In the Village

In medieval times most villages grew higgledy-piggledy from a collection of farmsteads.  But the major villages in the Chertsey Abbey lands seem to have been planned.  So Chertsey, Egham and Chobham are all nucleated villages and show signs of planning.  Compare Chobham with its neatly arranged properties along a high street with Windlesham which has no organised centre.

It is also possible that Chobham was a craft rather than an agricultural centre.  We don't know whether the village was populated by mixed craftsmen (such as brewers, smiths, coopers, etc) or was a centre for some particular craft.  We know that flax and silk weaving were practised in the village and it may be that Chobham developed as a weaving centre.

Outside the Village

Stretching up from the rich alluvial valley soils, we see scattered farms cultivating surrounding fields often enclosed from the wasteland.   Naturally, the best land was enclosed first.  The Abbey owned the waste but since it did not generate any income the Abbot encouraged enclosure which allowed him to levy taxes.

The cultivation of enclosed fields by individual families would allow for careful husbandry and land improvement.  On the poor heathland soils, crop rotation, maybe several years of recovering by laying fallow under grass, and the application of generous amounts of animal manure would be important.

Even so, arable productivity seems to have been very low; perhaps a quarter of the yield obtained today.  Thus a 'hide', the nominal amount of land required to feed a family, was often in the region of 100 acres.  It has been calculated that at the beginning of the medieval period the population density in N.W. Surrey was well below average; only 5 per square kilometre; and that by the end of the period had risen to only about 8 per square kilometre.

A perambulation survey of Egham as late as 1604 describes western Egham as being waste; hence the waste would have extended across the whole hundred from Bagshot Heath to Egham Common.  Thames-side Egham, Thorpe and Chertsey were reasonably well populated but away from the Thames there were still only small islands of habitation. Habitation was still confined, as it still largely is in Chobham, to a fairly narrow strip along either side of the Bourne and the Windle Brook.  A small population existed along the Blackwater at Frimley.

References

1. Shaping Medieval Landscapes.  Tom Williamson. WINDgather Press 2003

2.   Chertsey Abbey: An Existence of the Past.  Lucy Wheeler. Pub: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. 1905

3.  Chertsey Cartulary SRS

6. Bisley Bits, Rev'd J Cater, 1892, p72

7. Ibid p23

8. An Archaeological and Historical Survey of Chobham Common Proposed Area of Special Historic Landscape Value (ASHLV), C Currie, 2002.