last Bradshawe, of Bradshaw, of which there is any evidence, was,
only three months before his death, to execute a lease, dated 13th
September, 1735, for eleven years to Robert Lowe and John Jackson of
the old hall of his ancestors, in which document it is described as
“all that capital messuage with the appurtenances lying and being in
the parish of Chapel-en-le-Frith, commonly called or known by the name
of Bradshaw Hall.”
OFFERTON HALL.
By S. O. Addy, M.A.
The hamlet of Offerton is near Hathersage, and now consists of three
houses, called Offerton Hall, Offerton House, and Offerton Cottage. It
stands high, but the moors on the south rise higher still, and partly
hide the rays of the midday sun from these buildings. So, as you walk
up the hill on a summer’s morning, the gateway of the hall, already
darkened by time, is further darkened by shadows. But there is plenty
of light when you get into the courtyard.
You ascend a little-used, narrow lane, with walls on either side, and
leaving Offerton House, itself a quaint old building, on your right,
you presently enter the courtyard of Offerton Hall through a tall
gateway, which stands between farm buildings on one side and a barn on
the other. Within the archway on either side are mullioned windows, and
just beyond the archway is a door, as if a porter once kept the gate.
[Illustration: Offerton Hall (Front View).]
[Illustration: Offerton Hall (Back View).]
Open the barn doors and peep inside. At one end, raised high above the
floor, you will see a large wooden platform, which can be raised up
and down at will, and is used for clipping sheep. You will also notice
that the great oak beams or rafters which support the roof of the barn
extend down to the ground. These beams are thick and rude, and have
hardly been touched by the carpenter’s tools. They are locally known as
“crucks,” which is an older form of “crutches.” A book which has just
been published contains an extract from a lease dated 1432, in which
“crukkes” are mentioned, and it is remarkable that the word is used as
a translation of _laquearia_.[59] The barn at Offerton Hall consists
of four bays, measuring 15 feet by 16 feet each, so that the floor of
each contains 240 square feet. Some of the crutches are bigger and
heavier than the others, and they all rest on stone pedestals, varying,
according to the size of the crutches, from two to four feet from the
ground, the crutches which stand on the two lowest pedestals being the
thickest. All the crutches have mortise holes for rafters on their
outer faces about a foot above the lowest of the two tie-beams by which
they are joined together. This shows that the roof of the barn, or the
roof of an earlier building which the crutches once supported, sloped
from the ridge to the ground. The tie-beams are held in their places by
tree-nails or wooden pegs.
[59] The lessee covenants to build a house “de octo laquearibus,
Anglice viii. _crukkes_.”—Ling Roth’s _The Yorkshire Coiners_, 1906, p.
155.
As I have shown elsewhere, the bay was a unit of measurement,
containing 240 square feet. The evidence supporting this conclusion
may be seen in various ancient documents. For instance, in the twelfth
century, the villans of Aucklandshire had to “make the bishop’s hall
in the forest, of the length of 60 feet, and of the breadth within
the posts (_infra postes_) of sixteen feet.”[60] In other words, the
hall was to consist of four bays of 240 square feet each, like those
in the barn at Offerton. In 1694 there was a fire at Long Eaton, near
Derby, which “consumed fourteen dwelling houses, togeather with the
barnes, stables, outhouses, and other buildings, containeinge ninety
bayes of buildings.”[61] Here the houses of a village are estimated
by the bay, which must have been a recognised measure of quantity. It
appears in the Eckington Court Rolls that in 1758 a man borrowed £40
on the security of “all that one bay of a barn, situate and being in
the High Lane, called the Farr Bay, and all that close there called
the Farr Over Close adjoining to the High Lane aforesaid southwards,
containing by estimation three acres.” In 1764 an Eckington man and his
wife surrendered “all that middle bay of a barn situate and being at
High Lane aforesaid, together with twelve yards and two feet of land
in length on the north side of the said barn, and one yard in breadth,
with all the priveledges and appurtenances to the same belonging,” to
the use of John Gill, of Cuckhold’s Haven, in the parish of Eckington,
sicklesmith. The meaning is that bays, being measures of quantity, were
sold like acres, or, rather, like links of sausages. We must not, of
course, suppose that all bays were exactly of the same size, or that
each of them contained an area of exactly 240 square feet. We might as
well expect every acre in the fields to contain exactly 4,840 square
yards.
