From tref(gordd) to tithe: identifying settlement patterns in a north Pembrokeshire parish

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper reports on research that uses a broad range of evidence to examine settlement patterns and field systems in a Welsh-speaking area of north Pembrokeshire where poor medieval documentation restricts conventional research. Using regressive analysis of the 1841 Tithe Schedule and documentary research into individual properties on the 1786 Land Tax list, there emerges a post-medieval settlement pattern of clustered groups of farmsteads and cottages in areas of intermixed holdings, with farmsteads in isolated positions reflecting a process of piecemeal enclosure and consolidation. In the First Edition six-inch 1888 Ordnance Survey map this pattern is obscured by roadside settlement and enclosure of common land and shared pasture, arising from an early nineteenth-century increase in small-scale owner-occupation. A concomitant decline in the numbers of large absentee landowners signals significant change in the earlier settlement pattern which was strongly affected by the capacity (or otherwise) of competing major landowners to enclose and reorganise land in a non-manorialised parish. Place-names track this process of enclosure, with landholdings at the heart of settlement clusters sharing names that are first recorded between the fourteenth and late sixteenth century. Outlying farmsteads bear later names that attest to previous use as moor and shared pasture and, with field-names, provide evidence of a medieval agricultural pattern of infield-outfield, with small open fields adjacent to loosely nucleated hamlets of probable bond origin.