A Croydon Quincentenary

About the time that Christopher Columbus was making his landfall in the Americas, John Morton, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, was instituting a survey, or terrier, of his lands in Croydon, in order to ascertain who should be paying what to him in rent. This "terrier of the lands lying within the Parish of Croydon by diverse persons which quitrent the Archbishop", undertaken in 1492/3, may not have been the first such survey carried out, but it is the oldest in Croydon still in existence. My notes are based on Clarence Paget's transcription in the 1920s.

The terrier covered the copyholders, who were customary tenants, who held as their deeds copies of the entries attesting the fact of their tenures in the manor court roll, kept by the steward of the manor. A quitrent was a token rent paid to the lord of the manor.

Two other terriers are in existence, one in 1511 (Archbishop Warham) and another in 1543 (Archbishop Cranmer). Unfortunately there is no map and one has to look at the Enclosure Award map of 1800 in order to relate it to modern Croydon, but a lot of changes can occur in a space of three hundred years. However, it is possible to trace the surveyor's route, although Bermondsey Manor lands and Waddon were omitted from the 1492 terrier. He started in the George Street area and walked twice up London Road, firstly looking at the fields on the west, then on the east, going down Green Lane to Thornton Heath, Croydon Common, Selhurst, Norwood, Woodside and back to Croydon. He then surveyed the Town Field area, then on to Addiscombe and the great common fields of Clays, Upfield and Rippingill, along Coombe Lane to Shirley, back along Addington Hills to Croham, then visiting the detached part of the parish known as Croydon Crook (Selsdon) finally passing to Old Town, Duppas Hill and Haling.

It is evident that at this time most of the common fields were still divided into long series of parallel strips, each farmed by different tenants, although some consolidation of holdings was taking place. The fields were not common in one sense, each owner was at liberty to sell his copyhold and there were no fences or hedges. There were, however, some smaller fenced or hedged fields known as closes.

My own studies of the Terrier have been in respect of Croydon Crook and we are able to perceive some idea of what "The Villa de Sellistdowne" might have been like at the end of the 15th century. Then Selsdon road continued straight to the Farley border; the surveyor walked southwards, looking at the fields to the east, returning viewing those to the west. Each field is taken in turn and the owners, acreage and rent of each strip are noted, so one can calculate the acreage of each field.

Most of Selsdon was then owned by members of the Ownstead family. Way back in the 1332 Taxation return for Selsdon, Is' de Ouenstede was levied for 12d. tax and in the 15th century the family gradually increased their holdings, which they maintained until the Restoration.

Selsdon had a Northfield, an Eastfield, a Grotten Field and a Westfield. Spicers Wood (62 acres) was probably a nucleus of the present Selsdon Woods, but Kynges Wood (87 acres) was on the east side of Kingswood Way, not the wood we know now.

Let us look at a typical entry - Northefeld, probably equating with the area comprising Farley and Littleheath Roads:

The total field was 62 acres, of which Jeffery Ownstede held 46 acres.

One field of interest in the first terrier is called the Joigly Land Field (110 acres). In the next survey it is the Jewy and the Lane Field, so presumably the road to Addington ran through or by it. In 1543 part of it was called The Wygh, the Old English word wih is believed to refer to a heathen shrine, so did Gee Wood (the present name) once have a religious significance?

So far I have been unable to relate precisely the fields shown in the terrier with the fields shown in the 1800 Enclosure map. This is partly explained by the later Ordnance Survey total area computed at 889 acres, whereas my adding up of the field areas comes to only 712 acres. Some of the older calculations were probably rough and ready, but there is little evidence of pure common land or of land held directly by the Archbishop himself. My thoughts are that he didn't own the whole of the Crook, and as there would have been a farmhouse where the hotel now stands, and as there is no reference to a farm in the terrier, this particular area may have been held by the Ownstead family in their own right.

Ted Frith

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Last updated November 6^th 2000
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