I. GENERAL

his study has been of 7 houses - four farmhouses, two of which went with no more than 25 and 20 acres respectively, one house with orchards and a smallholding, and two with little more than a small orchard and a garden. Dating to the late 15th or the early 16th century is proposed, principally from the abundant evidence of formerly open halls. The term 'medieval' is used in the sense of the original building having been before about 1530. We have studied the houses at leisure over two years, during which we have also visited many other houses within a radius of 5 miles and, in the absence of any previous study, have gained an impression of vigorous building activity during the period. It is to be emphasised, however, that dating criteria are few. We have been able to return several times to most of the houses and pay tribute here to the friendliness and interest of the owners, in both Stocklinch and elsewhere. This has led more than once to the identification of features which might have been overlooked.

Location and topography

Stocklinch, two miles north-east of Ilminster, is one of a group of villages which lie at the foot of high ground to the north of the main road A303. Their lands are drained by the river Parrett on the east, the river Isle on the west. The Isle touches Stocklinch at Ilford Bridges and is there only a little over 50 feet above sea-level. Thence south-eastwards the ground rises slowly through the fields to the principal village street at about 100 feet. The gradient then increases sharply north- and eastwards, to a maximum of over 300 feet. The parish is almost two miles long from north-west to south-east and half a mile in breadth. In this small area, just under 500 acres, there were two manors, Stocklinch Magdalen and Stocklinch Ottersey, each with its church, though the boundaries of manors and ecclesiastical parishes did not entirely coincide. Stocklinch Magdalen church is in the village street, while that of Ottersey is on higher ground and isolated, save for manor-house, rectory and a few houses below it. The land of the two manors comprised just over 400 acres, the glebes a third of the remainder, while the 19th century tithe surveys showed only three other freeholds of over 10 acres.

Documentary evidence

We found that 6 of the 7 houses had been the property of the Ilchester Almshouse Trust, with the aid of whose records we were able to trace the tenures by which these and other properties were held, in several cases back into the 17th century'. The documents also contained a number of references to occupations, and so helped towards an impression of the social and economic make-up of the community. The process was aided by the discovery of two inventories, one of the 17th century relating to an Ottersey property, the other of the 18th century identifiable as concerning one of the houses to be described2. The Almshouse Trust is the successor of the Ilchester Corporation, in whose Bailiffs and Burgesses was vested the ownership of the former manor of Stocklinch Magdalen, with additional lands in Ottersey. The transaction was completed in 1475, following an assignment for the benefit of the poor of Ilchester 50 years previously. If we have taken a correct view of the time when the houses under discussion were built, the development took place not long after ownership passed formally to the Ilchester Corporation.

The documents of most importance to us have been a survey and reference book, commissioned by the Clerk to the Corporation in about 1792 (hereafter cited as the 1792 survey), the records then being in much confusion. The tithe surveys (Stocklinch Magdalen, 1845; Stocklinch Ottersey, 1839) have also been of great help in piecing together the nature of the holdings of land which went with the houses.

Economic and social deductions

The 1792 survey shows that the Corporation owned 160 acres, of which, from the tithe surveys, a quarter was in Ottersey. Towards the end of the I8th century, half the land had come into hand and was let either on short term lease or at will. Earlier in the century, close on three-quarters of the land was subject to the West Country system of 99 year leases, backed by lives3, and the rest was held by copy of court roll. Several of the documents relating to leases show specifically that copyholds were being replaced. The largest holding, before the leasehold system began to break up, was just under 40 acres. Among the dozen lease- holds, the next largest were of 20 and 16 acres. One or two might be termed smallholdings, but several had too little land to support a family, while at the bottom of the scale was 'a moiety of a cottage and garden', three perches in all. From these leaseholds have survived 5 dwellings, two of them styled 'farmhouses' in the 1792 survey, one going with a smallholding, and two described in the survey as 'houses', though by modern standards they would be nearer to cottages.

There were 7 copyholds, covering just under 50 acres in all. The largest accounted for 25 acres; the smallest was a single narrow strip in the Middle Field. Five have been traced as having had a building, ranging from a 'dwelling house, outbuildings, barn …' going with the largest copyhold - the house still stands - to a cottage which included the smithy. This last, surprisingly, was copyhold in the early 18th century, leasehold in the middle, and copyhold again by the end.

Both the map and the reference book of the 1792 survey show that an orchard was the normal accompaniment of a house, whether other land was much or little, and even, today, in spite of clearance, there are many cider-apple orchards in the residential area. The 17th century inventory mentioned above, of a leaseholder, who was also a shoemaker, lists hogsheads both at home and at a village the other side of Ilminster, where they had been sent with cider. That of the 18th century shows that the lessee combined dressmaking with cider manufacture, while the lease of her predecessor describes him as a soap-boiler4. Other occupations could be quoted, and it is clear that the standard of life often depended on trade and manufacture as well as agriculture. Yeomen are mentioned, as to be expected, in documents relating to the two largest land holdings. The only occupier specified as a husbandman leased the 'moiety of a cottage', where in the late 18th century he was followed by a baker. In a stable community, it is not improbable that the make-up of part farmers, part smallholders-craftsmen-cidermakers extended back to the medieval period. And looking forward to the 19th century, there was again no difference in principle in the occupations recorded in the 1851 census, save for the appearance therein of the servants and the landless labourers.

As an aside, it may be worth adding that the distinctions between classes were not rigid. One surname in an 18th century document is attached to a 'Mr.', in another to a husbandman. The lessee of the largest farm was a yeoman, but his heir bought a large 17th century house with a few acres of land, and became a gentleman. Elsewhere there is reference to a yeoman's daughter marrying a surgeon.

The agrarian background to the community was a single medieval field system - three main and three minor fields - within which the strips of the Ottersey demesne (that of Magdalen is not distinguishable with certainty), and of the glebes, the tenantry and the small freeholders, were so fragmented and mixed that exchange, precedent to general enclosure, was long delayed. There were closes within the fields by the time of the 1792 survey, but nearly a century later the 1:2500 Ordnance Survey (1st ed., 1885) has the text 'allotments' across the areas of the former West, Middle and East Fields. A farmer's wife remembers the enclosure of the hilly Middle and East Fields; and on the higher slopes, lynchets preserve the evidence of former strips. In the West Field, between village and river, many long strips remain unenclosed, with a variety of crops of which one is wheat grown for thatching-reed. Near the houses and between the churches are older enclosures, possibly representing former common, while closes on the periphery correspond with meadows by the river and marginal land on the high ground.

The houses of the two parishes are intermixed almost as much as was the land. There is a tendency for Magdalen houses, including one of those studied, to predominate near the church. In Stoney Lane, to the north-cast of the village street, all houses except one are of Magdalen, five of the old houses being among them. But in the village street and in the road leading out to the north-west there are Ottersey houses too; and the only Ottersey concentration is a small one in Owl Street, which leads to the manor-house and church, and also to our sole example of a house in that parish.