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CommonersCorner1997_04

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years ago

Commoners' Corner No.5

First published in the Yateley Society Newsletter in April 1997

The Welsh Drive & Blackwater Fair

On Easter Sunday Elizabeth, Eleanor and I decided to walk the Welsh Drive westwards from Coopers Hill, something we have never done before. With pubs, coaching inns, turnpikes and cattle fairs in our minds from the preparations for the Society‘s May Fayre exhibition, it was easy to romanticise about the drovers arriving at our inns and pubs for the Blackwater Fair every November 8th. It is not so easy to visualise the drovers with their herds and flocks along the Welsh Drive, as it is today, lined with forestry, even if it has been granted a prestigious award. The animals needed ample free grazing from the common lands en route, not fir trees and huge gravel 'mines' which our present day economy demands. A clear case of acclaimed environmental management killing the historical evidence. Without any historical evidence we conjectured how many people in present day Yateley knew that the Blackwater Fair operated under Royal Charter, once each year every year for some 700 years until it was killed as recently as 1930.

We then realised how little we knew about the fair ourselves, even though there must be people alive today who actually attended the Blackwater Fair, to sell stock, as well as to take part in the jollifications. Obviously the size of the Fair and the need to pasture so many animals, would cause a major disruption to the normal quiet life, and well as a major boost to the local economy. We knew for example that there were no licensing restrictions for chartered fairs, and that local householders could brew as much beer as could be consumed. Obviously too, the large number of animals arriving on Yateley and Eversley Commons, even for those few days in November, would play their part in the overall ecology of the heathlands we prize so much today. No wonder that descriptions from the turn of the century describe Yateley common as flat for miles with only the odd clump of trees and some gorse amongst the heather.

When I got home I checked Richardson‘s Local Historian‘s Encyclopedia concerning the Blackwater Fair. In 1889 the Government was investigating market tolls and rights. It therefore published various reports and its own contemporary research. A volume entitled Market Rights and Tolls gave, county by county, the places which were named in Owen‘s New Book of Fairs first published in 1792, together with the Governments own research for 1888. In Hampshire the number of places entitled to hold a market had dwindled to six. Around here Odiham, and interestingly, Mattingley, had held markets in 1792 but were no longer doing so in 1888. The number of fairs had also fallen. Eversley, Heckfield and Mattingley had lost theirs, whereas fairs were still being held at Hartley Row, Odiham and, not surprisingly, Blackwater.

The Government also published a list of market and fair charters dating from the reign of King John to the 22 year of the reign of Edward IV (1482-3). Place names are given in original spellings from a manuscript in the Public Record Office, styled Palmer‘s Index no 93. Blackwater is apparently not named in the Hampshire section of Richardson‘s summary, but Dogmaresfeld is. However there is a long alphabetical list at the back where no county information was given in the original index. Not finding Blackwater, I immediately looked for Bredeford, the old name for Blackwater corrupted from Bryda‘s ford as found in the boundary description of King Edgar‘s gift of the Manor of Crondal to the Old Monastery at Winchester. I was very pleased to find a listing for Bretford, given its charter for a market 11Hen3 (ie 1226-7). I postulated that Bredford was actually a corruption of the Anglo Saxon Brãd (broad) and ford.

The only trouble is that I have a very sceptical wife who actually took Anglo-Saxon. She pointed out that Bretford could merely be Bradford, as pronounced in modern usage in that northern city. So not to be outdone she looked through the list and found Dodebroke, a market and fair given its charter 41Hen3 (1256-7). Dudda‘s brook is according to Baigent a corruption of the old name for Blackwater, as the river, not the place. The Old Celtic for Blackwater is Dhu dwr, pronounced according to our Celtic speaking sister-in-law, something like Dudda.

If anyone out there is actually qualified in mediæval latin and palæography, it would be interesting to purchase both charters from the Public Record Office to find out if they will give us any further clues as to the origins of the Blackwater Fair. In the meantime if there is anyone out there who would like to research the fair in more recent history it might throw light on yet another usage of our commons as drove routes, without paying turnpike tolls, and with plenty of free grazing. A plea sent out on the Internet might not turn up many 80 year olds with reminiscences, but a troll through the old Reading newspapers at Reading Library might produce advertisements and editorial.

 

 

 

BlackwaterFair - Answer to Note & Queries Q2

Where was Blackwater Fair held?

How big was Blackwater Fair?

 

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