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negativing or inconsistent with the oral evidence, bat while there is a large
volume of evidence relating to Eights of Common in the Parish generally,
there is not a very large amount relating specifically to the lown Meadows.
Accordino- to a statement in Faulkner's History of Hulham, the Manor
was granted by Tyrhtilus, Bishop, of Hereford, to Erkenwald, Bishop of
London, A.D. 691, but it is sufficient, witheut going into such questionable
antiquity, to know as an incontrovertible fact that, previously to the
Norman Conquest, this Manor formed part of the possessions of the See
of London, and has continued to be held by the successive Bishops of
London, with the exception of a slight interval during the troublous times
of the Commonwealth, until the 30th December, 1808, upon which day the
Manor became vested in the Ecclesiastical Commisioners for England by
virtue of certain Acts of Parliament relating to the Commissioners.
Thus we have a case which is not very frequently met with of a Manor
not having been the subject of frequent seizure and grant by the Crown.
There, can be but little doubt that the Manor in the early part of the
present century was in much the same state as regards area and system of
cultivation as prevailed 800 years before, so that if it can be shown by the
documents that the customs which living witnesses say they know have
been practised, and indeed are practised now, have been in all probability
practised for all time, the Courts of Law will put some interpretation upon
such ancient usage, and will protect the persons entitled to the benefit of it.
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in a somewhat recent action, claimed
that the Manor has always extended, with a small exception, over the
whole of the old Ecclesiastical Parish of Fulham, and this is most likely
correct, for as is well known, Wormwood Scrubbs at the North ; Walham
Green, the Town Meadows, and the Bishop's Palace skirting the East and
South; Starch Green on the West; and the Common Fields, Eelbrook
Common, Shepherds Bush and Brook Green, dotted about the Parish,
were all within the Manor.
Accepting this view as correct, a fair notion of the state of things at the
time of the Conquest, A.D. 1066, may be gathered from the Domesday
Survey.
That wonderful Survey details in the language of the day the state of
cultivation, the number of the tenants, and occupiers of the land.
This Survey supports the view that with a small exception the whole
Parish was included within the Manor, and consequently the owners and
occupiers of all lands in the Manor were inhabitants of the Parish and
vice versa.
The exception in Domesday Book is some land held by the Canons of
St. Paul.
At the date of the Conquest, then, a little over 800 years ago, the lands
in the Parish were (except as above) held and occupied, as follows:
The Bishop held in his own hands a large tract of land, a considerable
free Tenants, and a further large acreage was
held by villain, the predecessors of the modern Copyholders, while the
remamcler, and. this is very important, was gTass land.
These references to meadow and Pasture are of the wildest description,
but taken with other statements in the Survey can, it seems, only bear ono
interpretation, viz.: that the cultivators of the soil, that is the owners
and occupiers of all lands and houses and in the Parish or Manor (except that
of the Canons of St. Paul) were obliged to go or at any rate had a right
to go to these meadows and pastures for the grazing of their beasts.