I love place-names almost as much as I love maps and so, whenever I do a walk, I get my place-names books out, and do some digging to see what they can tell me about the history of the places I have trodden. On a recent walk to Buckfast, when I looked up its name in my ‘Place-Names of Devon’ book, I was a little under-whelmed by the entry. The earliest mention dates to 1046 AD as ‘Bucfæsten’ and states ‘The name is apparently a compound of OE buc, ‘buck’ and fæsten, ‘stronghold’, possibly used as a thicket where a buck once took shelter’ (Gover et al, 1931, p293). A single buck?! Surely Buckfast must have restrained a few more deer than this to warrant such a name? This got me thinking more deeply about why a place might be named after a deer enclosure in the first place, and what was known about the deer park at Buckfast. I was surprised that absolutely nothing seems to be known about the fæsten of Buckfast – I couldn’t find a single mention of it anywhere.
The name Bucfæsten is Anglo-Saxon, and so I started by searching for academic material written about Anglo-Saxons and deer enclosures. I learnt a great deal from the fascinating papers I found – Liddiard, 2003; Stamper, 2008; and Flight, 2016 being particularly useful. Using what I learnt from these and other authors, and combining it with map and place-name evidence, I lay out in this blog, what I think might be vestiges of evidence in the landscape of West Buckfastleigh of it once having had an aristocratic Saxon deer park. But first, before I present the evidence, let’s start with a summary of deer parks, with an emphasis on their Saxon beginnings …
Saxon Deer Parks
Deep in prehistory, wild beasts were everywhere, and we hunted those beasts – auroch, wolf, elk, bear, and deer. Over time, some of these species became extinct and others greatly declined in numbers. Woodland and wasteland was also declining because population increases were creating a demand for arable land. As with everything, rare things tend to become more valuable and so, with ‘forest’ diminishing and limited big game left, hunting, particularly of deer, became the preserve of the rich. The zooarchaeological record supports this narrative. Wild animal bones are rare for domestic sites, from the Anglo-Saxon onwards, with the exception of high-status sites, where venison is a common component (Flight, 2016, p318).
By the time of Alfred the Great’s reign (849 – 899 AD), hunting was clearly a privileged pastime, made clear by how hunting language was used to exalt the king. He was hailed for his skill as a huntsman, and it was asserted that this great skill was one of his ‘gifts from God’. In prescribing the education of his children, Alfred specifies two key areas of focus – literacy and ‘manly arts – namely, hunting and other arts appropriate to noblemen’. As Flight points out (2016, p316), this singling out of hunting, and putting it alongside literacy, indicates its importance and exclusivity to the elite.
“Hunting also provided what was thought to be the best possible training in mounted warfare: how to read the country during a high-speed pursuit over varied ground, how to give orders to other riders, and how to use weapons to kill.”
Stamper, 2008
Flight uses a late tenth-century text called the Vita S. Dvnstani, which contains a description of a hart hunt at Cheddar by King Edmund (921 – 946 AD), to develop this argument for venary1 being a popular and exclusive pursuit in late-Saxon upper society, and argues that it was not just a trend that developed under the Normans.
This view is shared by Liddiard (2012), who has also written to question the narrative that hunting and game parks were a Norman fashion, and that forest law was a post-Conquest introduction. He cites evidence of the ubiquity and popularity of Saxon deer parks that date as far back as the middle-Saxon, including Costessey in Norfolk, Rotherfield in Sussex, and many others. These Saxon deer parks were held by the king, pre-Conquest earls, and large religious houses. Indeed, the church, as well as nobility, were so fond of their hunting, that they could own numerous parks, such as the case of the church of St Peter of Gloucester, which owned three hunting enclosures (Ibid, p12).
If such large areas were given over to hunting parks, then it might be reasonable to ask why only 37 are known to be recorded in Domesday? Liddiard (2012) offers a detailed examination and states ‘there can be little doubt that Domesday Book massively under-records the number of deer parks in existence at this time’ (p7). Hooke puts it succinctly (1998, p150). One of the main reasons why woodland in particular was excluded from Domesday was because it was often ‘put outside the manor’ or considered to have passed into ‘the king’s hands’. Hooke explains that this implies that the woodland has become part of the royal forest and so there is no point mentioning it in the Domesday listing, the purpose of which was to tell the king what his subjects possessed, not to catalogue his own ground. The bias towards the Normans as being masters of la chasse is therefore likely to stem from the way that documentary evidence, or the lack of it, skews what is illuminated about a Saxon to Norman hunting history.
