Monasteries Granges

The basis of economic stability and power in the Middle Ages was land and there are regional and local differences of land cultivation that can be attributed to different monastic orders. The monastic orders looked to farming and industrial estates for the supporting of the community and financing of its building campaigns. Many Granges (the word meaning barn) have a complex of farm buildings occur in the outer courts of many Abbeys, on Manorial farms and Granges elsewhere on the estates, and on the preceptories and commanderies of Military orders. In general they reflected the typical mixed farming economy, though an arable and pastoral bias may be revealed by the relative size of different buildings.

Many of the monastic orders were involved in assarting, meaning the clearance of woodland to provide them with agricultural land for farming. Even the marshes and fens were being farmed as discussed later in this assignment. Some orders were taken over and converted like Stratford Langthorne Abbey which was originally founded. Even so little archaeological research has been carried out on Grange sites a recent survey has shown that much of the landscape around Raystone Grange belonging to Garendon Abbey was being farmed since prehistoric and roman times before the monks arrived on the land and farming continues today. Some orders did not require land or little is known about them like the Military order and Dominicans friars who were more interested in townships and the importance of poverty.

The Benedictine estates had the greatest number of monasteries and owned extensive land properties on anciently settled fertile, low lying countryside and often used the feudal system farming lands by peasant farmers and taking income from feudal dues. The Manor lands could be split in two and would include demesne (meaning land owned by a Manor that a lord owned himself as opposed to lands that a peasant held under the guidance of a reeve or bailiff) and land that was farmed by peasants for the Benedictine Order.

The Augustinian canons were late in claiming some estates and missed out on the chance to acquire many grants of entire Manors. Their Granges came from gifts or were purchased and meant much of the land that was given was wooded and needed to be cleared and improved. They also reclaimed land thought to be unsuitable for farming like the wetlands of east Yorkshire. Also the demesne was often small and was formed around the glebe land owned by churches and the main income was then coming from churches and chapels within they jurisdiction.

During the twelfth and thirteenth century Cistercian monasteries acquired large amounts of land from Norman magnates in return for such gifts the donors hoped for spatial benefits. A good example of this is Tintern Abbey near Chepstow. Here William Marshall gave the land which proved to be generous. Adding lands near Usk to the overall estate. In addition, land at Dore Abbey was given by gift and some of the Royal forest of Treville was cleared but, unfortunately, the monks were later accused of changing an Oak forest in to a wheat field. The Cistercians orders long term effect upon the English landscape were more considerable for they demonstrated that the large scale rearing of sheep could be very profitable enterprise.

The Cistercian monks became the ultimate farm managers of their time and many of there Granges specialised in arable farming, came to develop range of buildings such as could be found on a Benedictine Manor, while the Benedictine and Augustinians themselves learned from and imitated Cistercian practices. Many Granges, like Abbeys, were required to be built in unpopulated areas to prevent contamination from the outside world and this caused many medieval villages to be destroyed by Cistercians monks. An example of this was on the Fountains Abbey estates in Yorkshire in which twenty villages are known to have succumbed to this ruthless depopulation. These resulted in the villages becoming desolate and are now known in archaeological terms as a deserted medieval village or DMV’s for short.

During this period, most of the destruction was taking place in Yorkshire but we must not conclude that the Cistercians were the only orders to remove villages. In my opinion the Premonstratensians and the Carthusians were very capable of removing and resettling a village. At least 15 per cent of monastic Granges were surrounded by moat. Most of the moats only seem to occur in clay land areas, and are common around the Vale of York and Holderness in east Yorkshire and yet rarely in Wales and in the south west of Britain. It is difficult to understand why some monastic Granges had moats and other did not. However, moats around monastic Manor houses and Granges were rarely formidable enough to deter a determined military assault, but they provided some security against illicit entry, theft and thuggery.

Whilst the industrial activities were usually based around the Grange some, for example, at Byland Grange and at Bentley were used for mining iron ore from the surrounding areas level and today the evidence of such activity can be seen in the landscape and show as bell pits. The iron ore had to be smelted so the woodlands were used for this work to be carried out. The main reason for smelting was in order to reduce the weight of the material and thus make it easier to transport. Much of the smelting normally took place near the ore source if fuel was also available nearby. The Forest of Dean contained numerous bloomeries, which are early forms of furnaces and forges. Tintern Abbey had a forge in a wood at St Briavels near Chesterfield in a woodland and harvested beach and elm for fuel for its Furnaces and forge.

Lead mining was carried out on the estates of monasteries and the lead was used for a variety of building projects and also for the renewal of pipes and roofs. Examples of this activity have been found at both Fountains and Byland Abbeys, both opening up lead mines at Nidderdale in Yorkshire. The Monks at Fountains also operated lead smelting industry in the same area and today we can trace this by examples of place names such as Smelthouses. Byland Abbey was extracting iron ore from its Grange at Bentley from about 1180, but the visible bell-pits, the spoil-heaps of which overlie narrow ridge and furrow, date from a later phase of working after the 1580s.

Its was not only the popular orders that carried on the smelting and mining industries but also the Knight Templars who were carrying out the extraction of lead ore. Archaeological evidence of the extraction of lead ore is very limited and hard to prove in the medieval period mainly due to the lack of evidence of ore crushing and washing. This has left very little evidence and smelting boles have yet to be located on the monastic estates. Many other minerals were mined in the surrounding Granges that the monks had created in order to exploit to its fullest extent the land that they had created for themselves.

The biggest event I feel that changed the monastic good fortune was the arrival of the pestilence or Black Death, which came to the British Isles during the fourteenth and fifteenth century and reduced the population by half. It disastrously affected many communities of lay brothers who worked the Granges and also the monks themselves and the infection also kept on returning. This, in turn, forced the labour cost to rise thus making it much more difficult to farm both demesne and Grange so the Abbeys resorted to renting out their lands to lay tenants for a fixed rate. The other major effect I feel was a particularly bad harvest during 1315-1317 which had a huge effect on the farming communities and resulted in many people starving to death and would have caused a devastating effect on the monasteries income and labour force.

The widespread economic changes of the fourteenth century and the decline in the lay brotherhood due to the monasteries became very unpopular by peasant communities eventually forced Tintern and Valle Crucis Abbeys to abandon the ideals of Grange farming. The Dissolution 1530 and 1540 arrived many Granges continued in use as farmsteads or hamlets and some land were sold off and some Granges went back to be farmed once more.

These resources are maintained by and © Webmaster of these pages No part of any of this text or pictures must be copied without consent All Rights Reserved. All information published on this site is corrected and was working when the site was launched by its owners