Arable land three miles long and one mile and a half broad.
All this reads very strangely to us living in the twentieth century. Put into present-day language it would read something like the following:—
The manor of Patrington, with the neighbouring hamlets of Winestead, Halsham, [Welwick] Thorp, and Tharlesthorp,[[22]] measures 4300 acres,[[23]] and its thorough cultivation would provide work for thirty-five teams of oxen, reckoning eight oxen to each team.
It belonged to the Archbishop of York in the reign of King Edward the Confessor, and is still held by him.
Attached to the lands of the manor-house there are eight serfs who have among them sixteen oxen, and sixty-three cottagers, who own 104 oxen. There are also six small farmers who have under them two serfs and twenty cottagers, and work forty-four oxen. Parts of the manor lands are held by two knights and two parsons. The former are tenants of 720 acres, the latter of 290 acres. On their lands there are four small farmers, three cottagers and five serfs, possessing among them forty oxen.
HOLDERNESS IN THE DOMESDAY BOOK
The land on which wheat, barley and oats are grown measures three miles by one and a half miles, and there are thirty-two acres of meadow land.
In King Edward’s time the annual value of the manor was £600, but is now only £205.[[24]]
The value of the manor of Patrington was, in 1086, only just over one-third of its value twenty-five years earlier. This is one example of the results of the ‘Wasting of the North.’ Others are to be found in the records given of the manors of Burstwick and Kilnsea, each of which had been worth fifty-six pounds, but was then worth only ten pounds. The manors of Withernsea and Hornsea had similarly decreased in value from fifty-six pounds to six pounds. All these belonged in 1086 to Drogo de Bevrere, Lord of Holderness. The manor of Beeford had experienced a still greater decrease in value; for it had sunk from twenty pounds to ten shillings. Others again, such as estates at Barmston, Drypool, Routh, and Sigglesthorne are recorded by the ominous word ‘waste.’ Such entries tell a very sure tale of the effects of King William’s vengeance.