.
The miraculously floating axe-head: followers of Elisha cut trees near the river Jordan, 1372, France. National Library of the Netherlands.
A Fight Ensues
In 1280, Thomas Gyrebrand, forester to the Abbot of Tavistock, came across men cutting down oak within Blackmoorham Wood, at a spot referred to as Ivy Oak[1]. Gyrebrand was angry and attacked the timber thieves. Unfortunately for Gyrebrand it turned out that the men with axes were servants to the abbot of the newly founded Buckland Abbey, accompanied by Abbot Robert himself, exercising their lawful right to the wood. They fought back against the forester, with their axes and arrows. Gyrebrand, old documents recount, had to run away with an arrow lodged in his arm, leaving his tabard and hatchet behind.
The dispute was tried in court and Gyrebrand was found guilty of perjury for lying about the Buckland men attacking him first. He was sent to prison. William le Pye, the man whom Gyrebrand accused of stealing his tabard, was exonerated. Instead, Gyrebrand was found to have fled, leaving his coat behind. William le Pye had merely taken the abandoned clothing rather than leave it in the wood.
This dramatic conflict, recorded in the Assize Rolls nearly 800 years ago, is evocative in its detail – the arrow flesh wound, the names of the protagonists, the place names of Ivy Oak and Blackmoorham Wood, and the emotion of the aggression and anger. Of this tale Finberg tells us that the men involved were “tenants of the abbot of Buckland who were bound, as a condition of their tenure, to repair the salmon-hatch at Abbot’s Weir”. For this service we can likely assume that these men would pay a minimal rent of a penny. This was known as ‘hatch-silver’ (p83).
What is a Hatch?
The term ‘hatch’ is an interesting one and worth explaining at this point in the story. If you are familiar with the Tamar and Tavy valleys it is a function you will see preserved in place names – there is ‘Hatch Mill’ and ‘Great Hatch Wood’, and ‘Hatches Green’. So, what is a hatch in this fishing context?
The word hatch has numerous meanings. Relevant to fishing, it can mean a flood-gate or sluice. Hatches may therefore be features of weirs and leats, both of which sluice water and into which traps can be placed to catch fish. For example, in 1669 they are described as ‘Flud-gates placed in the water to obstruct the Current’ (Worlidge quoted in the OED, 1989, Vol VII, p3) or in 1758 when hatch is used in the context ‘The Navigation … was impeded by Hatches, Stopps and Wears’ (Description of the Thames in the OED, 1989, Vol VII, p3). Much similar but with a slight variant of meaning, the word can be used to specifically mean ‘a contrivance for trapping salmon’.
There are many words for fish traps, so it is not possible to know whether hatch is a generic name or whether it refers to a specific design of fish trap, inserted into sluices. Hatches though, do not need to be devices that trap fish. The word also relates to the spawning of fish, with fish eggs ‘hatching’. A hatch can therefore be a controlled place in a fishery where fish are managed so that they spawn and hatch ‘in the right place’ so that the owner of a fishery can take maximum advantage.
The images above, all taken from the Food and Agricultural Organisation (specialised agency of the UN), show various basic hatchery methods for simple fish farming. Do these modern but basic hatchery designs provide us with clues as to how the fish hatches of medieval Britain would have operated? Do they give us any hint at what the hatcheries of the Tavy would have been like? Was any engineering of the environment involved to help create more artificial spawning habitats? Do these hatchery names relate to the spawning or the trapping of fish?
Confusion on the Whereabouts of the Weir?
Returning to the story of the 13th C fight over the fish weir, the record gives a few clues as to the whereabouts of the weir. Ivy Oak is a forgotten place but Blackmoorham Wood still exists but is unspecific; it covers a big area, extending a couple of kilometres on the western slopes of the Tavy valley below Double Waters.
Crispin Gill, author of ‘Buckland Abbey’ (1968) decided, on the basis of their being a modern weir at the site, that this medieval skirmish might be assumed to have taken place near Hatch Mill. This is a reasonable suggestion given the ‘Hatch’ name. Herbert Finberg thought differently. He says:
‘Remains of the Abbot’s Weir can still be seen at a highly picturesque spot a few hundred yards below the confluence of the Tavy and the Walkham.’
Finberg, 1969, p160
This is still rather vague. Finberg doesn’t tell us exactly where, and nor does he tell us what remains of the weir he is able to see that allow him to draw this conclusion. Finberg goes on to explain that this weir was ‘in full working order at the close of the eighteenth century’, on the basis of the detailed description of a Tavy fish weir given by William Marshall in 1796.