Venison
These descriptions of Anglo-Saxon hunting relate to the aristocracy hunting stag on horse-back, assisted by hunting dogs, as a recreational pleasure, and a show of their prowess. The nobility also showed their status by eating venison2 – a cut above ordinary meat – but hunting it on horseback was not an efficient way of obtaining it for the table. To provide venison as meat, deer might be corralled, trapped with snares and nets, and killed more efficiently with bow and arrow by huntsmen, assisted by other servants. This was known as a bow and stable hunt (Flight, 2016, p320).
Management and Operation of Deer Parks
Deer parks required a great deal of environmental, technological and legislative resources to enable such large hunting grounds to be managed. This would include: building and maintaining boundaries; managing the woodland therein by pollarding trees above browsing height; making sure the deer stock had sufficient food, particularly in winter; and defending the stock against poachers. Deer numbers also needed controlling through culling, as too many aggressive stags during the rutting season could become dangerous. Roe and Fallow deer became popular after the Conquest, but in the Saxon deer park, Red deer was favoured (Liddiard, 2012, p20). However, Birrell (1992, p112) cautions over seeing deer parks as solely for the purpose of deer hunting. She explains how deer parks had co-uses; they provided timber, were used to produce charcoal, and other domesticated animals might graze alongside the game too.
Haga, as will be expanded on later, is the Anglo-Saxon word for a type of strong boundary, typically around a woodland, and often used to describe the barrier around the edge of a deer park (Hooke, 1998, p154). Hooke says that these may have been earthen banks with timber palisades, an impenetrable barrier of stacked dead hawthorn, or a living hedge of thorns and dense undergrowth. Whatever the boundary, it would need making and managing.
Stag hunting is known to have taken place through both woodland and grassland environments, but precisely how this was done in relation to parks is not fully understood. It might have been that deer, when hunted for pleasure, were hunted on horseback in the parks themselves. Riding through woodland cannot be easy, although easier in the wood pasture, known to be the habitat of many parks. Alternatively therefore, the deer may have been folded in the enclosure, but for the hunt, an animal selected and released, then chased across open-country. Netting and killing of deer with bow and arrow for meat (as opposed the pleasure of the chase) probably took place within the confines of the wooded park itself (Stamper, 2008). How often kings, earls and bishops hunted in their parks is not known and would depend on factors such as personal appetite for hunting and geographical proximity, as lords had many hunting parks (Birrell, 1992, p113). Huntsmen and other servants would have undertaken the majority of the hunting (Ibid, p122) . This might have a seasonal pattern to it, linked to when the animals came into ‘grease’ (June to Sept) and to provide venison for the table at major feasts (Ibid, p116).
A legacy of deer park management in today’s landscape might be that of the venerable3 old oak trees that stand, geriatric, in parks and fields. According to research from the Department of Plant Science at the University of Oxford, deer parks were areas of rough grassland, heath and ‘pasture’ woodland (woodland not managed for coppicing) in which oaks dominated. In studying remaining ancient oak populations, the Oxford team have been able to establish an important link between oaks and deer parks, with 35% of all oaks in England with a girth of 5.99 m and greater, associated with known deer parks. For the very biggest oaks, some of which are 750 years and older, and with girths of 9m and greater, the association rises to over 50%. These veteran oaks, with huge hollowed out trunks, often display signs of pollarding against browsing, a technique also used to produce the long straight branches required for timber (Friends of Richmond Park).
The Place Names of Deer Hunting and Venison
There are names, still obvious today, that are clearly indicative of a hunting past; the ‘buck’ of Buckast being an obvious example. Names containing ‘hart’, ‘deer’, ‘hunt’, park’, and ‘chase’ are also manifest, with plenty of others that might be less apparent. An obscure term, and one that connects back to the Anglo-Saxon, is the term haga, or its plural, hagan, meaning an enclosure or hedging (Hooke, 1998, p157). These words appear in Anglo-Saxon charters, often, although not exclusively, in association to wild animals and in relation to strong enclosures around wooded areas. Liddiard (2012) and Flight (2016) make a case for some Anglo-Saxon hagan being the antecedents of Norman deer parks, saying that hagan and parcus, both of which are noted in Domesday, are likely a linguistic choice of the compiler (Flight, 2016, p319).
