Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/186

. AUG. 31, 1901.

What I wanted to know was the local name of the projecting building, but the owner though? I 3 meant the ^tch-pegs which held the thatch down, so he said, bpeets. In Yorkshire the generic name of sue building is " an outshot." Here I only learnt the specific name: it was the pantry. ihe thatch on the pantry was old, but the walls seemed comparatively new so I said, pantry is new, I suppose?" But the owner assured me that it was not, and took me inside to show me traces of the original woodwork. The copyholder had erected a brick wall outside the original stud and mud " of which the pantry, like the rest ot the cottage, was built, leaving some of the old posts within. The same thing is done from one side of England to another. As the framework of "stud and mud decays, panels of brickwork now usually take the place of the wattles and mud. and as the main beams perish new beams are inserted, or, when the decay is great, the entire wall is rebuilt or faced with brick or stone. And so it often happens that one finds ''stud and mud" on one side of a cottage wall, and brick or stone on the other.

Having photographed the last-named cot- tage, I took outside measurements, and found the length to be 28ft. and the breadth 16ft., so that the site contained nearly two bays of 240 sq. ft. each. The pantry or " outshot" is 6ft. in length by 13 ft. in breadth. I did not measure the other cottage. It had no "out- shot," but its size appeared to be about the same as the other. The lower rooms of the two cottages were about 6 ft. high, and eacl had small bedrooms beneath the thatch. To get to the bedrooms you open a door in one corner and enter a little closet or box con taining a movable ladder, with its upper em hooked to the bedroom floor.

Not far from the houses in the village are some arable lands known as the Six Scores I was told that they were laid out in plots o six to twelve acres each, the long score being as I was told, twenty-four.t These lands where not enfranchised, are copyhold, and i is said that no house has ever been attachec to them.

In one part of the village I saw a long row of cottages known as ''key-hole property. I was told that they belong to their severa occupants. No arable land is attached tc this property, and its owners are possessec


 * O.N. spt/ta, a stick, wooden ]>in.

t In A.D. 1258 Eadmund de Lacy held "a certaii culture containing 7 score and '20 acres of land " ii the soke of Snayt by Pontefraot. ' Yorks Inq. i. 52 (Yorkshire Arch. Association, Record Series).

nlv of the ground on which the houses stand, n front they touch the street; behind they ave no land. The consequence is that the ccupants have to hire small plots behind heir cottages for gardens and out-offices, found that the breadth of the long strip on VnVh t.hft oottaees stand is only 36 tt. 1

isked a man if he could tell me what key- l roert " meant. He said, If you hold

ole property

he key you hold the property.

Another

man, in reply to the same question, said, 'You can get a man out of copyhold pro- perty, but not out of key-hole property, vas amused to find that "key-hole property vas regarded as a better thing than copy- hold.

In reply to a query from me about this 'key-hole property," Mr. Wade, of Market Deeping, solicitor, who also practises at Jrowland, kindly wrote to me thus : " 1 believe the land on which these houses stand v/as formerly waste land, and got gradually built upon by people at will, and when the owner ot a cottage sold it he took the money and handed over the key to the purchaser, and this was considered sufficient for many years ; but during the last fifteen or twenty years these cottages in several instances have been sold by deed. The steward of the manor contends that these cottages were built on land appurtenant to the manor, and I have heard ot owners being admitted to and enfranchising the property at a nominal cost. Two years annual value on death is not an uncommon tine in many Lincolnshire manors. In Crowiand the custom is one and a half years'."

As the nature and quality of the soil may have some bearing on the subject, it may be well to say a word or two on that point. Crowiand lies in the fens, about nine miles from Peterborough. Previous to the existing system of drainage agriculture must have been precarious. On the Wash the "cow flag " and other reeds grow so high in summer- that men standing among them cannot see the abbey. From three to four feet below the surface of the ground enormous oak-trees are found some 100 ft. long. They are black, and when exposed to the weather crumble away. They all lie to the east, showing that they have been blown down by the west wind. The soil in Crowiand is rich, and lets at good rents.

Certain land in the parish belonging to the poor is let by auction to the highest bidder every three years. My informant described the rent arising from this land as "theffee money," meaning probably " feoffee money." It appears that

" the Copyhold Act, 1841, after recognizing that by the custom of some manors the lords thereof could not grant licences to their copyholders to alienate their tenements otherwise than by entireties,