Unfortunately, Finberg seems to have conflated the monastic Abbot’s Weir with the later Drake weir. It is easily done. There are many different weirs along the river – fish weirs and various mill weirs – and these come and go. Some sites seem to have more persistent weirs and others are short-lived. Their names also get confusing in that records, often showing the same weir being known by different names through history.
The weir described by Marshal is not the Abbot’s Weir, as Finberg supposed, but is a later weir, built by the Drake family of Buckland Abbey after the demise of the monastery. It is located further down river below Denham Bridge (for those interested in this weir, more can be read about it in a previous blog on Drake’s fish weir).
Finding the Weir
Just as with my interest in Drake’s Weir, I visited the Tavy riverbank hunting for the medieval Abbot’s Weir. I wasn’t hopeful of finding anything. Flood waters are extremely powerful and, after hundreds of years of redundancy, all evidence of it was almost certainly washed away. Unlike Drake’s Weir, this monastic weir was probably largely constructed of timber – hence the story of the men taking oak for its repair. A wooden structure would easily been swept away in spate centuries ago.
But Finberg’s confident statement that the weir could be seen drew me back to the bank again and again to see if I too could see what he thought he saw decades ago. When he was observing the river in the 1940s and 50s, was he mixing it up with other river-bank features, left by the detritus of the mining that was so prevalent in the valley bottom from the 19th century?
Visiting numerous times I worked my way down from Double Waters, giving attention to the river landscape and wondering – is this a good place for a weir? I had not initially looked as far down as Tavy Cottage because Finberg describes the weir as being a few hundred yards down from Double Waters (Tavy Cottage is about 450 yards downstream) and I reasoned that if the weir was at Tavy Cottage Finberg would have named the location, it being a prominent spot. However, searches in record offices gave me reason to suppose this was indeed the place.
The Tavy Consols Leat
Setting aside the story of the 13th C fight over timber for the weir, the only record I could find to an ‘Abbot’s’ weir on the Tavy, was a grant dated 1847 held in the Plymouth Archives. This gave the rights of water, for a period of seven years, to a group of men (including Sir Ralph Lopes) to take water ‘from the River Tavy, near Abbot’s Weir, Buckland Monachorum for working Tavy Consols Mine’.
On the opposite bank to Tavy Cottage the off-take for this leat can be found[2]. Now congested with sediment it is dry and no longer flows, but once it would have carried water south to Tavy Consols Mine where it would have powered metal processing of the copper mine.
This 19th C document comes many centuries after the Abbot of Buckland Abbey would have had a weir on the river. It is therefore probably only referring to the place-name rather than a weir still existing here. This is confirmed by a letter of 10 Sept 1854 from John Benson of the Bedford Estate Office, Tavistock, to George Giles, agent to Sir Massey Lopes. It regards:
‘the weir opposite Virtuous Lady Mine, Buckland Monachorum, and the cutting of a leat through the Duke of Bedford’s land to feed Tavy Consols Mine, but permission was not given to erect a weir’
Plymouth Archive, 1854, Ref 874/48/120
Whilst this pair of records do not relate directly to the medieval weir, but instead to more recent mining activity, they do confirm that this place we know today as Tavy Cottage was the site of the monastic fish dam and was, at least up to the 19th C, was known as Abbot’s Weir.
So, if Tavy Cottage is the right location, can anything of the ancient structure still be seen?
With weeks of dry and hot weather, the early summer of 2023 sucked the water from the earth and, with each return visit to the Tavy, its waters trickled lower. The river contracted so I was able to walk safely on parts of its exposed bed, and poke my nose into parts I had not accessed before. I found that I could scramble easily along the edge of the flow to the cliff face below Tavy Cottage where the river constricts and where the old mine captain’s cottage perches reclusively above the Tavy.
I made several visits, dragging my kids along on my initial recce and, becoming more sure this was the spot and that several landscape features related to the weir could be discerned. Later I showed more knowledgeable friends – Andrew Thompson (a Heritage Consultant) and Dr Chris Smart (Archaeologist). They allowed me the opportunity to sound out my observations and confirm that I was not reading fanciful interpretations into the landscape that could not be justified.
So, what did I find?
