Sudbury Common Lands
Freemen’s Great & Little Commons Little & Great Fullingpit Meadows North Meadow People’s Park (Harp Close Meadow) Friars Meadow (And Walters Meadow)
Wales
Wales is a beautiful country within Great Britain, of mountains, valleys, meadows, and flat coastal plains. It has its own distinctive culture, language, customs, and politics. It is widely praised for its sporting prowess, particularly in rugby, and for its festivals and music, especially in choral singing. Before the Roman occupation, the religion in Wales was pagan. It is commonly believed that, particularly on Anglesey (an old Norse name) that the druids influenced much of the early government of Wales….
Gild Merchant
The Gild Merchant and Hanse (old German for band or troop) Although gilds in various forms existed during the Anglo-Saxon period it was not until the Norman Conquest that the Gild Merchant came into operation. It formed the reorganisation of the old fraternal and craft gilds into an early form of local government. Newly begotten trade interests and connections were established with Normandy. Reorganisation of trading methods were adopted to suit a similar form of Gild Merchant in existence in…
COURTS OF PIE POUDRE
Merchants Law in the Middle Ages Pie poudre or piepowder is an old Norman French expression that literally means ‘dusty feet’. It is given to refer to travelling ‘foreigners’ visiting a fair or market to trade in goods. It was a summary court held by a borough to record all commercial incidents. Courts of Pie Poudre were the lowest courts of justice in ancient common law. They were often held outdoors. The courts were organised and administered by senior merchants…
East Anglia
East Anglia is the area within Britain first settled by the English people, in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire including Peterborough. The people were referred to as the east Angles. They migrated into England from Scandinavia early in the fifth century, settling firstly in the north of East Anglia. The north-eastern coastline had been commonly known by the Romans as the ‘Saxon Shore’. Early evidence clearly dates their settlement in the fifth century, succeeding the Roman civitas of…
Common-land Ownership
The use and the rights over ‘Common Land’: Those entitled to exercise such rights are called ‘commoners’. It is a popular misconception that common land is owned by the general public and to which everyone has unrestricted right of access. All common land is private property whether the owner is an individual or a corporation. Common land is generally owned, for example by a local council, privately by a landowner, or by the National Trust. Most of such lands now…
A417 Trunk Road Improvements Project
Designated Funding Form Application: A417 Trunk Road Improvements West Cotswolds Accessibility Project Project description The project will focus on improving the accessibility of public rights of way and associated routes to people with a range a disabilities, linking communities overlooked by the Cotswolds Escarpment with the area impacted by the A417 project. The aim is to provide improved links for walkers, horseriders and cyclists between the communities at the base of the escarpment with the escarpment itself and the landscape…
GLAF Site Visit to Alney Island
Thursday 21 October 2021 We met together at around 11am on a morning in fine weather to be shown around part of the site designated ‘nature reserve’. Our guide for the next couple of hours was the kindly, but guarded, Ian Elphick, Senior Countryside Ranger, for Gloucester City Council. Preamble: Alney may have considerable historic significance in that in 1016 it is asserted that Edmund Ironside, son of King Ethelred, the unready, met with Canute of the Danish Vikings at…
An Order for the Admission of Freemen of the City of Oxford
(Approved by Privy Council 2008) 1. Repeal of Existing Order The existing Order for the Admission of Freemen dated 12th October 1551 and all subsequent Orders or amendments made or expressed to be made pursuant thereto are hereby repealed. However, this repeal shall not prejudice or affect any right or interest acquired, or any liability incurred, or anything done or purported to be done pursuant to the said Order. 2. Qualifications for Admission The following persons if aged 18 years…
Woodhall Manor, Sudbury Suffolk
The site of at least two previous moated manor houses In early Saxon times a lord’s ‘Halle’ stood within the defensive walls of the old borough town. The original manor of Sudbury even prior to the Norman Conquest, appears to have been entwined with the farmlands of Woodhall. As subsequently were the lands of ‘Places Manor and those of St Bartholomew’s Priory. In Anglo-Saxon times the manor of Sudbury belonged to the mother of the Mercian earls Edwin and Morchar….