[60] _Boldon Buke_ (Surtees Soc.), pp. 26, 62.
[61] Document in Cox’s _Annals of Derbyshire_, vol. ii., p. 294.
In examining the outside of Offerton Hall, the first thing to be
noticed is a small projection from the back or western side. It is a
quadrangular tower, and contains the stairs which supply the two upper
floors of the building. As will be imagined from the outer appearance,
the stairs are not spiral, but go in short, straight flights, with
proper landings. The steps are of stone; first, six steps and then a
landing; in nine more steps you get to the first floor; after this, six
steps and a landing, then, the uppermost floor or garret. The staircase
is really a detached room, and you can only get into it by opening a
door. Taking the word in its etymological meaning, a staircase is a
“case” which holds a “stair” or ladder. In some old Lincolnshire houses
the “stair” is in fact a ladder inside a little closet, like a voting
compartment, in a corner of one of the rooms. At Garner House, about
a mile from Offerton, the winding stair, now of wood, but formerly
of stone, is in a round turret at the back of the house; half of the
turret is visible outside, the other half is concealed in the wall.
Offerton Hall is one of those buildings which have escaped the
practical joke of “restoration.” It consists of a “house-place” or
large central room, with a projecting wing on either side—a form
which was very common in the seventeenth century. In the angle formed
by the “house-place” and the southern wing is a yellow-washed stone
porch, about two feet deep. Just above the entrance to the porch is a
tiny window, with diamond panes and angular top. Below, in an incised
panel, the letters M.G. are carved, and, just beneath those letters,
R.G. 1658. Although the plan of the house is consistent throughout,
it was not all built at the same time, and the two pairs of initials
may represent two different owners or builders. Ralph Glossop, of
Offerton, appears in the Hope Easter Roll for this very year 1658, and
also Edward Glossop, of the same place.[62] A list of the freeholders
of Derbyshire made in 1633[63] shows that Ralph Glossop was the only
freeholder at Offerton in that year. According to Hunter’s large
_Pedigree Book_, printed by the Harleian Society, Ralph Glossop, of
Offerton, married Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Jeremy Ward, of Ashop, in
Derbyshire.[64] This Ralph Glossop is not, like his neighbour Thomas
Eyre, of Highlow, described in the list of freeholders as an esquire,
and accordingly Offerton Hall would seem to have been the residence of
a substantial yeoman.
[62] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xi., p. 21.
[63] _Op. cit._, vol. vi., p. 7.
[64] _Familiæ Minorum Gentium_, 647.
Opening out of the little porch is a strong oak door, studded with
iron nails. The height of the door is five feet eight inches, and it
is below the level of the sill or threshold, so that when you enter
the house you go down one step. As you enter you must take care both
of your head and your feet, or you may come to grief at both ends. Dr.
Troels Lund says that in Danish houses of the sixteenth century “the
door was extremely low, so that a person entering had to bend down,
and at the same time the sill was so high that the foot had to be well
lifted up. And if a man had reason to fear a hostile attack, it was a
considerable help that the entrance, which was always a weak point,
should be as narrow and low as possible; if the door were burst open,
the enemy might get his death-blow as he stepped over the sill with his
back bent and his foot lifted up.”[65]
[65] _Das Tägliche Leben in Skandinavien während des sechzehnten
Jahrhunderts_, Copenhagen, 1882, p. 12.
At Offerton Hall, instead of lifting your leg up you have to drop it
down, and at the same time if you are a tall man you have to bend your
neck. In the English, as in the Danish case, the intention was to make
entrance difficult, and to prevent surprises. The thick oak door opens
inwardly. As you go in you do not see the house-place; you face the
great chimney wall, and to get into the house-place you pass through
another door on your right. Thus the house contains both an inner and
an outer porch, the inner porch answering to the “speer” of Lancashire
cottages which have no outer porch. The door of entrance is fastened by
an oak bolt one foot nine inches in length, and three inches by four in
thickness. The bolt fits into a hole in the wall, and is drawn out by
an iron ring.