The Buckland ‘Abbot’s Weir’
There are three features that can be seen today that I think are landscape relics of the monastic fish weir. None on its own, without the documentary evidence linking the Abbot’s Weir to this Tavy Cottage site, would be conclusive, as they are rather obscure and subtle. However, in association they make a strong case.
1. River Boulders
The Tavy between Double Waters and Hatch Mill is not uniform. In places the water runs shallow and the river bed is strewn with cobbles, some of which form bars on the channel edges. In other places the river runs deep and smooth. At points along the channel the underlying bedrock is exposed. There is only one place, at Tavy Cottage, where the channel is dominated by larger boulders.
These boulders, initially, look natural, especially when viewed from up river. However, if your scramble down-stream to the cliff-edge and look across the river, the large boulders seem a bit more regimented, as if in line. Centuries of forceful flood waters will have dislodged them but they seem to span the river at a diagonal to the other bank. Those on the far bank, proud of the water, are the most diagnostic and have clearly been ‘placed’. They have been laid here to engineer some kind of structure related to the river and water management.
2. The ‘Sluice’ Stone
With the Tavy flowing so unusually low, rocks on the river-bed were gradually being exposed to the summer air. And so, on one visit, due to the diminished discharge, a huge and special stone was revealed. Under normal conditions this abnormal slab lies hidden below the surface but, with the hottest June on record, the arid conditions disclosed it.
Of course, the Tavy is full of boulders, so what was so singular about this one? Let’s start with its size. This slab was a prodigious 1.84 m wide and 4.38 m long. For scale, that is about as long and wide as a 2024 Mercedes-Benz B-Class Estate! Curiously this rock was also only about 25 cm thick – very thin in relation to its width and length. In terms of its position, it lies all but horizontal. Finally, apart from a few minor irregularities caused by fissures in its fabric, the slab is almost perfectly straight edged and rectangular.
The clues as to where it came from are close by. It looks like it came from the cliff face below Tavy Cottage. Given the presence of felsite dykes in the valley I am guessing this is its geology[3] . Whilst this stone looks like it came from the cliff face, what is it about it that suggests human hands were involved in its positioning, rather than it just falling? There are a number of reasons.
The beds of the cliff face lean back at an angle of about 60 degrees. A large slab resting at this angle could not fall forward without help. It could be eroded at the base by the river and slip, but not pivot outward. Even if such a fall could occur naturally, a large stone this thin would crack under its own weight on impact. If the stone had survived a natural fall without breaking it would have come to rest on the uneven surface of river cobbles meaning the slab would not lie flat. Any cobbles it was resting on would create pressure points which would eventually cause the slab to crack. None of these things has happened. It seems the only way for this monumental rock to be lying so perfectly flat in the Tavy is for it to have been purposefully levered and lowered into the river to lie in an area cleared of its normal cobbly bed-load.
Why would people have wanted to lower a rock into the river at this location? It is at this spot the putatively Elizabethan Virtuous Lady copper mine operated. I would be interested in hearing opinions as to why this slab may be mining-related but I am at a loss to connect the stone to a mining purpose. My own theory is that this stone is a remnant of the Abbot’s Weir and is possibly the base of a sluice.
Weirs do not have to be built with a sluice but there are good reasons why a fish weir might have one. Before getting into that, let’s look at what a sluice is …
A sluice is an artificial smooth channel designed to transmit water efficiently, typically with a mechanism, like a gate (hatch), that allows the water through it to be controlled. Because river fish weirs are designed to act as a barrier to fish, having a sluice is not a necessary design feature. However, throughout the medieval period, weirs on rivers caused repeated problems, and required legislation to address these. This was in part because of their impact on fish stocks by preventing fish spawning in up-stream habitats (Bond, 1988, p86). As a consequence, people living above a weir could not effectively exercise their right to subsistence fishing (Hoffman, 2023). If a river fish weir was being ‘responsibly’ managed then it would have been built with a sluice ‘fish pass’ that could allow some fish, in a controlled way, to swim up-stream.
Furthermore, salmon like to swim against a flow of water, intent on reaching their spawning grounds. For this reason a weir, fitted with a sluice can actively be used to trap fish, giving a sluice and added reason to be included. The Abbot’s Weir on the Tavy would therefore have almost certainly had a simple sluice as part of its design.
The sluice design of Skithead Weir shows how it has been engineered to have a flat stone bed, in this case hewn from the local rock. Author’s own image.
