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Hanscombe family of Shillington, Beds and Pirton, Herts - title deeds, lordships and family papers, including title to part of the former Musgrave estate and manors

1822 - 1953

From: 1822 To: 1953

Introduction These deeds cover a relatively small part of Shillington and Pirton yet they contain reference to nine different manors. The manorial holdings were small, sometimes just one field, which meant farms lay across several manors and also included some freehold land owned by the farmer himself. This has made choosing the arrangement of the catalogue particularly difficult - will the researcher be primarily interested in the manors at this late date; or will he or she be looking at the farms regardless of whether the farmer owned, leased or had copyhold? On balance the latter seems more likely so the documents are arranged by farm. For the researcher interested in the manors, however, the following is a summary of the nine involved. The Manors At least two of the manors were based in Shillington itself - the Manor of Shillington (also known as Shillington cum Apsleybury or Shillington Bury because it was itself an amalgamation of two earlier manors) and the Manor of Shillington Rectory. By the early 1900s the Lord of Shillington Manor was William Hammond Hanscombe who lived at Pirton Hall. The Lords of the Manor of Shillington Rectory were the Master and Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge. The Victoria County History does not mention this last manor but it clearly existed, because the manorial rights were extinguished formally in 1937 and recompense paid to the college by the Hanscombes, who farmed the land. It must have been a very small manor by then, as only 13 was paid. In the neighbouring parish of Pirton in Hertfordshire, four manors had an interest in this land. Two were held by the Delm-Radcliffe family as part of the Hitchin Priory Estate and were known as the Manor of Pirton and the Manor of Pirton Doddingsells. The third was the Manor of Pirton cum Ickleford, sometimes called the Manor of Pirton Rectory, and its Lord and Lady were Owen Warner and Clara Freeman. The last was the Manor of Ramerick, its manor house said to lie near Holwellbury, whose Lord was St John's College, Cambridge. Three other manors had an interest. The Manor of Luton, where Baroness Ludlow of Luton Hoo was Lady of the Manor, seems to have held small pieces of land in this part of Shillington. The remaining two manors are more obscure. The Manor of Temple Dinsley held just over an acre in one field in Shillington; and the Manor of Maydencroft, in Hertfordshire, may or may not have held land in the area. It's mentioned in association with the Hitchin Priory Estate of the Delm-Radcliffe family. This patchwork of different land holdings came about when parcels of copyhold land exchanged hands so that fields from one manor were combined with fields acquired from another or with freehold fields to form larger farms. Consequently, by the 20th century, the area of a farm no longer coincided in any way with the area of a manor, and although the farm looked and worked like a unit the farmer actually held some of his land freehold, some leasehold, and some copyhold from one, two or more manors. For each manor, he had to go through the ritual of being admitted, swearing fealty to the Lord and undertaking other symbolic procedures, and all possibly for only a couple of acres of land. By the 1920s, the Manor Court which had been so important for local law and custom in the middle ages had become the local solicitor, in his office, asking the copyholder to sign a document. There were few mansions or manor houses left, and the relationship between the Lord and his manorial land had all but disappeared. When copyhold was finally abolished and converted to freehold, the solicitors had a lucrative time working out what recompense the Lord of the Manor should receive from the copyholders for his loss of manorial rights. Generally this was not a huge sum, and often the freehold seems to have been offered to the man who held the most copyhold land in that manor, provided he could raise the compensation money. Failing that, the manorial land was auctioned off in lots, to be held as freehold from then onwards together with the voting rights that conveyed. This, at least, is what happened in Shillington. The Lordships The Hanscombe family, who lived in Shillington from at least 1222, had property of their own in Shillington and Pirton. The Musgraves were the local gentry. They had also been in Shillington for generations, and held the Manor of Shillington. In the late 1800s the Musgrave family ran into financial difficulty involving debts and divorce, and were forced to sell off much of their Shillington property, including the manor. The Hanscombes bought some of this land together with the lordship of the manor, and later passed the manorial waste, which was to all intents and purposes the unfarmable land such as the village green, to the parish council. The Hanscombes also bought the lordships of the Manor of Shillington Rectory and the Manors of Pirton and Pirton Doddingsells. Now the Hanscombes had become substantial landowners. In his will of 1901 William Hanscombe of Pirton Hall described in detail the family silver, heirlooms, and treasures, and his hunting trophies, and made absolutely sure his heirs knew which properties he wished should remain in the family and which could be sold. The last of the copyhold was converted to freehold in the 1930s, and all that was left of the manorial estates was the nominal title "Lord of the Manor".

By farms, a will, and family papers.

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