STONEYFIELD and the LIVESTOCK TRADE
  by Stan Waight and George Watts

[Members will recall that George has talked to us in the past about droving in Hampshire. The article that follows is, with his agreement, a revised version of one in which he and I collaborated for the Hampshire Field Club some years ago, when I was researching the Hampshire estates of Corpus Christi College in Oxford. Stan Waight]
Livestock marketing, and the droving trade on which it depended until 1840, are neglected topics in Hampshire history. For centuries, thousands of sheep, cattle and horses were sold at the fairs and markets of Weyhill, Winchester, Stockbridge, Romsey and elsewhere. But where did all those animals go? What happened to them? We get what we believe is a significant clue from an unexpected source  -  an Oxford college.
In 1517 Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester, purchased two separate areas of pasture field to provide further income for his newly-founded Corpus Christi College in Oxford. Both were about three miles from the walled town of Southampton  -  Stoneyfield to the north-east in South Stoneham [GR SU 444156] and Peverels to the north-west in Nursling [GR SU 384152]. Attached to both fields were rights to grazing in four areas of heathland common, at Millbrook, Chilworth, Baddesley and Merton. They were purchased as a package, and Peverels is shown on the 1^st Series 6" Ordnance Survey map as 'Mansbridge Detached', suggesting a long association between them.
Stoneyfield adjoined Mansbridge, formerly the lowest bridging point on the River Itchen and major point of access to Southampton from the east and north-east. The northern part of the field is now occupied by part of the Swaythling Housing Association's modern housing estate, and no earlier features are discernible, while the southern part is bare and, in the main, derelict and stony. A depression adjoining the road at the western side of Mansbridge is possibly the remnant of a boundary ditch (necessary to confine livestock), while the rest of the boundary is on land which slopes away sharply to natural margins--in the south to the river Itchen, and in the west to the former leet or millstream of Woodmill and the valley which leads into it. The Peverels field was adjacent to what we now know as Bakers Drove and Chilworth Drove, and part of it is now occupied by the Millbrook Community School.
Our interest lies mainly in Stoneyfield, because it was part of our parish of South Stoneham long before West End became a separate entity.
The two parcels of land had been in the hands of a Dorset family, the Dacombes, since 1385, and before that of the Peverels. Although not large estates  -  Stoneyfield was a little over 30 acres in extent  -  they were compact areas of pasture, and information provided by the Corpus Christi archives suggests a special historical connection with the town of Southampton, and its trade in livestock.
The College archives contain three principal series of documents that throw light on the early history of the estates, and go on to present a fairly comprehensive picture of the tenancies and tenants from 1517 until their disposal in the 19^th century. They  were the Twyne Transcripts, the Langdon Maps and the Lease Books, and all three were used extensively when researching Stoneyfield and Peverels.
The creation of the Twyne Transcripts in 1627 was one of the measures taken by the College to strengthen title. These were chronologically arranged transcripts of title deeds which, in the case of Stoneyfield, dated back to the beginning of the 14^th century.
A similar measure was the commissioning of Thomas Langdon to map its estates, and Stoneyfield and Peverels are included in a map of great accuracy. Bishop Fox, who was devoted to the view that the countryman was the mainstay of England, built into the Statutes for his newly-founded college a prohibition on any alienation or disposal of its agricultural land. This ban had the effect of ensuring that Langdon's map was valid until the 19^th century, when the two enclosures were still readily identifiable on the 1^st Edition of the Ordnance survey 6" maps. In fact, the boundaries of Stoneyfield remain identifiable in the most recent Ordnance Survey 1:25000 map of Southampton.
The Lease Books contain transcripts of almost every lease since 1517, so we know who the lessees were from that date. The Dummer and Andrews families of Swaythling were lessees of Stoneyfield from 1651 until it was sold to the sitting tenant, Dummer Andrews, for £358, on 16 Mar 1801 under provisions for the redemption of Land Tax. The rent during the whole of this time was £1 6s 8d plus the value of a quarter of wheat and ten bushels three pecks of malt  -  the variable corn rent being a form of inflation-proofing.
The earliest mention of Stoneyfield in the Twyne Transcripts is in a charter of 1368, when John Dacombe granted to John le Smyth and his wife Lucy a house in Mansbridge …
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