Page:VCH Surrey 1.djvu/352

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A HISTORY OF SURREY Domesday as sufficing for so many plough-teams. They were indeed of such value that Domesday notes their exact acreage, descending even, in the case of Talworth, to a half ' v[irga] ' of meadow, probably the eighth of an acre. The difference between the extent of meadow on the manors in the Thames valley, such as Egham (120 acres), Apps Court (46), Kingston-on-Thames (40), Mortlake (20), Battersea (82), and on those of the interior of the county, is strongly marked. Of ' fisheries,' as Domesday terms them, there were several in Surrey ; but these fisheries seem to have been weirs constructed for the purpose of catching eels. From ' a fishery and a half at Byfleet on the Wey the lord received yearly 325 eels ; while at Petersham, in suggestive proximity to the well-known ' Eel-pie island,' he received i ,000 eels from one of the two 'fisheries,' and 1,000 lampreys from the other. The latter have an almost historic dignity, as has the ' fishery ' mentioned at Mortlake, for Domesday tells us that it was c forcibly constructed ' by no less a man than Harold himself, and was held by archbishop Stigand for a long while afterwards (fo. 31). There is no mention of vineyards in Surrey, although we find at Wandsworth the only entry of a vineyardman (vinitor), it would seem, in all Domesday. Vineyards occur so often in Middlesex that they probably existed in Surrey also, although the Survey omits them. At Chertsey there is mention of a forge, which was worked for the Abbey. The miscellaneous sources of income include ' tolls ' at Putney and Wandsworth. The Domesday Survey was not intended to provide a census of the whole population, and I think it rash even to conjecture what the population was in 1086 from the figures there recorded. But on the relative proportions of the rural classes its evidence is always of interest. The valuable maps prepared by Mr. Seebohm 1 reveal no feature of special salience in Surrey ; but the serfs, in proportion to the other classes, were rather more numerous than in Kent, and three times as numerous as in Sussex. Mr. Maiden considers that Domesday shows ' a very marked preponderance in the south-east of the county,' especially in Tandridge Hundred, its south-eastern corner, of this servile class. He has also observed in the Survey ' a marked local distribution ' in the classes of bordars (bordarii] and cottars (cotarii), which he is unable to explain. In the Hundreds of Godalming, Wallington, and Emleybridge ' cotarii,' he has found, ' are nearly universal, to the exclusion of bordariij and on no estate in the county has he found both classes mentioned. 'The only rule,' however, he considers, ' seems to be that there should be no cotarii on royal demesne.' It must be remembered that Domesday Book does not contain the Survey in the form in which it was made. The original returns from which it was compiled were drawn up Hundred by Hundred, and their contents had then to be rearranged under fiefs by the compilers. Of this process, the Surrey Survey contains a trace that has escaped notice at 1 English Village Community, p. 86. 292