Structure Of Settlement : Vills, Villages And Hamlets

The Iter of Wark mentions a total of seven vills in upper North Tynedale, namely Bellingham, Charlton, Tarset, Tirsethoppe, Chirdon, Donkleywood (Duncliffe), and Thorneyburn (Iter: lii-lv, lxiv-v). These do not necessarily represent villages. Rather, as discussed above, they were territorial townships or administrative units. In this case, since the vills are recorded in the context of judicial proceedings and principally in connection with the payment of communal fines, it is likely they represent administrative vills. Moreover the list is not necessarily comprehensive. No vill is recorded on the south side of the river above Chirdon, although the existence of three or four inhabited places can be inferred there and none above Donkleywood on the north side although again a number of settlements can be identified extending far up the valley, including the chapel site at Falstone.

It is by no means clear that the majority of these vills actually contained a nucleated village in the the conventional sense, as opposed to a hamlet or a scatter of dispersed farmsteads. Bellingham was probably the most substantial of the settlements, since it was the site of a chapel as well as a manorial centre (caput), complete with mill and presumably a manor house for the Bellingham lineage. There may also have been a nucleated village at Charlton. The Inquistion Post Mortem for John Comyn of Badenagh, lord of Tarset, lists as part of the manorial holdings fourteen bondages 'in Charlton', each comprising one toft and 20 acres of land.

Even this was masks greater complexity since the settlements of Little Charlton and South Charlton are also mentioned with Little Charlton, at least, if not South Charlton as well, apparently lying south of the river with rights of common in Hesleyside. (NCH XV (1940), 251-2; Harbottle & Newman 1973, 139). These may relate to the manor of Charlton, a sub-manor of Tarset, held by Adam of Charlton at the end of the 13th century, whereas the 14 bondage tenancies (in Charlton proper?) were held directly by the Comyn lords.

Greystead, on the other hand, is explicitly labelled a hamlet and Snabdaugh, in the manor of Chirdon, where Robert Swinburne had held five bondages each with one toft and 16 acres of land, probably falls into the same category. Indeed it seems likely that virtually all the sites listed in the inquisitions or inferred from their occurrence as part of the surnames of people mentioned by the Iter of Wark were hamlets or farmsteads.