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in Domesday. These denes lay primarily in the weald of
Andred, the great oak and beech forest covering the southern part of the
county and extending into Surrey and Sussex and a short distance into
Hampshire ; and secondarily in the lesser wealds of the lests of the
eastern part of the county. The Saxon charters show that the wealds were
open to intercommoning of the villages of the lest or district in which
the weald lay, just as great stretches of waste in the fen country or in
Dartmoor, or of woodland in Essex, were open to the intercommoning of the
encircling villages,21 but the actual form under which this
intercommoning took place in Kent was peculiar to the county. Even the
word dene occurs rarely elsewhere, and in Ashdown Forest within the Sussex
limits of the weald the more usual form of intercommoning appears in early
documents.22 Instead of turning into the waste all the
cattle, levant and couchant, of tenements anciently arable, the Kentish
villages came to have definite places within the weald which they regarded
as their own peculiar pasture, to which the swineherds could drive the
swine. These places might in time become more or less permanently settled
by men drawn there by the attractions of pasture and use of the timber,
each of these units being called a dene. The total number of denes
mentioned in Domesday is forty-eight and three half denes, and a
distinction is sometimes made between the large denes and the small denes.
They are attached to the lands of St. Martin (five), of the king (eleven
and one-half), of the archbishop (six), of Battle (one), of Hugh de
Montfort (four), of Albert the Chaplain (four), and especially of Odo
bishop of Bayeux (seventeen whole and two half denes). It is evident from
this list that by no means all the denes in Kent can be entered in the
Survey, since we know certainly that the archbishop, for example, had a
very much larger number of denes both in Saxon times and in the 13th
century than is here accorded to him. Probably those mentioned in the
Survey are inserted because of some particular circumstance, while many
more lying in the great stretches of woodland are taken for granted and
included without special mention in the assessment and values of the
villages to which they were attached. The chief divisions made by Domesday
are, first, into denes large and small, with no indication of the basis of
differentiation, and secondly, with lines evidently cutting across the
other division, into denes of woodland, de si?va, sometimes defined
by the actual swine rent paid, and denes which have progressed beyond the
woodland state, and reached the stage of cultivation by villeins or bordarii,
and are measured by the ordinary measures of arable land used
elsewhere in the county. Of drove denes, prominent later on, there is no
mention. In one or two cases, Benenden and Newenden for example, places
once rated as denes have come to be regarded as ordinary villages entered
with others under their respective lords. The ‘men of the walt’ who
paid 50s. for averis et inward22 at Milton
were, as has been said, probably the men living in the region of Marden,
which does not appear by name in Domesday but is mentioned in the
charters, and is later considered a hundred attached to Milton. With the
services of ward and carting due to
21 Compare Fisher, Forest
of Essex; Dartmoor Preservation Soc. vol. i; Round in Journ. Arch.
Assoc. (n. s. III), p. 36 et seq.; Neilson, Terrier of Fleet, Introduction
on intercommoning vills. and Bilsington Chartulary, Introduction on
denes.
22 Mi Acc. (P.R.O.), bdle. 1027, nos. 20—22,
Rent, and Surv. Portf. 15, No. 46. The form ‘dene’ is here adopted,
but ‘denn’ is frequently used.
23 See p. 209a.
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