The house-place, or “house-body” as they call it at Halifax, is still
the centre of domestic intercourse, as it has always been. As you
enter, your back is turned to the great fireplace which once warmed
all the house, and which was kept burning day and night. When you
get inside the house-place the great vault of the chimney, more than
eleven feet wide, is before you, spanned by a depressed arch. People
in the neighbourhood speak of the chimney of Offerton Hall as “a
lantern chimney.” If you ask them why it was so called, somebody may
tell you, without blushing, that it was because a man went up to sweep
it with a lantern. The term “lantern chimney” is not to be found
in dictionaries, and may therefore be presumed to be unknown. There
must once have been a louver or lantern at the top of the chimney at
Offerton, like the one, for instance, at Tisbury, in Wiltshire, figured
in Parker’s _Glossary_. The chimney at Tisbury is octangular, with a
conical roof, like the top of a stable lantern, and with lateral holes
for the emission of smoke. The summit of the chimney at Offerton may
originally have been of this form.
The base of the chimney has a breadth of twelve feet six inches on one
side, and ten feet six inches on the other. It is built of stone, and
in the chamber above the house-place it begins to taper off, so that
its sides might be compared to the “steps” on the Great Pyramid. Big
central chimneys like this are the first rude attempts to get rid of
the open hearth, from which the smoke escaped by a hole in the roof, or
by a louver. It is said that “chimneys were not used in the farmhouses
of Cheshire till within forty years of the publication of King’s _Vale
Royal_ (1636); the fire was in the midst of the house, against a hob of
clay, and the oxen lived under the same roof.”[66]
[66] Whitaker’s _Craven_, 1812, p. 334.
The rooms of the house are about eight feet high on the ground floor,
and seven feet on the upper floor, and the principals supporting the
roof in the garret are a good deal like the crutches which have just
been described. There is no panelling in the house, and no cellar. In
front of the building is an old-fashioned garden.
In 1545 Robert Glossop, of Offerton, was fined for trespassing on
Abney Common.[67] In 1465 John Glossop, of Wodsetys, in Norton (Norton
Woodseats, near Sheffield), leased to Henry Foliaumbe a messuage in
Offerton called Le Storthe for twelve years.[68] It would not be
difficult to make out a considerable history of the Glossop family and
their relations from the Lichfield wills and the other usual sources of
information.
[67] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxiii., p. 89.
[68] Jeayes, _Derbyshire Charters_.
We must not be in too great a hurry to conclude that Offerton means
upper farm, as Over Haddon means Upper Haddon. Overton, in Ashover,
means upper farm, but Mr. Jeayes has shown that in the thirteenth
century Offerton, in Hathersage, occurs once as Hofnertoun, and that
a man called Eustace de Hofnerton lived there.[69] Other early forms
of the name are Offirtun and Offreton; in _Domesday_ it appears as
Offertune, a berewick of Hope. Mr. Searle has told us that _Offerd_
is found in Old English charters and in _Domesday_ as a form of the
man’s name _Osfrith_,[70] and, if we could put aside Hofnertoun as a
scribe’s error, this is probably the first element of the word. In the
thirteenth century we have Over Offerton and Nether Offerton, otherwise
_Kauereshegge_.[71] Was Nether Offerton ever so called? Possibly the
scribe should have written _Hauereshegge_, a form of Hathersage, as old
documents show.
[69] Jeayes, _Derbyshire Charters_.
[70] _Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum_, Cambridge, 1897.
[71] Jeayes, _op. cit._
The Offerton Hall estate is the property of H. Cunliffe Shawe, Esq.,
of Weddington Hall, Nuneaton, to whom it has descended from Robert
Newton, Esq., of Norton House, who was born in 1713 and died in 1789.
Mr. Newton was a wealthy man and a great purchaser of land, this being
one of his many estates. In a survey belonging to Mr. Shawe, made about
eighty years ago, the Offerton Hall property is described as containing
eighty-five acres, and as including the following fields: The Acre with
Kentny Barn, Great Kentny, Kentny Meadow, Kentny Wood, Breedy Acre
with the Precipice, Wild Hey, Siss Acres, Cornhill Cap Meadow, and
Great White Ley. As the map shows, Kentny Meadow is close to the hall.
