The Watermill of Greensted

An entry in Domesday Book5

of 1086 records the existence of a mill
in Greensted. The entry appears under the Hundred of Ongar, and
within the estate of a landowner named Hamo the Steward. Within a
longer entry for the parish, it is stated that:
".... [There is] woodland for 400 pigs. [There are] 16 acres of
meadow. [There is] now 1 mill ...."
In total, the woodland of Greensted supported 520 pigs. Domesday
woodland in East Anglia was measured according to its capacity to
support pigs, fed from the available acorns and beech mast. This
method of estimating the value of woodland would have been quick,
and maybe more relevant to the intended purpose of Domesday, than
assessing area in acres since the number of pigs would have been
known closely. Pigs may be translated to a measurement of area if it
is assumed that one pig required roughly one acre of woodland. This
conversion from pigs to acres can only be a rule of thumb, but there
is some analyses to justify this, based on otherwise quantified
acreages of woodland within Essex6

. Therefore, the woodland in
Greensted may have amounted to around 500 acres, leading to the
conclusion that Greensted was considerably more wooded then than
it is today.
Domesday records not only the condition and structure of a
settlement, but also the changes in the settlement during the 20 years
of the Norman Conquest, between 1066 and 1086. Thus the mill was
in existence at Domesday, but the use of "now" in the entry implies
that it was built during and not before the Norman Conquest. About
one in three settlements in Essex were recorded as having a mill7
. A
few of these places are recorded as possessing a fraction of a mill,
generally the result of sharing a mill with a neighbouring settlement.
Other settlements possessed several mills, Ham, now East and West
Ham, was even recorded as having eight mills, just one less than
existed twenty years before.
Analysis of the sites of these mills suggests that all the mills were
watermills, invariably aligned along watercourses. Darby states that
the distribution of these mills is sometimes a puzzle, with some of
the larger settlements being without a mill, suggesting that some
mills might not have been noted.
A later reference to a mill in Greensted is to be found in the Calendar
of Inquisitions Post Mortem of 1349. Such inquisitions were set up to
establish the extent and ownership of an estate following the death of
a tenant-in-chief, holding an estate directly from the king. The
inquest was held before a jury of twelve local men of high standing.
During this process, the inheritance of the estate would have been
confirmed. The entry of the inquest into the estate of Robert
Burghcher (Bourchier) includes property in Grenestede:
"Greenestede. A messuage, 60a land, 8a. meadow, 15a. pasture, a
wood, and l9s. 3 1/2d. rent, a watermill, a windmill, and pleas &c. of
court, with the advowson of the church, held of Ralph, baron of
Stafford, as of the manor of Aungre, service not known."
A "messuage" is a homestead. The "advowson" carries the right to
appoint a priest to a benefice, usually associated with a parish
church. A watermill still operates and a windmill has now been
added to the estate.

Greensted is a small parish. One stream passes along the length of
the parish, forming the border of the parish before entering the
Cripsey Brook at the E end of the parish. The position of the
watermill on this stream is easily determined from the existing
landscape. Extensive alterations must have taken place to change the
course of the stream. The distance from the Hall to the site of the mill
is about 200 yards. Since there is no other evidence of a watermill on
the stream, this site is likely to be the Domesday site.
The details of the site of the Mill have changed, as shown on recent
OS series maps. The current topography confirms the construction of
the millpond and defines the millrace, together with the development
of a banked island, possibly for the actual site of the mill itself. There
is a noticeable drop in the stream at this point, so much so that
previous owners of Greensted Hall have constructed small waterfalls
by the addition of groups of stones in the stream. The site is now well
wooded, more so than shown in the OS survey of c.1870, and the site
is obscured.
My thanks are due to Mrs Clare Cox for the tour of the site.