Part 7 – Charlesworth and Simmondley
After it had been “wasted” in the Harrying of the North in 1068-70, the area known in Domesday as Longdendale, which was all on the south side of the Etherow, was taken into the Royal Forest of the Peak. In 1157, though, Henry II gave the area north of Hayfield to the Abbey of Basingwerk, and this became the Manor of Glossop.
At the time of Domesday, 18 years after the Harrying, its population was still close to zero, and recovery over the next 70 years would have been very slow, as the common land on which villagers had pastured their animals and from which they had obtained wood for fuel and building was now subject to forest laws. However, the Basingwerk monks were Cistercians, who were serious farmers, and the Abbot would be able to face down over-zealous forest officials. It’s likely, therefore, that the rate of recovery went up a gear, and again after 1285 when the Abbot gained exemption from most of the laws.
Charlesworth was the site of a forest court, and on a major way coming from the south and going through Mottram, so would already have been a significant settlement. Coming from the Abbey in North Wales and crossing the Etherow at Bankwood it was also the first village the monks would reach, so they made it one of their bases, constructing from there a way, at least part-paved, through Simmondley to their other main base in Glossop.
A chapel, on the site of the present “Top Chapel”, had been built by 1291, but the Abbey didn’t own the whole village until in 1308 Robert “de Charlesworth” gifted 80 acres of arable, which approximates to the area of “fossil open fields” we can still see on the maps to the north-east and west. It’s likely that one of his ancestors had received the land from the King in return for service as a forest official. In 1329 the Abbot obtained permission to hold an annual fair and a weekly market, putting the village on a par with Glossop as a local urban centre. It would still have been just two straggly lines of wood-framed houses spread out along the way, but some residents would have earned a living from trades or crafts in addition to farming.
Gamesley and Simmondley aren’t mentioned in Domesday, but their names suggest that they may have been very early satellites of Charlesworth. Gamesley remained as two hamlets, Upper and Lower, but Simmondley became a self-contained village with its own open-field system (see Part 3) and a hall. The present hall (see pic) is a 1602 reskin of a much older building. There were also large areas of common to north and west, where the new houses now are, and an even larger area running down between Charlesworth and Chunal to Plainsteads, where the Manor boundary was marked by a cross, the base of which is now the Abbot’s Chair.
To serve its estate the Abbey would have built at least one grange – a group of farm buildings – but exactly where we’re not sure. There’s evidence for one in Glossop, and as there was a chapel in Charlesworth – meaning at least one resident monk – and a market, it’s possible there was one there too. However, the main farming base may well have been in Simmondley.
When in the 12th century the English wool trade began to expand, the Cistercians went into it in a big way – Fountains Abbey eventually had 18,000 sheep. The Basingwerk operation wasn’t on that scale, but in the south of the Manor, in Simmondley, Chunal and Whitfield, there was a large area of open common suitable for sheep runs. In 1433 the Abbey withdrew, and rented the Manor to the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury, and documents show that by the late 1500s their “demesne farm”, the centre of their commercial farming activities, was at Lees Hall.
It seems likely, therefore, that this had also been the main base for monastic sheep farming. There’s no sign, though, of monastic buildings – the old hall was demolished around 1700 and the farm next door is mostly 19th century. Although they were here for nearly three centuries, the only certain physical relics of the monks are a fragment of the Parish Church, and the Abbot’s Chair.
Next week, we will visit the village where things were done differently.
NEXT – Part 8 Whitfield
PREVIOUS – Part 6 Tintwistle, Arnfield and Crowden