A place called Kenteney, in Upper Offerton, is mentioned in deeds of
the thirteenth century.[72] This name represents an older _Centan-īg_,
meaning Centa’s “island,” and we have the same termination _ey_ (_īg_
or _īeg_) in Abney, which adjoins Offerton, and in a manuscript survey
of 1451 is written Albeney.[73] We can rely upon this form of the name,
not only because it was taken from an older survey, but because the
surname De Albeney occurs in North Derbyshire in 1250.[74] Now the
surname Albeyn is found at Chesterfield in 1339,[75] and is the English
form of the Latin _Albāgnus_. Abney, therefore, means Alban’s “island.”
Eyam, which adjoins, is written Eium or Eyum in the thirteenth century,
and the termination _-um_ is so very frequent that we cannot doubt
that it is a dative plural, and that the word means “islands.” These
“islands,” it need hardly be said, were not pieces of land surrounded
by water. They remind us of the intermixed townships which are so
frequent in some parts of England, as if strangers or conquerors had
settled amongst a conquered people. At Eyam, the “islands” seem to have
been the lands which were held by military tenure, or “hastler lands,”
as they were known in the neighbourhood.
[72] Jeayes, _Derbyshire Charters_.
[73] _Feodarium_, in the possession of the Duke of Norfolk.
[74] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_.
[75] Jeayes, _op. cit._
Siss Acres may be six acres, for Chaucer has _sis_ for six. If so,
the word is interesting as pointing to French influence in the
neighbourhood.
In 1611 it is said that Offerton is a manor of itself, then in the
tenure of Henry Cavendish, Esq.[76]
[76] _Derbyshire Archæological Journal_, vol. xxiii., 89.
ROODS, SCREENS, AND LOFTS IN DERBYSHIRE CHURCHES
By Aymer Vallance, F.S.A.
Although still comprising a considerable amount of excellent
screenwork, the county of Derby has suffered grievous losses in
this regard, losses for which, if fanaticism in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries was primarily responsible, ignorance and
indifference in the eighteenth century, and wilful perversity of
so-called “restorers” during the “Gothic revival” of the nineteenth,
have produced consequences not less disastrous.
At the beginning of the religious revolution in England, inaugurated
in the reign of Henry VIII., every church and chapel in the land had
its rood-screen, surmounted by a rood-loft. Above them both was the
great rood, or cross, with a figure of Our Lord outstretched upon it,
flanked almost invariably by statues of St. Mary and St. John. Of these
ornaments the rood-loft was the latest to be developed, not becoming
general previously to the fifteenth century. It had, however, been
preceded in cathedral and monastic churches by the pulpitum, a thick
wall with a gallery on the top of it at the west end of the quire. In
churches of this class, the rood-screen would be situated parallel to
the pulpitum, but further westwards, in the nave.
[Illustration: Fenny Bentley Church: Rood-Screen.]
The pulpitum and the parish church rood-screen, although the former is
usually a solid stone structure, while the latter consists of openwork,
and is of wood rather than of stone, so far resemble one another
that both have a central doorway, whereas the cathedral and monastic
rood-screen appears to have had, as a rule, two doorways in it, one at
the north and the other at the south end, with an altar (which ranked
as the principal one among the altars of the nave) placed between them.
It was in front of this altar, and at the foot of the great rood, that
the procession, which perambulated the church before High Mass on
Sundays and great feasts, having traversed the appointed route, finally
drew up to make a solemn station. This done, those taking part in the
procession would file off to right and left in two divisions, either of
them passing through one of the doors in the rood-screen, and thence
under the pulpitum into the quire for the celebration of the chief
service of the day.