Less apparent to our modern eyes, the term haga, and its latin plural haia, gives us the etymological route to the place-names ‘haigh’ and ‘hay’. These Hagan deer parks corresponded to ‘the most thickly-wooded areas’ of the kingdom and were often very large, and could stretch several miles. For example, Willey Park, illustrated in Stamper (2008) is a good 3km long by 2 km wide whilst Bishop’s Waltham park in Hampshire, and Rayleigh park in Essex, are known to have been c. 1000 acres in size (Liddiard, 2012, p11).
As an aside, the word ‘ha-ha’ is so similar to that of ‘haga’ and its Latin equivalent ‘haia’, that I wonder if this explains its etymology. I find this much more convincing than stories of it originating in the 18th C as an expression of surprise (Ah! Ah!) in response to the optical illusion of the concealed ditch around later deer parks (National Trust).
With this background now laid out, let us return to Buckfast …
Buckfast – An Anglo-Saxon Deer Park?
As I read and started to understand something about deer parks and game hunting, I kept flitting back to maps of West Buckfastleigh, and the place-names they contain. I wanted to see if the landscape of Buckfast held more clues, beyond the town’s name, to a potential Saxon deer park. I found more than I had bargained for.
Buckfast
Let’s start by returning to the name of Buckfast itself. As mentioned at the start of this blog, the first record for Buckfast given in the place-names of Devon book (Gover et al, 1931) is Bucfæsten, which attributes the buc to a male deer, and fæsten to some type of compound or stronghold. The word fæsten is worth looking at in more detail. Baker (2012) says that, in the small number of instances where the word occurs, it is always used as the second part of a compound word, with the first element seemingly used to describe the nature of the stronghold such as holegn-fæsten (a holly stronghold), brōmfæsten (a broom stronghold), or brōcfæsten (brook stronghold). In the majority of cases usage implies an area that is ‘inaccessible rather than necessarily defensible‘. Baker goes on to say:
“There is some support for a connection between OE fæsten and animal husbandry in the place names ‘Buckfast’ and ‘Hornifast’ and the charter boundary marker ‘wærnan fæsten’, the first elements of which mean ‘buck’, ‘herdsman’ and ‘stallion’ respectively”
Baker, 2012, p317
Hayford
On the western edge of West Buckfastleigh parish are a suite of interesting names. The first of these I want to consider is the name Hayford. As was set out above, the name ‘hay’ is one that etymologically can be derived from the Anglo-Saxon word Haga, denoting a deer enclosure. ‘Hay’ is common in place names, and also denotes names relating to hay meadows, so as a prefix is annoyingly ambiguous, but in context, could be significant. Not only might the name ‘hay’ directly relate to deer parks but, it seems, it could have an even more nuanced meaning. Not just a general term for a deer enclosure, the word, in some cases, appears to have been used to describe a specific area within the deer enclosure. This is illustrated by these quotes from Liddiard and Stamper:
“By the later medieval period ‘hay’ could mean an enclosed wood or a small wooded area for the keeping of deer. In pre-Conquest England however, the term could simply refer to a hedge, or the net in which deer were eventually captured.”
Liddiard, 2012, p6
Hays “seem to have been the successors of late-Saxon deer folds, places where deer were temporarily enclosed before the hunt. They were perhaps also breeding enclosures.”
Stamper, 2008
These quotes suggest that the ‘hay’ might therefore be interpreted, not as relating to the whole of the deer park, but in a quite specific way, to describe the part of the deer enclosure where the deer were netted or temporarily enclosed before the hunt; in this case this would likely involve releasing a stag onto the open moor. The geography of this area supports this conclusion, with maps showing how field boundaries funnel at this point, with a narrow constriction (The Strole), leading to the moor. Such a set up could be interpreted as purposeful landscape management to coral the game. Other place-name evidence in this vicinity lends further credence to this interpretation. This is outlined in the following sections.
