Review: Medieval Mayfield: Archbishops and Peasants
Medieval Mayfield: Archbishops and Peasants. By Tim Cornish (Mawefeld Books, 2022), 324 pp., colour, fully illustrated, hardback. £30 + postage. No ISBN. Available from https://mayfieldtimshistory.org/.
Readers of Archaeologia Cantiana will know, I’m sure, that the village of Mayfield is situated within East Sussex, well over the Kent border, some six miles south of Tunbridge Wells. Yet although the village forms the focus of this study, the book draws heavily on the wider geographical and jurisdictional landscapes of the High Weald and the diocese of Canterbury and is thus of particular relevance to historians of Kent. Indeed, one of its many strengths is the way it moves seamlessly between the very local, the regional and even the international to produce a detailed understanding of the development of both the parish and of the Weald during the middle ages. Mayfield’s interest to non-residents lies in its long history as the location of one of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s manors, situated at the heart of his extensive and ancient Sussex estate of South Malling. In this volume the author, Tim Cornish, charts the evolution of the parish, from its pre-conquest beginnings deep in the Wealden woodlands through to the protestant reformation of the sixteenth century.
The early chapters of this book are particularly strong, exploring the jurisdictional development of the parish and mapping out its subsequent division between the Norman-imposed Rapes of Hastings and Pevensey. The landscape history of the Weald in this early period is complex and uncertain and Cornish handles this difficult material deftly and with the seriousness that it deserves, piecing together his evidence from a good range of primary source material. In 1260 the Pope granted the then archbishop, Boniface, permission to establish a permanent manor at Mayfield, which – conveniently for historians – resulted in the subsequent creation of a rich body of manorial records. In 1285, for example, Archbishop Pecham oversaw the compilation of Custumals for his various manors, including that at Mayfield. This document reveals the duties of the archbishop’s tenants through which Cornish is able to bring to life the landscape and society of the thirteenth century parish.
Thereafter the book takes a broadly chronological approach to the influence [pg382]of each of the archbishops, examining their use of the manor, their architectural contributions to its expansion and the development of the surrounding village. These chapters are interspersed with detailed explorations of the palace and its community, the establishment of the archbishop’s deer parks and, later on, the rebuilding of St Dunstan’s church, and the destructive impact of fire and plague in the fourteenth century. The parochial manors at Bivelham and Sharden that lay outside the archbishop’s holdings are not neglected, nor is the involvement of Mayfield men in Cade’s rebellion of 1450.
This summary does not do justice to the richness of this book. Indeed, there is so much detail here that at times the reader finds themselves unexpectedly deep in the countryside of thirteenth century Savoy with Archbishop Boniface, negotiating marriage and peace treaties in Scotland and in France with Edward I’s ambassador in 1298, or following Archbishop Winchelsey down into the wine regions of Bordeaux in 1306… but this is not a criticism. The author’s skill in lies in his grasp of detail and the depth of the context he provides, and wherever he takes his reader in the text, he skilfully then returns to the history of Mayfield so that the relevance of these detours becomes apparent. His use of a wide range of primary source material is impressive and reassuring.
This is a physically beautiful book, fully illustrated in colour and including numerous photographs of manuscripts and buildings, besides several useful maps, plans and reconstructions. It is both an impressive intellectual study and a coffee-table book but written with a clarity and fluency that makes it suitable for all readers. There are good appendices, including a list of the parish clergy pre-1544 (the compilation of which is no mean feat); an overview of the architectural report on the village from 2005; and two reconstructed plans of the village tenements and owners for 1498 and 1558. One or two minor comments remain: the Latin text of the papal permission for the manor in 1260 has no English translation, which might have been helpful. More useful, though, would have been a detailed map of the present-day parish. I read the book with an Ordnance Survey map open beside me, to locate the many geographical references that occur in the text. Finally, he includes extensive quotations from secondary sources within the body of the text. These are fully referenced, of course, but it takes the academic reader a chapter or two to acclimatise. Once there, however, this is a genuinely fascinating and stimulating read and the author is to be congratulated on a very impressive achievement.