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Edric and Studley in Domesday Dorset

Studley before and after the Norman Conquest

The Domesday Book of 1086 provides our earliest detailed documentary picture of Studley in Dorset. It places the settlement within a landscape that included Pilsdon, Rushton and other neighbouring estates and introduces us to two named men associated with its history: Saewin, before the Norman Conquest, and Edric (Eadric) in the Domesday settlement that followed.

The Phillimore Domesday Book: Dorset is particularly valuable because its Index of Persons identifies Edric with the complete sequence of entries 56,42–49.

Within this group are two separate holdings called Studley/Stodlege.

This takes the documented history of the place back almost a thousand years.

Edric's Dorset Holdings

Phillimore associates eight entries with Edric:

Domesday entryPlace

56,42Rushton

56,43East Holme

56,44Stoke [Wallis]

56,45Slitlege

56,46Pilsdon

56,47Studley

56,48Briantspuddle

56,49Stodlege [Studley]

The original Phillimore page confirms the sequence and gives us the population, agricultural resources and values of these estates.

Not all of Edric's properties formed one compact geographical estate. Nevertheless, the appearance of Pilsdon and the two Studley holdings within the same Domesday group is especially interesting for the history of Studley and the later Broadwindsor family.

The First Studley — 56,47

The first holding appears simply as STUDLEY.

It was assessed at 2 hides, with land for two ploughs. The estate contained:

• 2 villagers

• 9 smallholders

• 1½ ploughs

• 4 acres of meadow

• pasture measuring 1 furlong by 1 furlong

Its recorded value was 25 shillings.

Although modest in size, the presence of eleven recorded villagers and smallholders indicates an established rural community rather than an isolated farm.

The Second Studley — 56,49

The second holding appears as STODLEGE, which Phillimore identifies with Studley.

It was assessed at 1 hide, with land for three ploughs, and contained:

• 2 villagers

• 4 smallholders

• 2 ploughs

• 3 acres of meadow

• 12 acres of woodland

• pasture measuring 1 furlong by ¼ furlong

Its recorded value was 44 shillings.

This is intriguing. Although assessed at only half the hidage of the first Studley holding, its recorded value was considerably greater.

More importantly for the history of Studley, the Domesday entry records that:

Saewin held it before 1066.

The Phillimore Index of Persons independently associates Saewin with entry 56,49.

We can therefore take the documentary history of this particular Studley holding back beyond the Norman Conquest.

Saewin and Anglo-Saxon Studley

Saewin is consequently an important figure in the story.

Before William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, Saewin already held land at Studley.

This means that Studley was not a settlement created by the Norman reorganisation of Dorset. It existed as a recognised landed unit in the Anglo-Saxon landscape.

We should, however, distinguish carefully between the history of the place and the genealogy of the later family.

Saewin is not described as de Studley. Domesday tells us that he held Studley; it does not tell us that he belonged to a family already bearing the Studley name.

Nevertheless, he is presently the earliest named individual whom we can securely associate with the Dorset Studley holding.

Edric after the Conquest

By 1086 the political landscape of England had been transformed.

Much Anglo-Saxon land had passed into Norman hands, but the name Edric/Eadric is itself English, making his position particularly interesting.

His presence reminds us that the transformation following 1066 was more complicated than the simple replacement of every English landholder by a Norman lord.

The evidence available to us does not establish Edric's ancestry or explain precisely how he came to hold these estates. We should therefore resist identifying him with a particular family without further documentary evidence.

What we can say confidently is that Phillimore associates him with the group 56,42–49, which includes the two Studley holdings.

Godric and Briantspuddle

Entry 56,48 initially caused us some difficulty because it mentions Godric.

The actual Domesday text resolves the problem.

Godric is not replacing Edric as the lord of entry 56,48. Rather, Godric holds the land of Edric.

This explains why Phillimore's Index of Persons quite correctly gives Edric the uninterrupted sequence:

56,42–49.

It is a useful reminder that Domesday frequently distinguishes between the person exercising lordship over an estate and the person actually holding or occupying land beneath him.

Pilsdon, Studley and Broadwindsor

One of the most evocative features of the Domesday evidence is the appearance of Pilsdon and Studley within Edric's group of holdings.

