1363 - John de Peytto of Schelton

I live in West Hall and lease half of the manor of Sheldon, including the village of that name from Henry de Sheldon. The Sheldons of East Hall have the other half. My wealth has enabled me to rebuild my house, as well as to add a chapel to the church of St. Giles in the village. The new hall is the finest for miles around. It has two floors, with dormer windows in the steep-pitched roof : this is covered with red clay tiles, like the separate kitchen, to lessen the risk of fire. The hall has separate rooms for my family, and actually has a great stone chimney at one end while at the other is an outside staircase. There is a solar on the upper floor where my wife and daughters can spend their time sewing and embroidering our clothes. Next door is a bedroom of our very own with a great bed which has its own curtains to keep out the draughts and for privacy as the girls have their own bed on the other side of the room. Most of the servants sleep on the floor of the great hall downstairs or outside in their small workshops.

Our family chapel is lit by a lovely stained-glass window, and the floor is of patterned tiles, the best in the district. The central courtyard round the well is now very small because of the size and number of the buildings : the herb-garden and chicken-run have had to be moved across the moat, where some of my retainers are now living in new huts. Within the wall, which is of stone and timber, like the hall, there are now the kitchen buildings, dairy, smithy, barn, dovecote, stables, news, and kennels : and I have put up a fine gatehouse.

I own two postmills, one near the hall and the other beyond the village, both on high ground, as well as a watermill on Hatchford Brook. All these are needed, because the fields near the village - Sheldon, Greatock, Hatchford - besides Ashole and Cockshutt, are all growing crops two years out of three.

They are still largely worked in strips, and all the strips in one great field grow the same crop, or lie fallow for a year, according to the custom of the manor : the waste has shrunk, as timber has been cut and new farms made, but there is still plenty of woodland to give us timber, fuel and pannage (pigs grazing for acorns). The meadows are stripped too, for every man needs the hay crop to keep his best animals alive during the winter. Matters concerning the tillage and husbandry of the manor are dealt with at my court.

Before planting the ground needs ploughing. The plough is very similar to the one Eric used a thousand years before - a wood frame with a steel plough-share. A team of 6 or 8 oxen pull it along. Most people cant afford horses and in any case they are not as strong as the oxen. Because we always run the plough and heap the earth towards the centre f each strip it leaves the countryside with markings on the fields which will be visible for hundreds of years in the future as ridges and furrows.

One year in three we leave each field fallow. During that year the grass grows but except for allowing the cattle and sheep to graze on the weeds and grass we do not use the land at all.

The next year we start to use the field again and God gives us excellent crops; but if we do not leave it fallow every third or fourth year in rotation God makes the crops get smaller and useless. The rotation we usually follow is barley, wheat, then fallow. Because of the Plague I have turned some of my land to sheep because they take less staff to look after.

A few years ago, after some good harvests, Sheldon could afford to rebuild its small timber church : everybody gave money, materials, or labour, and a larger building of sandstone brought from outside the manor was erected. I have now built a chapel beside it. The priest's house is inside a moat nearby.

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