Welsh Journals

The Upland Dimension: further conjectures on early medieval settlement in Gower.1 Jonathan Kissock In Morgannwg XXXV (1991) I proposed a model which attempted to date, describe and explain the origin of villages in Glamorgan. Drawing on evidence, taken primarily from south-east Gower, it was argued that villages and their associated open field systems probably originated prior to the Norman Conquest. The settlement pattern of the parishes of Bishopston and Oystermouth was discussed and it was suggested that they once formed part of a pre-Conquest (and possibly prehistoric) multiple estate which broke up when Bishopston was granted to the church c.605.2 The Llandaff Charters described the event: King Gwrddwg gave his daughter Dulon and four modii of land to the diocese of St Teilo at Llandaff.3 The nature of the multiple estate is quite straightforward. Within a given area there would have been a range of resources: arable land, pasture (perhaps both meadow and upland grazing) and woodland. Each would have been exploited by a series of small communities, each perhaps no larger than a family. Hence the settlement pattern would have been essentially a dispersed one. Some of the communities would have been free, the population of others would have been made up of bond tenants. The former would have rendered occasional small payments of goods and services, whilst more onerous demands fell on the bondmen. At the apex of the social system stood a king, assisted in managing his estate by a mayor. One role of the king was to ensure that each community, whilst only producing one commodity, would receive a share of everything produced within the estate through exchange. As men like Gwrddwg began to give land to the church the estates began to break down. A consequence of this fragmentation was a severing of the exchange links which existed between the estate's component elements. Those farms which had specialised in arable