Being under the control of Buckland Abbey, one would expect to find the sluice by the Buckland bank, and this is where this stone is located. The purpose of the stone, I am hypothesising, was to create a stable flat base that allowed the efficient passage of water, and on top of which a timber sluice channel, sluice gate and fish ‘hatch’ could be fitted. The images above, of the younger weir near Ludbrook, not far downstream on the Tavy, help to illustrate this point. Here the sluice has been carved out of the bedrock to create a flat bed, on top of which a basic modern hatch can be seen.
The Road to Nowhere
The final piece of evidence that the Abbot’s Weir was at Tavy Cottage is a feature that, on first appearance, doesn’t seem related to the river and doesn’t seem odd until you start interrogating it. Bear with me whilst I explain …
When exploring the river bed I found myself looking back at the banks to a very old track, revetted with stones on its down slope side. The weird thing was though, this track led right up to the cliff face. It didn’t go anywhere.
The valley here is full of tracks and paths, many of which relate to mining. Was this track mining related? I looked about to see if it led to an adit. No, there was nothing, it just went to the riverside cliff and stopped. Why would a track lead to a cliff cul-de-sac?
If this was the site of a fish weir, with origins as far back as 1280 and even earlier, then it would need to be accessible. Fish weirs needed to be maintained, the sluice operated, and fish taken from its associated traps. Being able to get to the weir was a necessity and therefore a well-made track to the weir makes sense.
‘Major early medieval fisheries relied greatly on passive techniques using large fixed instillations. More or less permanent structures which blocked and held fishes should be recognized in many of the “fisheries” conveyed as appurtenant to landed property. Barrier fishing called for knowledgeable siting and timing plus sophisticated but simple engineering …Work and wealth spent on construction, upkeep, and annual operation produced large seasonal yields. ‘
Hoffman, 2023, p123
Just above this track is another wall, this one forming a small platform of about 3 to 4 m depth and 10 to 15 m length. Connecting the platform and the track below is a small walkway that hairpins the short distance between one end of the platform and the track below [4]. It is only a few metres in length and is narrow – clearly just a footway. This engineered relationship between the platform and the lower track is suggestive that it too relates to the weir. Perched above the weir, it provides an ideal vantage point to keep an eye on the valuable asset.
Proof Positive – The Aislabie Map
After finding the weir location I had a chance to visit the Devon Record Office archives at Exeter. I asked to see an 18th century map of the western part of the Duke of Bedford’s Tavistock estate. I am afraid I can’t show you the weir as shown on this map from the 1760s because permission is required to publish extracts from the Duke of Bedford’s archive and they don’t provide this permission to bloggers. However, I expect you can imagine how excited I was when I saw on this map the Abbot’s Weir clearly labelled at the Tavy Cottage site.
If only I had looked at this map at the start of this process and not the end then I would have found the definitive evidence needed to re-establish the location of the medieval Abbot’s Weir. However, although I could have saved myself repeated visits to the Tavy, intent on finding the evidence, I doubt I would have have looked in such detail at the riverbank looking for the physical proof.
Discussion
The Medieval Fish Weir
Fish weirs, being much taller structures than mill weirs, are designed to act as barriers to fish. They need to be located in the landscape to maximise harvesting of fishery habitats but somewhere below a confluence that leads to a neighbours estate. You don’t want your fish swimming up river and beyond your fishery do you?! For the abbey at Buckland, this would mean siting the weir below Double Waters where the river Walkham and Tavy combine, and where fish could swim up the Tavy branch to Tavistock.
Joseph Knippenberg (1876-1943) taken in 1928, Wikimedia commons. As a large fish which became rare through the medieval, the Sturgeon became prized and the preserve of the elite.
However, such a reason was also true for Tavistock Abbey prior to AD 1278, the date when Buckland Abbey was founded. Before this date the monks of Tavistock held the fishing rights. They would no more want fish swimming up the Walkham and away from their control, than the Buckland monks wanted the fish swimming up the Tavy. For this reason I suspect the location of the fish weir at Tavy Cottage dates back to at least the early 12th Century when the fishing rights were granted to Tavistock Abbey (and possibly even earlier).
It has been suggested in this blog post that the presence of the large stone slab in the water might be the remnants of a sluice, to allow the control of water and fish. If this was the case then at what point in its history the huge slab was lowered into place is anybody’s guess. It might have been a feature of the weir from its earliest construction or might have been added in its twilight days.
