SOMERSET HUNDREDS AND DOMESDAY

Hi Dom. As you probably know Pensford isn't mentioned in the Domesday census (Completed 1086) which is based on Manorial settlements from the pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon era of common strip farming. It was hierarchical but less so than the Norman feudal system that replaced it fairly quickly and brutally after 1066.

Of course it is Belluton that IS listed and was one of the largest in Somerset. Maybe the presence of the river as a means of power generation for various types of mills could have been one of the reasons it did so well. It had no less than eight! The problem is in deciding the actual location and boundaries of categories of land use mentioned - nearly 300 acres plus woodland and mixed strips.

The population, if we assume about five to a household (probably more), would have been about 800, not so different from today. Interestingly although not mentioning Pensford it does refer to 'villagers' and 'burgesses' which is definitely suggestive of a 'town' or village of some sort.

What is confusing is that Belluton is said to be in Keynsham Hundred whilst Pensford north and west of the bridge and road (now A37) fell in the Chew Hundred and Stanton Drew parish. If there were eight mills in the Belluton entry and it in turn was in the Keynsham hundred it would have to place the lands and mills eastward of Belluton and the old Pensford bridge.

Pensford church is built c 1300. Whether the mill race pre or post dates it is not altogether clear but the architecture of the weir itself (as with the buried one at Publow) suggests 17th or 18th C. to me, although that doesn't mean there wasn't a more primitive one there before it. I'm probably wildly wrong so I await correction.

I did some historiography stuff back in the day. It's easy to get lost in the forests of material and of course the further back you go, the harder it is to even read the stuff. 'History' is the bit that is left to modern eyes and awareness when the majority of people - their lives and experiences - have become completely lost. As a general rule only those things built or written remain as a testimony and both are subject to the depredations of time.

There are two rules of thumb that the poorer the person is, and the further back one goes, the less there is to find or uncover. This of necessity gives a slanted view of 'history' that only in relatively recent times has been addressed by scholars such as in Christopher Hill's 'The Making of the Working Classes'.

Locally, the Strachey Papers held at Taunton are a good source but there are many more. Our old friend John Locke's papers in the Bodlean and National Archives have been well studied and include details of his Belluton Estate holdings including various rented properties in Pensford. This may or may not give some indication to the Domesday entry some six hundred years prior.

Following photo-copy extracts from https://archive.org/details/libraryofjohnloc0000unse/page/11/mode/1up?view=theater

Locke's writing from an interleaved Bible in his library.

LOCKE'S LIBRARY IN 1704