1086-1407: The Normans and the rise of Oswestry

The webpage Roger of Montgomery: Marcher Lord - Castle builder, d. 1094 , quotes from Medieval Wales by David Walker:

"King William (William the Conqueror) turned to another close friend and advisor, Roger of Montgomery, to control the middle range of the frontier (between England and Wales), and he built up a strong feudal enclave centred on his new castle of Shrewsbury. He consolidated his hold on land which was technically within England but not firmly under English control. He moved into territory which was unmistakably Welsh and which passed into the hands of his military tenants. . . . Reginald de Bailleul had his principal castle at Maesbury, and his lands became the lordship of Oswestry [but it wasn't called that until about 200 years later... ed.]."

It is generally agreed that the Reginald's castle was the one that later became known as Oswestry. But, as the online version of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica says: "it was not definitely known as Oswestry until the 13th century. In the Domesday Survey it is included in the manor of Maesbury." Unfortunately some historians tend to refer to 'Oswestry' retrospectively which causes some confusion.

The Domesday Book, of 1086, gives Maesbury as the administrative centre of the Anglo-Saxon Hundred of Mersete. But within the previous 20 years the Norman Lord, Rainalt (usually translated as Reginald De Baiueul) had built his 'caftellu LVVRE' (Castle Luvre or even l'oevre) - three miles to the north, described in Domesday as being at Meresberie (Maesbury). There is no official record of it beng called 'Meresberie Castle' but the anglo-saxon peasants would not have been too familiar with Latin or Norman French, so it may well have been known that way locally.

In 1094 Earl Roger died, and by then Reginald appears to have moved the administrative control of the district to his new castle, which would be consistent with the Norman practice of the time. If this is correct then it was the end of Maesbury's era as the local capital - and probably the end of Mersete as the castle controlled a much wider area and the Normans imposed their own system to replace the saxon 'hundreds'.

But Maesbury's role was not quite finished at that time as we have an unconfirmed report that Henry II (grandson of William the Conqueror) camped his army at Gwern y Brenin in 1163. This could be consistent with well documented accounts of Henry occupying the Castle (Luvre, later Oswestry) in 1165, and using it as a base for his ill-fated attempts to conquer Wales. The castle had apparently been occupied by the Welsh Prince Madoc from 1149 to 1157, then retaken by the Fitzalan family but the situation remained unstable until King Henry arrived to settle it.

There is a house on the Gwern y Brenin side of the Morda, in Ball Lane, called 'The Camp', and the name goes back some way as F. A. Mason* refers to 'Jones the Camp' being there in the 1920s, but there is no mention of it on the 1839 map of field names. However, this could have been an ideal location for Henry to prepare his army prior to occupying the castle as there was marsh land to the west (Gwern y Brenin translates as King's Marsh), and the probably still fortified Maesbury to the east - plus a good track along Wat's Dyke to within a few yards of the castle.

There is no evidence that Maesbury diminished in size after it lost control of the region, just that many other places seems to have become a lot bigger, notably the town that grew up around the castle and eventually became Oswestry.

The Normans were no great road builders but the tracks between their castles must have become enlarged and the settlements along the routes became more important. The route between Castle Luvre and Shrewsbury must have been established early on, following a similar route to the modern A5. Hisland (not in Domesday but probably part of Aston which was) gained a motte & bailey castle near the road, and West Felton (tiny in Domesday but also near the road) gained both a motte & bailey and a Norman church.

The route from Baschurch to Montgomery, both major settlements at the time, passed through Ruyton XI Towns, which gained a motte & bailey and a church, whilst a comletely new village of Knockin grew up around the motte & bailey and church which the Normans built there.

Maesbury, meanwhile, was effectively bypassed by all this. The Normans were quite destructive of Saxon churches, usually replacing them with their own buildings as a stamp of their authority. But in Maesbury they appear to have simply demolished the church mentioned in Domesday and replaced it with one near the Castle Luvre, reinforcing the change of administrative control.

The website for St. Oswalds Church, Oswestry, says that the tower of the church is thought to have been built in 1085. This seems rather unlikely as it was not mentioned in Domesday the following year, but perhaps they had just started it then. Either way the Maesbury church was probably demolished soon after the new one opened, which was almost certainly not dedicated to St. Oswald at that time. By 1190 the town had grown enough to be given a market charter, but apparently in 1272 it was called Blancminster after the white stone of the church. Meanwhile the Welsh were calling it Croes Oswalt (Oswald's Cross) by 1254 - and it looks like their version eventually won the name game.

Maesbury has always been a very unusual village in not having a church of the established religion - at least between 1086 and 1906. It looks like the Normans did that deliberately to help wipe out the Saxon folk-memory of their ancient capital, and it just stayed that way for the next 820 years.

Maesbury Mill was not mentioned in Domesday, but it was there, at the bottom of Maesbury Road (now Ball Lane) by 1407 as the notes from the Oswestry School website record:

Oswestry School was founded in 1407 in the reign of Henry IV by David Holbache, friend of Owain Glyndwr, war treasurer to the king, crown pleader for Wales and member of parliament for the county of Shropshire to provide education "for children on both sides of the Welch Marches and so bring all together into a closer union".

David and his wife, Gwenwhyvar, endowed the school with substantial "lands, tenements, meadows, woods and underwoods" in Sweeney, Treflach and Maesbury together with a corn mill at Maesbury, but by the end of the end of the eighteenth century all of these had been sold.

The demolition of the church and building of the mill seem to have changed the shape of Maesbury, it became stretched along the lower end of what is now Ball Lane, and part of the original fortified settlement reverted to agricutural land, known as 'Maesbury Field' in 1839.

The English Heritage website gives the following: "It is generally accepted that motte and bailey castles were introduced into England by the Normans and were widely built by them after the Conquest. . . . Motte and bailey castles ceased to be built after the 12th century, being superseded by stone castles and other fortified dwellings of various classes." The map below shows the 'castle mound' at Hisland, close to the old A5, marked on more recent OS maps as 'Motte'.

Below is a graphic of a typical Motte & Bailey Castle, apparently about 700 mottes (mound+moat) have been found in Britain, the bailey (tower) rarely survives.

*Sources:

• Oswestry Castle by David Timmins

A Little Bit of Shropshire: The Village of Maesbury, 1800-1930 by F. A. Mason, published by Gee & Son, Denbigh, November 2000, ISBN 07074 0350 2.

Two books by John Pryce-Jones make brief mention of Maesbury:
Oswestry through the Ages - an introduction Llanforda Press, 1991, ISBN 0 9517162 0 4
Oswestry - A Local History Llanforda Press 1994, ISBN 0 9517162 2 0