If the stone was part of a sluicing mechanism as has been suggested here, then with Buckland Abbey in charge, it is natural this was close to the Buckland bank. However, this raises the question, when the weir was in the control of Tavistock Abbey, did they have a sluice on their side? The land on the Tavistock bank is less steep (and therefore less awkward) than the Tavy Cottage cliff. In the recent past a leat to Tavy Consuls was installed; in effect a sluice at this location. It is possible that the mine leat made use of, and has therefore masked, an earlier sluice channel that served the medieval weir. As can be seen from the extract from the first edition OS 6 inch map (see below), there is appears to be an artificial channel leading into the river at this point. This is the spot where the arranged stones, referred to above, are located.
The Dissolution – Fisheries in Flux
After the fall of the monasteries in the 16th century, with the subdivision of land into private hands and the buying and trading of newly available fishing rights, this was a period of great flux for riverine fisheries.
In the case of the Buckland Abbot’s weir, the fishery rights mirror this national instability. Records suggest they may have initially been bought by the Earl of Bedford because, by 1567, these are being sold by the Earl, to Elys Crymes, the gentleman who bought the manor of Buckland, formerly been part of the Abbey estate (DRO, 1567). This deed included permission to build a weir across the Tavy. However, it is not clear what happened to this lease because dated only the following year, Sir Richard Grenville, is seen leasing the Tavy fishing rights to John Fytz, for twenty-one years, ‘all his fishing rights in the rivers Tavy and Walkham, appertaining to his estate of Buckland Monachorum‘ [5] (Plymouth Archives, 1568).
In 1601, Thomas Drake, brother of the deceased Sir Francis, writes to Lord Mountjoy, Earl of Devonshire about fishing rights. Details in this letter make it clear that sometime between Drake taking on Buckland Abbey (1580) and the previous Lord Mountjoy dying (1594), Drake had acquired the fishing rights and had built a fish weir and associated mill at great cost (200 marks). Perhaps this was around 1589 when the Fytz lease expired? Crymes, who held the manor of Buckland, upstream of Drake’s property, was not happy about the fishing rights situation. He was trying to buy the fishing rights from Mountjoy and was threatening to pull down Drake’s weir and erect his own weir further upstream (DRO, 1601). Just in this small case study of fishery leases on the Tavy in the 16th C we can see an example of what Hoffman (2023, p244) describes as fishing leases being a market commodity.
‘During later medieval centuries private owners of fishing rights notably conceded leases or licenses for others to exploit these renumerative resources, so moving them, too, toward the status of market commodity.’
Hoffman, 2023, p244
The End of the Abbot’s Weir
From these records we can see that the valuable fishery underwent several changes in ownership after the monasteries were dissolved. What happened to the weir in the aftermath? Did the Earl of Bedford immediately acquire the lease and have the weir maintained or did it fall into disrepair? If it was maintained, how long did it last?
In 1683 an indenture was drawn up between Elize Crymes Esq of Crapstone, and Joseph Drake of Buckland ‘Monarchum’ [sic] (i.e. Buckland Abbey) on fishing rightswhich sheds light on the weir’s post monastic fate (Plymouth Archives, 1683).
Not apparent from this record’s title listing, this document relates, not to general fishing rights on the Tavy, but specifically the transfer of the fishing rights from Crymes to Drake, relating to the Abbot’s Weir and ..
“together also with the old decayed house upon Roborough Down near adjoining to the said wear and one acre of land upon Roborough Downe next adjoining to the said wear“
Plymouth Archive, REF 874/97/18
This document seems to show that in 1683 the Abbot’s Weir still exists [6], along with a decayed building adjoining it. Is this decayed building and acre of land the tenement of Tavy Cottage? The Tavy Cottage site is one that has always been interpreted as linking solely to the copper mining history of this place but this record seems to linking the tenement here specifically to the weir, raising the possibility that this place has a more complex and older history, not just linked to copper mining but also to the Tavy fishery.
Conclusions
Ever since reading Finberg’s history of Tavistock Abbey, and learning about the Abbot’s Weir, I have been intrigued by its place in the Tavy landscape. Having looked for it every time I walk in the valley I didn’t think I was going to be able to track it down. However, through a combination of hunting for clues in local archives and the fortuitous dry weather, the Buckland Abbot’s Weir site can conclusively be located on the Tavy at Tavy Cottage.
