Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 1 (2013), p. 171

The Northamptonshire Record Society enjoys the good fortune of support from the Anthony Mellows Memorial Trust for the publication of volumes of records from Peterborough Abbey. This has given us a series of high quality editions of documents from the monastery’s archives, of which this bulky collection of manorial accounts is the second to be edited by Sandra Raban.

The abbot of Peterborough’s estate in the early years of the fourteenth century consisted of 26 manors, which were mainly in the Soke of Peterborough or in Northamptonshire, with a few outliers stretched across Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland. In common with other large estates, both ecclesiastical and lay, the abbot’s administrators produced enrolled versions of the annual accounts for all of the manors. These fair copies are very legible, and were clearly objects of pride for their compilers, but unlike the original accounts for individual manors, they lack the informative notes by the auditors and subsequent alterations. This volume contains all of the enrolled documents for three accounting years, 1300–01, 1307–08 and 1309–10. In addition there are accounts for two manors that take us into the years of the Great Famine.

These important sources have been used by historians, notably by Edmund King to delineate the administrative structure of the Peterborough estate, with its cash income, sown acreage, crops and labour supply. His calculations of numbers of animals were much expanded in a book on pastoral husbandry by Kathy Biddick. Others have dipped into this rich resource for information about particular themes, for example in this reviewer’s pursuit of references to gardening. Now that the records are readily available in English translation, we can expect that much more use will be made of them. Those interested in building history will find a mass of detailed descriptions of work on the fabric of the manors. Historians of technology can read much about the construction of mills and carts. There has been extensive investigation of landscape and settlements in Northamptonshire, and the accounts contain relevant data about the use of land and the topography of villages. Useful references to rents and tolls reveal something about the market towns of Peterborough, Kettering and Oundle. The court revenues of manors are presented in sufficient detail to depict the main features of cases coming before the manorial courts, including marriage fines and entry fines. There are also brief accounts for the revenues from the private hundreds controlled by the abbey. The neglected subject of the seigneurial baking monopoly could be explored through the references to ovens, such as that of Great Easton which produced an annual 20s. The delight of these documents is their capacity to bring to light unexpected information, which would not be easily found elsewhere – who would suppose, for example, that a brief reference to plots of land at Tinwell would show that in 1307–8 the vills of both Tinwell and Ingthorpe had religious fraternities? The surprising inclusion of the lord’s personal expenditure in the accounts of the private hundreds means that we know the cost of the abbot’s boots.

We must be grateful for the skill and stamina of the editor in completing a volume of 700 pages, which is provided with an introduction, map, glossary and index. Translation of the many technical terms always poses problems, and Dr Raban has overcome them by consulting with specialists. This reviewer’s only complaint is that the Latin word bercaria, shown in a lengthy publication in a well-known journal in 1995 to mean a sheepcote or sheephouse, is translated here as sheepfold and equated with ovile, that is an open pen made of hurdles. The account for Scotter for 1307–8 makes it plain that the bercaria was a substantial building with stone walls and a tiled roof, which cost almost £16.