When St. Augustine’s church was built, between 1401 and 1404, Skirlaugh, as we now know it, was actually two separate communities which were separated by the Lambwath Stream (Skirlaugh Beck). North Skirlaugh was a part of the Rise Estate which at that time was owned by the Nevilles. The land of South Skirlaugh was owned jointly by Swine Priory, Thornton Abbey (in Lincs) and the Wyton family.
At the time when the church was built in South Skirlaw there may only have been about 20 houses in the village, mostly occupied by farming peasants – villeins who were legally tied to the land owned by the local lords of the manor which at that time were the Nevilles and later the Bethells.
At this time, the layout of a typical medieval village in Holderness consisted of a cluster of homes, surrounded by the land of the village which was farmed by the inhabitants. The land was graded into three main divisions, arable, meadow and pasture. The land on which the homes stood was called the toft. Behind the toft were the crofts which were small enclosures behind the houses which could be used for gardens, orchards or to pen in animals. Many of the crofts ran back from the house as far as the edge of the open fields where there were often walls or ditches to prevent the animals straying.
The toft was the site of a house and its outbuildings. The houses were made of wattle and daub. They were supported by wooden timbers cut down from the manorial forests with withies (willow branches) – the wattle – woven between them and infilled with daub – a mixture of mud, straw and animal dung. The houses were of varying sizes, the smallest only having one room, part of which was penned off for the animals. The floor would have been bare earth covered with straw. A fire burned in a hearth in the centre of the hut with a smoke hole above it but much of the smoke would remain in the building so the air was permanently smoky.
Furniture was probably a couple of stools and maybe a bench. The bed would have been made of planks with a mattress of dry straw or fern and an old wool blanket. A metal cooking pot would hang over the fire on which they cooked pottage, a thick soup made of porridge, beans and peas which they consumed throughout the day accompanied with bread. Some would have also eaten fruit from their orchards in their crofts. They may have drunk water from a well (if they had one) but often the water would be contaminated so they drank ale. They had to work long hours to grow enough food to survive.
Women in peasant families learnt to spin wool from an early age, using wooden wheels to make clothes. Children didn’t go to school – but spent most of their time helping their parents with day-to-day activities in the house or looking after animals and helping in the fields.
The Villeins worked the lord’s land for him and in addition they had to perform set tasks, usually ploughing and harrowing a certain acreage or collecting nuts or firewood for the lord from the manorial woods. In spring they would plough the land and sow seeds followed by tending to crops in the summer and harvesting them in the autumn. They had a hard life working all day on the strips of land, spread out in different fields across the village. If crops failed to produce enough food, people faced starvation.
The lord would eat fresh food all year. peasants were not allowed to hunt. Their main food was bread. Water was not clean so people drank beer. Peasants sometimes starved, especially in a hard winter.
In return for their service, they had the use of some land for which they paid rent. On days when they were not working on the lord’s land or after they had finished work they could work on their own acres or tend to their own gardens. The large fields were divided by banks of earth into long, thin strips. Each villager farmed some strips in each field, so that the good and bad land was shared out equally. In return for being allowed to farm the land they lived on, villeins had to give some of the food they grew each year to the lord. If they wanted to move or marry, they needed the permission of the lord first.
Some peasants were called freemen. These peasants were able to move round from one village to another and did not have the same restrictions on them as villeins did.
Most Medieval manor estates used the three field method of farming. There were two great fields around the village settlement which were used for crops. Wheat, barley, beans and oats were grown in one field, with the other one being left fallow and used as pasture for grazing animals. The dung from the animals would have provided nitrogen to enhance the soil the following years crops. The remaining field was used as meadow, which would produce hay to be used as animal feed over the winter. Once the hay was cut, the shorter grass left behind would also be used for grazing.
The Holderness pastures carried many sheep, but also oxen, cows, horses and pigs. Every plough team needed oxen or horses.