Bowden and Bowleigh
Adjacent, on the eastern side of Hayford, is Bowden. The earliest reference to this place is in 1314 as ‘Steneneboghedon juxta Bocfasteneslegh’. Gover et al (1931), interpret this as ‘stony curved hill’, seemingly splitting the elements into Stenene-boghe-don. I think a different interpretation is justifiable if the word is broken instead into Stenene-bog-hedon’. The element ‘Stenene’ remains the same, meaning stone. The element ‘bog’, (OE – ‘Boga’) is also equivalent in meaning, but can be interpreted, not as curved, but as bow (as in a weapon). The final element ‘hedon’ maps onto the OE words ‘heden’ or ‘hydan’, meaning a hide , cloak, shelter, conceal (Old English Translator). This place-name could therefore mean ‘stone bow shelter’ which, as it happens, is similar in meaning to Bowden – literally, a ‘bow den’.
Place-names are identifiers that benefit from a degree of specificity and uniqueness, particularly at a time when landscape and travel through it was dominantly kept orally. In a county where ‘stony curved hills’ are ten a penny, I do wonder how useful such a name would have been. Within a context of other hunt-related names at this location, I offer this interpretation as a plausible alternative. The place of Bowleigh, sitting next to Bowden, would therefore be a clearing (Lēah) in woodland that is in some way related to the use of bows; the ‘leigh’ offering open ground, or wood pasture, where the exposed animals would be easier to shoot.
As was described above in discussing Hayford, the roads and boundary walls funnel here. Such a landscape would seem ideally designed to push deer towards, and coral them in a clearing where they could be killed by huntsmen concealed in a stone ‘bow hide’. Of possible relevance, the Historic Environment Record for Bowden observes that, on the basis of the Tithe Map, it is ‘a long narrow building’ (HER, undated). If this building was replicating the footprint of an earlier stone ‘bow hide’, then just like shooting ranges of today, a long narrow building with frontage facing to Bowleigh is the design you might expect.
Lud Gate
If you walk from Bowden, past Hayford, towards the open moor, your passage is between field boundaries that create a long linear constriction, labelled today on the map as ‘the strole’. This slender access takes you to a moor gate called Lud Gate. Hemery is dismissive of the OS use of this name, stating there is no justification or precedent for its use, and saying that Crossing’s spelling and the moor people’s pronunciation of it was ‘lyd’ (Hemery, 1983, p602). Errors do occur, but equally, the OS may have had good reason to mark this as Lud Gate. If the name is a correct attribution, then it is an interesting one. A ‘lud-geat’ is a a postern gate; a back entrance (Bosworth1). Often the name can be found in castles and town walls such as Ludgate in London, used to describe the westernmost gate in the city walls. The use of the name Lud Gate is therefore a positional name, and in this location implies a back or posterior gate to the area to its east. This implies there is something in the landscape that is on its east that it is a back entrance to. If a hunting park existed here, then the name would make sense, as a back gate to a park, whose front end would be at Buckfast.
Huntingdon
The most obvious of the place-names here is Huntingdon Hill/Warren. This place is not recorded until 1481 AD and appears as Huntydon. Gover et al (1931) say that this form is too late to be definitive about its meaning with certainty but is likely to be ‘huntsmen’s hill’. Dartmoor, as a royal forest, was a hunting area anyway but, as I hope is emerging from the evidence I have begun presenting, I think the relationship between the hunting down, and the wooded hunting park to its east, was an important one. The literature on this subject seems to suggest that, when hunting was done for sport, in an area like Dartmoor, a stag would be released onto the moor from its wooded park. The landscape evidence of deer being funnelled up towards the Lud Gate from the park along the zone known now as The Strole hints at such a modus operandi.
King’s Wood
As outlined above, deer parks, whilst not solely woodland, were dominated by it. Woodland is not, in and of itself, evidence of a deer park. What is significant about the substantial area of wood in this deer park area is that it is called King’s Wood, which clearly implies that it once belonged to the king. Many woods were in the hands of the crown throughout the medieval. However, as will be discussed later, Buckfast was linked to a noble called Æthelweard, who may have been descended from King Æthelred. Perhaps this may be the link to the King’s Wood? Given the tight relationship that Saxon kings had with ownership of forest hunting grounds (e.g. Liddiard, 2012,p8), it is possible the name specifically relates to this Saxon royal ownership.
