Conclusions
The parish of Alwinton appears to represent a coherent block of territory containing a group of eight agricultural township communities plus a large tract of the adjacent Cheviot uplands providing extensive grazing resources.
It is therefore tempting to argue that the parish may have fossilised the boundaries of an early medieval lordship - such as a shire or multiple estate. The nominal division of this territory between two lordships after the Norman conquest appears rather less coherent and this has inspired some of the theories regarding the ‘Ten Towns’ discussed above.
It should be remembered, however, that Norman baronies were in general more territorially fragmented than the earlier shires, extending over wider areas and often forming discontinuous blocks of manors (Lomas 1996, 15-25). Whatever its pre-Conquest origins, there is certainly nothing unusual in a parish being divided between two or more lordships after 1100. Moreover, however plausible any of the hypotheses discussed above might seem, none can be decisively confirmed or refuted at present.
Indeed, rather than seeking to attempting to devine fossilised fragments of pre-Conquest administrative institutions in the Anglo-Norman arrangments it is more useful at this stage to focus on the feudal settlement established in the early 12th century and consider what the various principal actors - the Anglo-Norman monarchy and two most powerful local baronial lineages - might have been trying to achieve.
The Anglo-Norman monarchy of Henry I was seeking to impose order on the Northumbrian uplands and reward loyal agents (cf. Kapelle 1979). In realising these goals, the monarchy appears to found the Umfravilles willing to assume the burdens and opportunities of lordship in the uplands, at any rate when furnished with the counterbalancing lowland barony of Prudhoe.
It therefore seems likely that the Cheviot upland part of Alwinton parish was granted directly to the Umfravilles, to incorporate it in their liberty of Redesdale with its major castle at nearby Harbottle, because this was the most effective way of maintaining control of this remote upland district, with its multiplicity of cross-border routeways. It was perhaps deemed more appropriate for vice-regal government as part of the liberty than for incorporation in the normal judicial and administrative structures of the county.
A similar explanation might be advanced for the treatment of the ten townships. Of the extensive sweep of upland manors, stretching from the Coquet to the Breamish valley, which were contained within the barony of Alnwick the Vescis retained significant control only of those in Alnham parish, where they held Alnham as a demesne manor and maintained direct relations with the manorial lords of Unthank, Prendwick and Scrainwood.
The remainder, falling within Alwinton and Ingram parishes, were all subinfeudated to the Umfravilles who held two directly and granted the rest to manorial lords. Again, it is possible, that the Umfraville lords, with their powerful castle at nearby Harbottle, were considered by the royal authorities - and perhaps by the Vescis themselves - to be much better placed to maintain control over remote and vulnerable border townships, than the Vescis were, whose main stronghold lay down in the coastal plain at Alnwick.
Thus we see the construction of an extensive and powerful, upland lordship by the Umfravilles, of which Alwinton village, township and parish were but small parts. This lordship stretched from the North Tyne/Rede watershed in the south to the Breamish valley in the north. Its heart, however, was upper Coquetdale, where the administrative centre, Harbottle Castle, was situated, in close proximity to many of the other necessary seigneurial elements - a borough nestling at the foot of the castle ramparts, demesne manors at Shirmondesden and Alwinton with at least one mill and brewhouse, and a small monastic foundation a short distance down the valley, in the shape of Holystone Priory.
The Ten Towns of Coquetdale provided the necessary knights’ fees and the extensive hill pastures of Coquetdale and Redesdale constituted the lordship’s most important economic resource. Exploitation of the fine Kidland pastures was effectively subcontracted to the Cistercian monks of Newminster Abbey, who were experts in such matters, but the Umfravilles retained extensive ‘waste’ grounds and forest tracts elsewhere in Coquetdale and especially in Redesdale. Despite the disparate tenurial components from which it was constructed, the coherent nature of the Umfraville creation is striking.
It is possible that this lordship at least partially reconstituted earlier administrative and defensive arrangements in these border districts, as some have suggested, but equally the potential degree of originality in this Anglo-Norman remodelling should not be underestimated.