Whilst the weir no longer exists, there are landscape features that seem to relate to the former fabric including: stones placed in the river that might have formed a core of the structure and also a possible sluice on the Tavistock bank; a very large slab stone that has been interpreted here as potentially being part of a sluice; and a trackway (and associated terraced platform) that led down to the weir.
Records show that the weir out-lived the demise of the monasteries as it appears to have been extant until at least 1683 where it is mentioned in a document about fishing rights. This document, which links the weir to an adjoining ‘decayed house’ and one acre of land, along with the trackway and terraced platform above the weir, hint at other historical dimensions linked to the role of the weir in this landscape. Always interpreted as exclusively a mining landscape, these lines of evidence raise the possibility of a different purpose. Was the tenement of Tavy Cottage, before its current buildings, linked in the past to the weir, perhaps with a former resident responsible for maintenance, fishing, and protection from poachers? Such a question can be raised but not answered. However, the identification of the weir at this location, and its potentially associated features, does raise the need for caution in terms of landscape interpretations at this place, being based only on mining.
The best of fishes in my flood
Extract from William Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals, originally published in 1613.
Shall give themselves to be her food.
The trout, the dace, the pike, the bream,
The eel, that loves the troubled stream,
The miller’s thumb, the hiding loach,
The perch, the ever-nibbling roach,
The shoats with whom is Tavy fraught,
The foolish gudgeon, quickly caught,
And last the little minnow-fish,
Whose chief delight in gravel is.
For me, the big question that remains unanswered in this exploration relates to developing a better insight into how medieval fish weirs were managed, particularly in relation to the hatcheries, which left such a big mark in our river valley place names. Some of the historic images taken in North America, peppering this blog, provide interesting recent historic analogues that may help to explore the possibilities.
In a future blog I hope to return to fish weirs one last time, to unpack the history of the monastic fish weir on the Tamar between Calstock and Gunnislake. This weir was about four times as wide as the Tavy fish weir and, with a need to allow boats passage, presents a whole different scale and dimension to the management of medieval fishery resources.
[1] Details of this fight, recorded in the Assize Rolls held in the Public Record Office, are recounted by several local authors including Finberg (1969), Gill (1968) and Beer (1930).
[2] The leat is on private land but its off-take can be seen, if you look hard for it, from the publicly accessible opposite bank.
[3] Felsite, according to the British Geological Survey is a light-coloured fined grained extrusive igneous rock of varying mineral composition. Because felsites are formed by cooling quickly, crystals don’t have long to form and grow large, so they are too small for identification by the naked eye. https://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/EarthMaterialClass/RockName/FELS.html
[4] Thanks go to Andrew Thompson for picking out this particular feature.
[5] Grenville held the abbey part of the estate, not the manor of Buckland.
[6] Also in 1683 there is another indenture (Plymouth Archives Ref 874/97/14a) confirming a further fish weir at Ludbrook.
References
Beer, A. 1930. Buckland Monachorum. Underhill Ltd: Plymouth.
Bond, C.J. 1988. Monastic Fisheries. In Aston, M. (Ed.) Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in England, Part I, BAR British Series 182 (i)
Devon Record Office. 1567. Russell Estates (General Evidences): Grant of a licence to fish in the Tavy, 2nd November 1567. Ref W1258M/0/GE/1/13/2
Devon Record Office. 1601. Letter, Thomas Drake to Lord Mountjoy, Lord Deputy of Ireland re Tavy Fisheries Case. Ref 346M/E/390
Finberg, H.P.R. 1969. Tavistock Abbey: A Study in the Social and Economic History of Devon. Augustus M. Kelley: New York.
Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Undated. Training Series – Aquaculture Training Manuals.
Gill, C. 1968. Buckland Abbey. Underhill Ltd: Plymouth.
Hunt, P. 1986. Payne’s Devon: A portrait of the county from 1790 to 1830 through the watercolours of William Payne. Devon Books.
Hoffman, R. 2023. The Catch: An Environmental History of Medieval European Fisheries. Cambridge University Press.
Plymouth Archives (The Box). 1568. Sir Richard Grenville, Leasing of Fishing Rights, Rivers Tavy and Walkham. Ref Box 277/17. Indenture dated 1 March 1568.
Plymouth Archives (The Box). 1683. Fishing rights on Tavy Crymes to Drake 1 Jun 1683. Ref Box 874/97/18.
Plymouth Archives (The Box). 1847. Tavy Consols Mine, Water Grant. Ref 874/49/22.
