Prior
to this time Froli was a Royal Manor held by Edward the Confessor “in his own person”.
His Queen, Editha, held the manor of Alton (Aweltone). With the
Conquest, Froli came into the hands of William the Conqueror who gave
it to the Nuns of St.Mary's Abbey, Winchester, known then as Nunnaminster,
and it was held by them until the dissolution of the nunnery in 1540. But lets just go back to that Domesday
entry for a moment and look at it in a little more detail. First, the
name, Froli, as it was then. There are two schools of thought
with regard to the meaning of this name. The first is that it derived
from Froehyll or Frijas Hill. Frija was the Norse goddess of Love
and one of Odins wives; she protected mens marriages and made
them fruitful. If this is the case, then the hill referred to has been
suggested as Saintbury, but there is no documented proof that this hill
has ever born any name that would suggest this. The second school of thought,
according to the extensive research undertaken by the late Theo Beck is
that it comes from Mediaeval English frow translating as swift” and
Old English wiell(e) - spring or stream”.
This stream he sees as the Ryebridge stream rising
in the Combe Field opposite Blundens House and known for generations
as Newmans Spring" which flows continuously, but at a season
of the year becomes lavant” and
swollen by water gushing from the adjacent ground, floods the stream,
overflows the culvert and
floods the road with a swiftly flowing stream. Mr.Beck also
adds, With reference to Ryebridge Stream, it is interesting to note
that in West Sussex the word Rithe”,
Ang. Sax., is a fountain; well; rivulet. A small stream, usually
one occasioned by heavy showers
of rain. (A Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect, by the Rev. W.D.Parish,
1875).But whatever the origin of the name, it
is interesting to trace its transition from Froli to
Froyle. In 1086, as we have seen it was Froli; Frolia,
1166; Froila, 1167; Frolia, 1196; Frohill, 1199; Froyles, 1229; Froyle,
1236;
Froille, 1236; Froile, 1237-1242; and the Froyle that we are so familiar
with came into use around 1316. By far the largest class of the population
at the time of the compilation of Domesday was that of the villeins
or villagers; these occupied nearly everywhere the greater part of the
lands of the manor, and the lord depended mainly upon their labour and
services for carrying out the agricultural work on his estate.
The average holding of a villein in addition to his homestead, the messuage
with toft (a place where a house formerly stood) and croft (a
small piece of pasture land near a house) in the village was a virgate
or yard-land, being about 30 acres, consisting of a number of acre and
half acre strips distributed through the three arable fields, generally
ten or twenty in each field. The distinctive feature of these holdings
was that the strips were not collected together in one plot but lay interspersed
in the several fields; one in this furlong or shot (shoot), another
in that. Hence we have Indentures, like this one in 1760, between William
Draper and Adam Blunden, both of who we shall meet later, which contain
pages of references to the fields owned:
.......In Burrowfield thirteen acres and a half dispersedly
in eight pieces (to wit) one piece upon Reed by Reed Close one acre;
one other piece butting to Bonhams ground two acres; one other piece
called the Rainbow acre one acre; one other piece that goes across
the
way that goes to New Close two acres; one other piece by late Forders
half an acre one acre; one other piece near the field Gate half an
acre
and one other piece butting to Hill Close one acre.........
Looking at Froyle today it is hard for us
to visualise that the whole village consisted of just these three fields
at the time of Domesday and for many years to come. But their names
are, perhaps, quite familiar to many of us - Coombefield, Coxfield and
Burrowfield.But by the 1800s the Enclosure Acts
had put an end to this open farming and Froyle looked very different.
In the Froyle Archive is a copy of the Tithe Map of 1847, painstakingly
traced by a Froyle resident, Sue Clark, which, along with its
accompanying
Apportionment Book, gives us a snapshot of the village 153 years
ago. We know who all the landowners were and who rented the land
from them
and there before us are all the names of every field in the parish.
To view a copy of the Apportionment Book in
Adobe Acrobat format, follow the menu item below.