Conquered probably by Ceawlin, or soon after the year 577, the manor of Tidenham seems to have remained folkland or terra regis of the West Saxon kings, till Offa conquered it from them and gave his name to the dyke upon it. One of its hamlets bore, as we shall find, the name of Cinges tune, and Tidenham Chase remained a royal chase till after the Norman Conquest.
given by King Edwy, A.D. 956, to the Abbey of Bath.
The manor itself was granted by King Edwy in A.D. 956 by charter[182] to the Abbot of Bath, under whose name it is registered in the Domesday Survey. It is in this charter of King Edwy that the description of the manor and of the services of the tenants is contained. The services must be regarded, therefore, as those of a royal manor before it was handed over to ecclesiastical hands.
The boundaries still to be traced.
The boundaries as appended to the charter are given below,[183] and may still, with slight exceptions, be traced on the Ordnance Survey. [p150]
The northern limit on the Severn is described as Astege pul, now, after a thousand years, known as Ashwell Grange Pill, the puls of 1,000 years ago and the present pills being the little streams which wear away a sort of miniature tidal estuary in the mudbanks as they empty themselves into the Severn and the Wye. Numbers of pills are marked in the Ordnance map, and as many 'puls' are mentioned in the boundaries of Saxon charters and those inserted in the Liber Landavensis.
Inland and gesettes land.
After the boundaries, under the heading 'Divisiones et consuetudines in Dyddanhamme,' [184] the document proceeds to state that 'at Dyddanhamme are xxx. hides, ix. of inland and xxi. of gesettes land.' The manor was therefore in the tenth century divided into demesne land and land in villenage.
Next are stated separately the contents of each hamlet on the manor, as follows:—
Yard-lands.