–Leigh
The suffix of -leigh in the name Buckfastleigh (and Bowleigh) provides indirect evidence. Buckfastleigh is first recorded merely as Legh in 1286 AD (Gover et al, 1931) but this does not mean that this is when the area developed its identity as a ‘leigh’. Gelling and Cole (2000, p237) discuss the history of its use, citing research that shows that before 731 AD there are only seven known examples of places called lēah. The name also became less frequent after the 10th century. This provides a time window of probability for when Buckfastleigh as a landscape developed – between the 8th and the 10th centuries.
“When you arrive at a Lēah you were in a very different world – there was no ‘there’ there”
Faith, 2012, p240
But what does the name lēah tell us about this landscape identity that might be relevant to this hunting story? Lēah is a term now understood to probably relate to wood-pasture, not fully cleared places, amongst heavily wooded areas (Faith, 2012, p240). It is thought to be an indicator or woodland regarded as ancient when the Anglo-Saxons arrived, and may also indicate woods in generally open country where they would be ‘jealously preserved’ (Gelling and Cole, 2000, p237). Certainly the hilly topography of Buckfastleigh does not suggest that it obtained its name from the later sense of the name leigh as a ‘pasture meadow’. In this locality then, the name could be interpreted as wood-pasture in an area of old and valued woodland in otherwise open country. The common association between hagan place names and those with the name lēah is commented upon by Hooke (1998, p154), and although not evidence in itself of a hunting ground, it does contribute to a picture of a landscape of hunting.
‘Park’
Gover et al (1931) mention two places in Buckfastleigh parish with ‘park’ in the name – Byrcherd Parke and Neweparke. Neither of these place-name has a first usage date recorded. Byrcherd Parke, it can be presumed, lies in or close to Burchetts Wood. Neweparke is also located in this vicinity, just to the south of the Holne road. There is also a recent farm called Parklands, just north of King’s Wood, perhaps inheriting a name from a continuity of naming tradition for this land? I don’t think this evidence is strong, partly because of a lack of chronology and understanding of the origin of these names, and partly because Burchetts Wood almost certainly lies outside of what I will later suggest may be the park bounds. However, given the association between the word park and deer parks, their occurrence in this locality ought to be noted. Many field names in the parish contain the word ‘park’ but this is unlikely to be significant. Its use is commonplace in field naming and is therefore not a good indicator of medieval parkland.
Hapstead
My final place name offering is speculative, but I wanted to include it as food for thought because it is an interesting name in its own right, and because it has led me to think more deeply about how a potential deer park might have been used, rather than just considering its existence and its boundary. Hapstead sits centrally in West Buckfastleigh, on the northern edge of King’s Wood. The name is first recorded in 1600 AD as Hapstrete (Gover et al, 1931, p295), and it is the use of ‘strete’ in this rural context that draws the attention. In its later etymology, street became a term for urban streets. In its earliest form it was used to describe Roman roads, but also by the Anglo-Saxons, to describe high-ways. If this record of Hapstrete really was thought of as a ‘strete’ by the Anglo-Saxons, and not a ‘stead’, then it was a route of significance to the people that used it.
The first element of the name of Hapstrete – the ‘Hap’ part – is probably hæp or hæþ (Gelling and Cole, 2000, p74) which means a heath, waste, or uncultivated land (Bosworth2). If interpretation of ‘hap’ is correct, then the name Hapstrete might be taken to mean ‘the wasteland high-way’ or ‘high-way to the waste-land’. In a heavily wooded enclosed deer park, with animals being released onto the open heather-clad moor for hunting, then the woodland deer park would require ‘rides’ through the forest for access. Principal of these would be a route through the heart of the haga, linking the settlement at Buckfast with the business end of the park at Bowden and Hayford, and the hunting ground of Huntingdon. Such a route would be necessary to enable the hunting party and huntsmen to efficiently access these areas and return to Buckfast. I propose this route would follow a fairly direct line between Holy Trinity church (where Anglo-Saxon Buckfast is now thought to have originated), past Hapstead, through to the Lud Gate, and up on to the moor. In places this route still exists as roads today, in others as tracks, and in others, just hinted at by field boundaries.