Plymouth Archives (The Box). 1854. Tavy Consols Mine and Virtuous Lady Mine, Letter, Weir. Ref 874/48/120. Letter dated 10 Sep 1854.
Powell-Smith, A. undated. Open Domesday. Buckland [Monachorum]. www.opendomesday.org
A great bit of historical and landscape detective work Sharon! I suspect the journey would have been nowhere near as interesting or compelling if you’d come across the Aislabie map at the outset. All the arguments building up to that point were very convincing and well-reasoned and the physical evidence you have highlighted adds a great deal to the knowledge base regarding the Abbot’s Weir specifically but also makes a valuable contribution towards the understanding of such Medieval structures generally and the social history behind them (I particularly enjoyed envisioning the incident with poor Gyrebrand!). I’m sure it would make an interesting paper for the transactions of the DA if you were interested.
Thanks Alan. It was certainly fun, the landscape gradually revealing itself to me. Since writing this I have been in touch with Prof Hoffman, whose work I have referenced in here and he has given me a few chapters he has written to help add to the substantiation of such fishery/weir narratives. Thanks for the suggestion of publishing in the TDA. I hadn’t thought about that. I want to move on to the even bigger weir across the Tamar next as I have a few landscape thoughts to explore with regard that one. I need to see if I can back them up with evidence! Perhaps all three weirs (Tamar Abbot’s Weir, Tavy Abbot’s Weir and the Drake Weir) would make a good triumvirate for a paper?
Good afternoon,
I have a pencil drawing dated circa 1820 by H.Worsley and titled ‘The Virtuous Lady and Abbot’s Weir River Tavy. It is looking down stream above Tavy Cottage and shows a line of rocks/boulders crossing the River Tavy just before the cliff below Tavy Cottage..
Happy to scan it and send you a copy if it is of any use to you.
Hi Ian. That would be amazing! I would love to see this. I am doing a talk about the weir at Bere History group on 11th Nov and the same talk to the Tavistock Local History Group on 9th Jan, so the weir is still very much in my thoughts. Thank you so much.
Hi. Is it Sharon? I was really interested to read your article and what evidence you discovered for a fish weir immediately adjoining Tavy Cottage. I am well entrenched in some research into the history of the Virtuous Lady Mine which I intend to publish this year and one of the questions still outstanding for me is the date this was built (formerly known as the Virtuous Lady Mine House and Cottage). Does the 1820 sketch provided by Ian Doidge show any buildings? Could you share it with me or ask him to contact me? I’ll put a link to your blog in my website in due course if that is ok. Also, do you already know about a project being put together to do further research on Tavistock Abbey? I note you have written something already so maybe you are already involved. If not, I can send you contact details. Best wishes, Tracy
Hi Tracey. Sorry for the delay in replying to you. I haven’t managed to find the time to blog since Christmas so I am a bit behind and hadn’t logged in in a while. Ian showed me the sketch the other day, after I gave a talk to the Tavistock Local History Society. The sketch is not dated. It does show a building but not Tavy Cottage. The building it shows is set further back and is, I assume, one of the other buildings shown on the tithe map. You will know more about this than me but I had thought that, because the Virtuous Lady was re-opened in the 1830s, that Tavy Cottage dates to around this time at the earliest. A date in the 1820s for Ian’s sketch would therefore fit. Perhaps Ian will be able to give you a better idea as to the dating of the image. I will email him to make an introduction. With regards the abbey project. Yes, I am aware of it and I did go along to a meeting the other day. My understanding of this is that it is all hypothetical at the moment, depending on getting funding. Is that correct? I would love to hear more about your research. Best wishes, Sharon.
BTW Tracy – do you have a blog address for me to check out?
Hi Sharon
I didn’t think to check your blog again for a reply so apologies. I just read the info you posted about the tower in Tavistock which is really interesting as well. We actually had a meeting today to discuss the vast broad areas of research that ideally could be covered to really understand the Abbey and I am going to switch my attention to that soon. My website for the Virtuous Lady Mine is almost ready, just getting some photos and one further reference and then a final edit. And there are a few bits to go back to like comparing the sketch that I was sent a copy of with what I know about the layout of the buildings at Tavy Cottage. The kind of in-depth research you have done is really impressive. I will send you a link to my website when its ready. Happy Easter, Tracy
The website was finally launched last night: virtuousladymine.co.uk. Let me know if you can add anything. I do mention your research on the Abbots weir.