Page:VCH Essex 1.djvu/469

 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY Lastly, when Wallbury thus first comes before us it is spoken of, we see, as if imperfectly detached from Hallingbury rather than a separate place with a name of its own. The identity of name however is so much in Morant's favour that one is loth to reject his view. But we can now assert that his ' Thunreslau' was at the other end of the county, 1 and that ' Walla,' following as it does Loughton and Theydon Bois, must be assumed to have been probably in the same Hundred as they were, that is, in Ongar. This is only an assumption, but if we act upon it, and search for such a name in that Hundred, we find that North Weald Bassett itself lies in it, though nearly half the parish is in Harlow. And of North Weald Morant could find no mention in Domesday. Its Domesday equivalent however should be ' Walda,' and the area of meadow land assigned by the Survey to ' Walla ' suggests that it lay in a river valley rather than on Cripsey brook. Reviewing all the evidence the case stands thus. We have to find a Domesday equivalent for North Weald Bassett, a parish of more than 3,400 acres almost equally divided between the Hundreds of Harlow and of Ongar. In the former we have in Domesday two entries under ' Walda ' and one under ' Walla ' ; in the latter apparently we have a great manor entered as ' Walla ' and held by Peter de Valognes. One cannot assign much importance to the actual form of the name, for the Rodings not far off occur in Domesday as ' Roinges ' and as ' Rodinges.' Of the ' Walda ' entries in Harlow Hundred Morant assigned the one on the fief of Peter de Valognes to Wallbury and the other to Weld in Harlow, an arbitrary and inconsistent identification. He appears to have overlooked the fact that almost half of North Weald lay in Harlow Hundred, for he deals with it only under that of Ongar, and he consequently pitched upon Weld in Harlow itself as ' Walda.' But the form ' Weld ' appears to be of rather doubtful authority, and North Weald itself (to which ' Weld ' adjoins) is a more likely equivalent for both the ' Walda ' entries. The real difficulty is the ' Walla ' which I take to be in Ongar Hundred. If it was so, it must have been the Ongar portion of North Weald, and this conclusion is strongly supported by the fact that North Weald was held of the heirs of Peter de Valognes, the Domesday holder of ' Walla ' ; but even the evidence for this is not so clear as could be wished. 2 Looking at the whole of the evidence at present available, it appears to favour the identity of ' Walla ' with North Weald, although the extent of its meadow-land strongly supports, on the contrary, the view that it lay in the valley of the Stort. The labour expended on identifying the manors named in Domes- day will often prove of the utmost value for the right ascertainment of 1 See p. 405 below. 1 It consists of (i) an Inq. p. m. of 1291, showing that North Weald was held by the successors of the ' Essex' family, as five knights' fees, of the Castle of Benington (i.e. the head of the Valognes barony in Herts) ; (2) a return in the Testa de Nevill (p. 263) showing that Henry de Essex held five knights' fees of the Valognes barony (compare Ancient Deeds, A. 768,774). But these five fees were located by the Inquisition in places which cannot be connected with the Valognes fief (compare Morant, i. 149). 397