Oak Trees
Now that I have exhausted the place-name evidence I want to finish with a mention of oak trees. As we learnt above, old oak trees have a strong affinity with land known to have been deer parks. Along the route of the monastic way between Buckfast and Tavistock, is an historic oak, known affectionately as ‘Stumpy Oak’. Of this oak the South West Heritage Trust says:
‘Stumpy Oak stands at Hawson Cross, near Scorriton, and is thought to be many hundreds of years old. The tree has been pollarded in the past, resulting in its present ‘stumpy’ form. Its position at a crossroads suggests the tree has historical significance, possibly as a way marker on a pilgrim route or as a boundary marker.’
SW Heritage Trust
A single historic pollarded oak tree is not in itself evidence of a deer park. Looking on current and old maps, more oaks spring up. A lane south west from Hawson’s Cross takes you to a place called Two Oaks. At the junction of Holne Road with Oaklands Road, near Hockmoor, this place was known and Five Oaks. And finally, Oaklands Road itself runs past and area known as Oaklands Park (that ‘park’ name again). It is fair to assume that the trees that stood at these places might well have been large and venerable – noteworthy enough in the landscape to warrant naming places after them.
Suggesting the Park Boundaries
Based on the evidence presented above I have had an initial go at suggesting the boundaries to this Saxon deer park (see map below). This is merely a first stab at defining the territory it encompassed. The place-name evidence is highly suggestive that the enclosure extended to the Lud Gate and Hayford area in the north-west. I feel that the road across Wallaford Down to the south of the park, and the Holne road to the north, may also define its bounds. Ordinary people would have been excluded from the park and so it is likely that routes grew up to ring it. To the south-east, I am less sure how close the edge of the deer park would have come to where the town of Buckfastleigh now stands. It is not certain when Buckfastleigh developed. The earliest mention of it is in the 13th century. It may therefore not have existed as a place (not of any size), until this time. The deer park boundaries likely developed before any town existed, preceding it by many centuries. Even if a settlement had formed here of Anglo Saxon age, there are, according to Liddiard (2012, p19), examples of parks with towns immediately adjacent.
I have also included on this map the potential ‘hæþstrete’ (the highway to the waste). On the basis of the place-name evidence, it is possible that this now lost road ran centrally through the park. With the park’s demise (discussed below), and other roads opening up through the defunct park to the new medieval centres of Buckfast and Buckfastleigh in valley locations (as opposed to the early Saxon centre on the hill), Hapstrete would have fallen out of use.
Discussion
A case has been made, primarily based on place-name evidence, for the possibility of a Saxon hunting ‘haga‘ at Buckfast. Ironically, it was the name of Buckfast itself that led me on my own hunt, once I got the scent of this potential history.
The geography and landscape west of Buckfast suggest a wooded deer park, roughly coinciding with the territory of West Buckfastleigh parish, using Huntingdon and the Forest of Dartmoor, to flush the stag into the open moor for the kill. This is an interpretation in line with what Hooke (1998, p52) says is a feature of Anglo-Saxon landscape division, in which multiple royal estates are frequently observed as having links to distant pastures and hunting grounds. Hunting parks would often be sited in well-wooded, steep and marginal ground, abutting uplands (e.g. Winkleigh in Devon, and parks in Cheshire, abutting Delamere Forst, cited in Liddiard, 2012, pp10 and 13). This steep-valleyed, wooded West-Buckfastleigh area therefore has all the prerequisites of an ideal deer park.
The origins of this proposed deer park lie in an age of Saxon overlordship, in which hunting land was seemingly becoming scarce. Liddiard (2012, p20) proposes that such parks arose because arable expansion was diminishing ‘wastes’ at this time, and therefore the ability of the nobility to hunt, as well as their rights over grazing and woodland. It is for this reason that he proposes that early parks tended to encompass relatively large areas, a pattern that fits with this Buckfast story. The activity of ‘the chase’, and the provision of venison for the table became the preserve of the powerful (Flight, 2012). So, what were Buckfast’s connections to a powerful Saxon elite?