In illustration of the foregoing, it is of interest to recall that
excavations, carried on at the end of the seventies of the nineteenth
century, on the site of the Premonstratensian Abbey of Dale, revealed,
at the eastern crossing, the bases of the two parallel walls of the
pulpitum, about five feet apart, and pierced by a central doorway, 4
ft. 6 in. wide. A year later much of the tile pavement of the nave was
unearthed, disclosing the tiles spaced and arranged in bands to mark
the exact position for the procession, as before described. Further
may be cited the accounts of the sale of the effects of the abbey,
drawn up by order of the Royal Commissioners on its dissolution in
1538. This document is dated 24th October, in the thirtieth year of
King Henry VIII.’s reign. It enumerates, beside “the seats in the
Quier; a crucifyx, Mary and John; a payre of organs; ... the rode alter
in the Churche,” _i.e._, in the nave, “and a rode there,” _i.e._,
presumably the great rood. Another item disposed of, viz., “The
partition of tymber in the body of the Churche,” most probably refers
to the rood-screen in the nave; while the before-named “rode alter”
would be, by analogy, the altar in the midst of the rood-screen; for
such was the usual dedication. The greater number of the fittings of
Dale Abbey were acquired at the sale by Francis Pole, of Radburne. It
is, therefore, not without good reason that certain linen-fold panels
in Radburne Church—eighteen in all—have been identified as belonging
formerly to the rood-screen of the abbey church. And yet another item
sold, “a grate of yren” (iron) “abowte the Founder and the tymber worke
there” would include parclose screenwork such as is described hereafter.
The church of another Premonstratensian abbey also, that of Beauchief
(founded between 1172 and 1176), had its altar of the Holy Cross.
Evidence of the fact is extant in the shape of a deed, _circa_ 1300,
by which Sir Thomas de Chaworth, lord of Norton, made over the entire
village of Greenhill, moor included, by way of endowment, to maintain a
canon to celebrate mass at the altar of that name in perpetuity. I have
found no other particulars of Beauchief bearing on the present subject
except in the inventory, dated 2nd August, 1536, wherein occurs:—“It’m
a p’ of organnes,” which same may be assumed to have stood upon the top
of the pulpitum.
Neither, again, has very much that is relevant come to light concerning
the vanished church of the Augustinian canons at Darley. Their abbey,
in its time the largest and most important of the religious houses of
Derbyshire, was suppressed in the autumn of 1538, as the result of
three months’ unremitting pressure on the part of Cromwell’s agent,
Thomas Thacker. This man actually wrote, at the close of the first
three months, to inform his master how little effect his cajoleries
and threats had had upon the abbot; and to solicit the all-powerful
minister’s favour and help in securing possession of the house and
goods for himself, when he should have succeeded in the design of
coercing the unhappy man. It is at least some slight satisfaction to
know that Thacker’s petition was disregarded as far as Darley Abbey was
concerned. The abbot’s consent to the suppression at length wrung from
him, no time was lost before cataloguing and selling the effects of the
abbey. The inventory of the sale is dated 24th October (only two days
later than the signing of the act of “surrender”), and comprises the
“Great Crucyfyx” of the abbey church and “tymber about ... Seint Sythes
Chapell,” meaning, obviously, the parclose screens that surrounded it.
With the foregoing may be compared the priory church of another
Augustinian house, founded in 1172 at Repton. The inventory of the
sale, dated likewise in October in the year 1538, specifies, besides
the rood, at least six partitions of timber, or parcloses, fencing
round the chapels respectively of Our Lady, St. John, St. Nicholas,
and St. Thomas. The church, dismantled, as has been stated, under
Henry VIII., still continued standing “most beautiful,” according to
the testimony of the historian Fuller, until the reign of Queen Mary,
when, in a single day, it was utterly demolished by the intruder in
occupation, Gilbert Thacker. This miscreant belonged to a family
deeply tainted with the guilt of sacrilege. He was, in fact, son and
heir of the before-named Thomas Thacker, and becoming alarmed at the
news of the rehabilitation of the religious orders, and determined to
prevent such an eventuality in the case of Repton Priory, promptly
acted on that resolve by destroying, as he himself expressed it, “the
nest, for fear the birds should build therein again.” Excavations
conducted in 1882 and two successive years on the site of the former
church, discovered practically all that is ever likely, under the
circumstances, to be learned from investigations on the spot. The
results, embodied in two reports by Mr. W. H. St. John Hope, were
published in volumes vi. and vii. of the _Journal of the Derbyshire
Archæological Society_, from which, as comprising the whole of the
available information relevant to the present subject, the following
particulars have, for the most part, been extracted.