suffolk records society

This fourth volume, featuring a good series of manorial accounts and rentals, complements the court roll material by painting a more textured picture of life in late-medieval Walsham.

The Suffolk Records Society has already published three volumes on Walsham Le Willows: 17, the Field Book of 1577 edited by Kenneth Dodd, and 41 and 45, the Court Rolls of 1303-1399, edited by Ray Lock. This fourth volume, featuring a good series of manorial accounts and rentals, complements the court roll material by painting a more textured picture of life in late-medieval Walsham through furnishing further details of its society and economy. These include documents from the small lay manor of High Hall, which was highly typical of medieval English lordships but hardly any sources have survived from such places. The accounts and rentals provide insights into Walsham’s agricultural practices, including woodland management for the production of fuel, the balance of crops and livestock, the disposal of produce, the remuneration of workers, the consumption habits of harvest workers and local lords, and the role of women in the management of the manorial estate. There are insights into local tensions following the national political turmoil in the summer of 1450.
Yet even these four volumes hardly scratch the surface of the surviving archive. In addition to the published fourteenth-century court rolls there is a long run of rolls from 1399 through to the early twentieth century and there are many more surveys and rentals from the early modern period. Indeed Walsham may reasonably claim to be one of the best documented places in England between 1300 and 1900.