It is the contention of Higham (2008, p88) that Buckfast possessed a minster before its abbey foundation in 1018 AD, and that this date likely represents a re-foundation of an existing religious community here. Excavations at the ruined church of Holy Trinity, that sits on the hill between Buckfast and Buckfastleigh, support this view, with a Saxon structure, of basilica form, sitting below the medieval ruins, and an even older structure below that (Reynolds and Turner, 2012). What is significant about a well-established Anglo-Saxon religious occupation at this site is the very probable connection this gives the place to a royal centre. As Blair says:
“More and more archaeological evidence is emerging that many late seventh-century minsters were not only founded in core zones of royal activity, but even appropriated the royal buildings”
Blair, 2018, p131
If Buckfast had an early Anglo-Saxon minster, as it seems it might, there is therefore a strong possibility that this was also a royal site. Æthelweard II, who founded the monastery, was thought to have been descended from King Æthelred (reign 865-871 AD), older brother of King Alfred (Higham, 2008, p103, p148). If this was a royal site, then having an area for hunting would have been a requisite. In fact, hunting locations were considered high status in their own right. In 904 AD King Edward the Elder signed three charters whilst staying at the hunting lodge at Bickleigh in Devon, and as Flight says:
‘Evidently the nobility deemed a hunting lodge a suitable seat of power from which to construct administrative business‘.
Flight, 2016, p319
I have suggested a broad, not perfect, coincidence between a proposed hunting park here, with the boundaries of West Buckfastleigh parish. This is indicative of imparkment at an early date (perhaps at or before c. 870 AD if the links to King Æthelred are valid), for as Liddiard (2012, p18) says, such a link with parish boundaries is ‘normally taken as a strong indicator of an early park’.
How did this hunting ground operate? It is possible that the whole area of the largely wooded deer park was the bounded playground for the aristocratic hunt. However, given that the hunt benefits from driving the stag into the open, and because the name of Huntingdon lies on the moor, beyond the wooded park, I think it is more likely that, as described above, a stag was selected and released onto the moor, and this is effectively where the hunt began, chasing a stag on horseback with dogs. The deer park itself would serve to protect and manage the king or eorldoman’s venison stock, and could be used by the royal huntsman to trap and kill venison for the table. This interpretation if supported by the place name evidence around Lud Gate, Hayford, and Bowden, all of which point to this being a zone of deer management – coralling, killing deer with bow and arrow, and enabling beats to be selectively released into the moor.
For all record and memory of this deer park to have been lost, for it to go so completely unobserved, it must surely have demised at an early date. It may be that Buckfast had royal links in the late 9th century but that, as time diluted the connection to the throne, Buckfast became more peripheral, being passed in 1018 AD to the newly founded abbey. The abbey in its early years did not flourish, being granted, by King Stephen in 1136 AD to the control of Savigny in France, and converting to a Cistercian order (Robinson, 1998). It seems unlikely that, if indeed this land was passed to the monks as a complete parcel, they would have had the money to finance the upkeep of such a large deer park with a massive perimeter to maintain. As a hypothesis I therefore propose that it is around this time that the deer park disintegrated, perhaps completely, or perhaps initially by being scaled back to smaller and more manageable deer fold.
Conclusions
If this deer park existed at Buckfast, as I think the evidence suggests it might, then this is an old park and one of considerable size. Place-name and landscape evidence seems to preserve, not just evidence that a Saxon deer park existed here, but may also give clues to how deer were managed in Saxon parks. This is potentially valuable as very little is known about Saxon deer park practices.
Once I started looking at this landscape, a history of hunting was yielded relatively easily. I feel sure that if this deer park was hiding in such plain sight, then there must be many others, previously un-recorded, waiting to be discovered. For example, just north of Buckfast is Holne Chase with North Park Wood, Chasegate, and Kinghurst (the hurst suffix often linking to hunting places). I also wonder at the possibility of a deer park in my own home town of Tavistock, a place also with Saxon noble and monastic origins.
With this preliminary desk-based research under my belt, I am now keen to pull on my walking boots and re-visit this area. I want to move beyond names on maps, and tread the ground, in search of field evidence for remnants of an Anglo-Saxan haga.
I want to acknowledge the advice given to me by John Hudswell and Andrew Thompson in the development of this ‘blog-essay’. John provided some robust critique on the subject of place-names, and steered me away from more problematic interpretations. His advice made me more circumspect about linking Harbourne to deer ‘harts’ (in this case it probably relates to the Harbourne being an ancient boundary), and getting over-excited about all the field names containing ‘park’, which I now appreciate is a ubiquitous form and therefore not necessarily an indicator of medieval parkland.
