A letter published from Reverend George Plaxton in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on 1 June 1707 about the Weald Moors and the estate’s reclamation work. Plaxton was rector of the church in Kinnersley (“Kinnardsey”) for thirty years and describes the marshy conditions of most of the surrounding land.
VI. Some Natural Obfervations made in the Parishes of Kinardsey and Donington in Shropshire, by the Reverend Hr. George Plaxton. Communicated by Mr. Ralph Thoresby, to Dr. Hans Sloane, R. S. Secr.
SIR ,
I have oftentimes desired me to give you an Account of such Observations as I had made in my Parishes in Shropshire, and in some of the neighbouring Villages; my poor Remarks are hardly worth your notice, however to shew you that I cannot deny you any thing, I now send them, or some part of them.
Anno 1673, I was presented to the Vicarage of Sheriffe-Hales, and also to the Rectory of Kinnardsey, the former in the Counties of Salop and Staff. The other wholly in Shropshire. November 6. I was inducted into the Parsonage of Kinnardsey, where I was incumbent for 30 Years and upwards; at my Induction I found a great many Aged People in tbe Parish, upon which I took the Number of the Inhabitants, and found that every sixth Soul was Sixty Tears of Age, and upwards, some were 85 and some 90; this I could not but wonder at, considering that the Town was surrounded with a large Morass, overflowed in Winter, and that you could not come into the Parish any way upon Arable Land. At my Entrance there, I found neither Gentleman nor Begger, nor any fort of Dissenter from the Church; there had been no Law Suit amongst them in the Memory of Man, nor was any commenced during my Incumbency as Rector there, for above Thirty Years together; they have but one way to the Town and Parish, the rest they hire from Lords of the adjacent Manours. The Morasses or Moors are of a great extent, and the Parish was surrounded with them, the Village was called Kinnardsey or Kinnardus his Island; ei, ea, ey, all there are Watry Terminations: Thus the next Parish was Eyton, the Town upon the Waters, Edney, or Edwyney, Edwins Island, Buttery, or the Island of Butter, being a long Grazing Tract of Land, with some others of the like ending. All that vast Morass was called, the Weald Moor, or the Wild Moor, that is, the Woody Moor: Thus the Wood Lands of are called the Weald of Kent; the Wolds of Yorkshire most probably have been Woody formerly, and called the Wealds, for the Word Weald or Wold is by our Saxon Matters render’d Woody; and I have been assured from Aged people, that all the Wild Moors were formerly so far overgrown by Rubbish Wood, such as Alders, Willoughs, Salleys, Thorns, and the like, that the inhabitants commonly hang’d Bells about the Necks of their Cows, that they might the more easily find them. These Moors seem to be nothing else but a Composition of such Sludge and Refuse as the Floods left upon the Surface of the Ground, when they drain’d away, and yet this Sediment is full three or four Foot thick; for I have often observed, that the Black Soil cast up by Moles, or digged out of the Ditches, was a meer Composition of Roots, Leaves, Fibres, Spray of Wood, such as the Water had brought and left behind it; in Digging they often find Roots and Stumps of Oaks three or four Foot under the Surface, and they are very common in the bottom of their Ditches and Drains : The Soil is peaty, and cut up for Fewel in some part of the Lordship; in the bottom of these Peat Pits, they find Clay, Sand, and other sorts of Earth. These Grounds have been formerly much higher, for I have observed Oaks and other Trees, where the present Soyl is so much shrunk and setled from them, that they stand upon high Stilts, and are supported from the great Fibres of the Roots, so that Sheep may easily creep under them.
That great Tract, called formerly Vasta Regalis, is now by Draining become good Pasturage, and yields my Lord Gower, the Owner of it, a considerable Rent, his Ancestors having purchased the Royalty from one of the Earls of Shrewsbury: It yields great Quantities of Hay, tho much of it is of such a nature, that it will dry up a new Milch-Cow, starve an Horse, yet will it feed an Oxe to admiration; and I have heard some Grasiers say, they could not by their best Upland Hay feed an Oxe so sat, as the Moor-Hay would do; this, I suppose proceeded from its dry and binding Quality that made the Oxen drink much.
One thing I must further observe to you, within the Parish, about half a Mile from the Church, there is a pretty Farm call’d The Wall, which I judge was formerly a British Fortification; ’tis encompassed with a Morass, and raised up from Sand, broken Stones, Gravel, and Rubbish to a great height and breadth, being (as I measured it) above 1900 Yards in Compass, and 16, 18, and 20 Yards in Breath: In some places it seems to have been Buik before the Moors became Boggy, for I could never find any way over the Moors, by which they could carry those vast Quantities of Earth, Clay, Sand and Rubbish to raise that mighty Rampire. In that Parish I was the Sixth Rector from the Days of Henry VIII.