Pilsdon lies beneath Pilsdon Pen, the great prehistoric hillfort dominating this part of the Dorset landscape.

The photographs below help place the documentary evidence within its physical setting. They do not prove that Pilsdon, Studley and Broadwindsor constituted a single medieval estate, but they demonstrate how these places belong to the same wider landscape.

Pilsdon Pen Hillfort

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Pilsdon Pen hillfort, the great prehistoric earthwork overlooking the landscape around Pilsdon, Studley and Broadwindsor. Long before Studley entered the written record, this was already a landscape shaped by human settlement, movement and memory.

Broadwindsor from Pilsdon Pen

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Looking towards Broadwindsor from Pilsdon Pen. Broadwindsor can be seen within the surrounding Dorset countryside, illustrating the close geographical relationship between the later home of the Studley family and the Domesday landscape of Pilsdon and Studley.

The Wider Landscape from Pilsdon Pen

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The landscape viewed from Pilsdon Pen. The photograph gives a sense of the terrain within which the Domesday settlements developed and through which farms, settlements and routeways were connected.

An Ancient Landscape

Pilsdon Pen reminds us that the history revealed by Domesday represents only one moment in a much longer story.

The hillfort had existed for centuries before Saewin, Edric or the Norman Conquest. The farms and settlements recorded in 1086 occupied a landscape that had already been inhabited, cultivated, traversed and invested with meaning for generations.

Studley therefore belongs to a cultural landscape whose history reaches far beyond the origin of the surname.

The Domesday Book allows us to glimpse that landscape at one particularly important moment: the transition between Anglo-Saxon and Norman England.

Did Edric Found the Studley Family?

There is a tempting question:

Was Edric an ancestor of the later Studley family?

At present the answer must be:

We do not know.

Domesday establishes a sequence concerning the land:

Studley before 1066 → Saewin → Edric's Domesday estate group in 1086

What it does not establish is a genealogical sequence:

Saewin → Edric → de Studley family.

That distinction is fundamental.

The territorial surname de Studley essentially means of Studley. When it begins to appear in medieval records, it could identify a person by the place from which he came or the estate with which he was associated.

Finding the earliest securely documented de Studley connected specifically with this Dorset Studley is therefore our next challenge.

The Problem of Robert de Studley

An earlier version of this history referred to a Robert de Studley around 1160.

That attribution should presently be regarded as unproven.

I have not yet found sufficiently reliable documentary evidence demonstrating that a Robert de Studley of that date belonged to this Dorset Studley, and it would be unsafe to use him to bridge the gap between Domesday and the later Studley family.

This illustrates one of the hazards of medieval genealogical research: the same place-name and surname can occur independently in different counties.

Until a contemporary or otherwise reliable source establishes the connection, Robert should therefore not be presented as an ancestor of the Dorset Studleys.

The Missing Century

This leaves a fascinating documentary gap.

We have Studley securely recorded in 1086, with one of its holdings traceable back through Saewin to before 1066.

We then need to discover what happened between Domesday and the later medieval appearance of people bearing the Studley name.

The evidence we now possess can be represented as:

Saewin
↓
Studley before 1066
↓
Edric's Domesday holdings — 1086
↓
?
↓
Medieval de Studley / Stodley
↓
Later Studley families

That question mark is now one of the most interesting parts of the investigation.

Charters, cartularies, Pipe Rolls, ecclesiastical records, feudal surveys and other twelfth- and thirteenth-century documents may eventually enable us to bridge it.

From Place to Family

What Phillimore allows us to establish is therefore more subtle—and historically more secure—than a speculative family tree reaching back to 1066.

Studley itself has a documented pre-Conquest history.

A man named Saewin held one of its estates before 1066. By 1086 two Studley holdings appear within the group of Dorset estates associated with Edric.

Somewhere in the centuries that followed, Studley became not merely the name of a place but the name by which people and eventually families were identified.

Whether the later Broadwindsor Studleys can ultimately be connected by documentary evidence with the people who occupied this landscape in the eleventh century remains unanswered.

But the photographs from Pilsdon Pen give the documentary investigation a physical dimension. Broadwindsor, Pilsdon and Studley were not simply names written into medieval records: they were places within a real and interconnected Dorset landscape.

And it is within that landscape that the search for the origins of the Studley family must continue.