Etymological Notes
1.Venery – The art, act, or practice of hunting; animals that are hunted. In Middle English venerie, borrowed from Anglo-French, from Old French venery “to hunt with dogs” (going back to Latin vēnārī “to hunt”) (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Earlier still, from Proto-Indo-European *wenh- (“to strive, wish, love”). (Wordsense Dictionary). It is this striving, hunting, loving sense that we get the name Venus and links to love and sexual desire and the meaning of venery as the gratification of sexual desire (Barnhart, 1988). Hence sex and hunting are etymologically inextricably linked.
2.Venison – n. deer meat. The word seems to be borrowed from Old French venesoun meat of large game, especially the deer or boar as principal animals of the hunt; also a hunt, from Latin vēnātionem, a hunt; also game as the product of a hunt, from vēnārī to hunt, pursue, related to venus love, desire (Barnhart, 1988).
3.Venerable – modeled on the Latin venerātus revered, past participle of vēnerārī to seek a deity’s favour, worship, revere, related to venus, love, desire (Barnhart, 1988).
Moving now to the area bordering the south of the parish of West Buckfastleigh is a river called the Harbourne. Gover et al (1931, p7) note that this river was not recorded in text until 1244 and written as Hurburn. They say that the first element might relate to a Saxon word hēore meaning ‘gentle mild and pleasant’, but also say that it is ‘equally possible, and with frequent parallels, is heort-burna, ‘hart-stream’, with early loss of the t’.
References
Baker, J., 2012. What Makes a Stronghold? Reference to Construction Materials in Place-Names in OE fæsten, burh and (ge) weorc. Sense of Place in Anglo-Saxon England (Donnington: Shaun Tyas), pp.316-33.
Barnhart, R.K. (Ed.) 1988. Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. Chambers: London.
Birrell, J., 1992. Deer and deer farming in medieval England. The Agricultural History Review, pp.112-126.
Bosworth1, Joseph. “lud-geat.” In An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online, edited by Thomas Northcote Toller, Christ Sean, and Ondřej Tichy. Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2014. https://bosworthtoller.com/21862.
Bosworth2, Joseph. “hǽþ.” In An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online, edited by Thomas Northcote Toller, Christ Sean, and Ondřej Tichy. Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2014. https://bosworthtoller.com/17968.
Department of Plant Science, University of Oxford. The Ancient Oaks of England. Deer Parks www.herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk
Devon County Council Environment Viewer, Tithe Mosaic. www.maptest.devon.gov.uk
Faith, R. 2012. Tun and lēah in the rural economy. In: Sense of Place in Anglo-Saxon England (Donnington: Shaun Tyas), pp.238-242.
Flight, T., 2016. Aristocratic deer hunting in late Anglo-Saxon England: a reconsideration, based upon the Vita S. Dvnstani. Anglo-Saxon England, 45, pp.311-331.
Friends of Richmond Park. Ancient Oaks in the Park. www.frp.org.uk/
Gelling, M and Cole, A. 2000. The Landscape of Place-Names. Shaun Tyas: Stamford.
Gover, J.E.B., Mawer, A. and Stentson, F.M. 1931. The Place-Names of Devon, Parts I and II. English Place-name Society. Volume VIII. University of Cambridge Press: Cambridge.
Hemery, E. 1983. High Dartmoor. Robert Hale: London.
HER. (Undated). Bowden farmstead, West Buckfastleigh. www.heritagegateway.org.uk
Hooke, D. 1998.The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England. University of Leicester Press: Leicester.
Liddiard, R., 2003. The deer parks of Domesday Book. Landscapes, 4(1), pp.4-2
Merriam-Webster. Venery. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/venery
National Trust. What is a ha-ha? www.nationaltrust.org.uk/
Old English Translator. Old English toModern English Translator. https://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/
Reynolds, A.J. and Turner, S., 2012. Discovery of a late Anglo-Saxon monastic site in Devon: Holy Trinity church, Buckfastleigh. Archaeology International.
Robinson, D. (ed). 1998. The Cistercian Abbeys of Britain: Far from the Concourse of Men. Batsford: London.
South West Heritage Trust. Stumpy Oak Hawson Cross. www.swheritage.org.uk
Stamper, P. 2008. Deer parks and hunting. Parks and Gardens. 17 September 2008, www.parksandgardens.org. I understand this might be a re-working and updating from: Stamper, P., 1988. Woods and parks. The Countryside of Medieval England, 128, p.148.
Wordsense Dictionary. Venari. https://www.wordsense.eu/venari/#Latin
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