Welsh Journals

The Manor and Township of Wrinstone, South Glamorgan BLAISE VYNER, B.A., Cleveland County Council STUART WRATHMELL, B.A., PH.D., F.S.A, University College, Cardiff SUSAN WRATHMELL, B.A., M.A., A.L.A. SUMMARY Documentary research on the manor of Wrinstone has indicated that the 16th-century township contained open fields and common pastures, as well as a few peripheral sever- alty holdings. The chief settlement was a village, now largely depopulated, but there was also a number of farmsteads elsewhere in the township. Some elements of this pattern can be traced back to the 13th century; it survived until the 18th century, when the modern arrangement of farmholds emerged. Further work on the village site has provided evidence of changes to the perimeter boundary of the settlement, and the probable site of a medieval chapel has been located. Building survey has identified the substantial remains of a medieval tower which seems to have been the manorial residence of the 13th century and earlier. Towards the end of that century the lord of Wrinstone established a new house on a demesne holding at the east end of the manor. Near this dwelling was a fulling mill. INTRODUCTION The last volume of these Transactions contained an archaeological and historical survey of medieval and later settlement at Wrinstone, some 6-5 km south-west of Cardiff. It was concerned mainly with a former village settlement, the earthwork remains of which lie around the steading of Wrinstone Farm (ST 135 726), and with the agrarian changes of the late 17th and 18th centuries which led to its depopulation. Since the publication of that report documentary and archaeological research on the township have continued, and our knowledge of its agricultural and settlement history has been so amplified and extended that a further report seems appropriate. The bulk of the documentary evidence used in the first report comprised manorial records and estate rentals of the late 17th and 18th centuries in the Jones (Fonmon) MSS:2 that family had acquired the manor after the Civil Wars. During the 16th and earlier 17th centuries, both Wrinstone and the adjacent manor of Michaelston-le-Pit had been held by the earls of Worcester, and three important documents have been discovered in their archive.3 The earliest is a late 15th-century copy of a rental dated July, 11 Edward I (1283); the second is a survey of 1552, and the third is another survey, taken c. 1585. 4 The information in these records has made it possible to establish in broad outline the pattern of land use and settlement which obtained in the period before Wrinstone was trans- formed into its modern farmholds, a process discussed in the earlier report. It also enables us to trace some aspects of that pattern back to the 13th century. The work of field survey recorded in the earlier report has been extended in two direc- tions. In the first place, small-scale excavations were undertaken on the village site in order to examine the morphological development of the settlement perimeter. Secondly,