Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 2 (2022), p. 311

Compared with the farming of sheep (along with the wool and cloth trades), and to a lesser extent that of pigs (principally swine pannage), relatively little has been written about cattle management in medieval England. Margett’s contention – surely correctly – is that this was important and has left a narrative which can be explored not just through the documentary record (of which more anon) but also through the visible landscape and below-ground archaeology. Based on a thesis and arguably less concise than it might have been, the book is nicely produced, with a large number of relevant figures including a gathering in colour and a lengthy bibliography. But the lack of an index greatly diminishes its usefulness.

Margetts opens strikingly, asking us to travel back 1,200 years ago to follow herds of cattle passing along the wide unmetalled droveways of south-east England leading from the coast and downland to well-watered summer pastures in the Weald. ‘Local woods would have echoed to the lowing of herds feeding on browse as contentedly as they had done on the grass of Romney Marsh or the chalkland hill’ (p. 1). That said, Margetts believes direct documentary evidence for the use of wood-pasture in this part of the country for cattle is slight, other than in parks and forests. Even here, the references gathered by Margetts are little more than glimpses. One of the few substantive references is one from the late thirteenth century when 2,000–3,000 beasts were agisted in Ashdown Forest (Kent), apparently at a time when sheep were excluded from it, and specialized vaccaries were being developed on its fringes. And from this stems one substantive criticism of the study, which is the generally limited use made of historical sources, and especially manorial and other accounts, which are detailed and quantifiable from across south-east England. It is refreshing that this is a multi-disciplinary study, but one which foregrounded the written evidence would surely have been on surer ground and less speculative.

Self-evidently, cattle were important components of the agrarian economy, with plough oxen essential for both lords and peasants wherever there was arable cultivation, here notably on the Sussex coastal Plain. Based on limited evidence it is suggested that in Sussex dairying based on cattle was not widely found on the eastern downs, whereas on the western downs the Clay-with-Flints gave a wetter and more wooded environment, more akin to the North Downs of Kent which are associated with medieval cattle dairying. The evidence presented for beef consumption, whether from clapped-out oxen or from bullocks, is also scattered, and no clear conclusions emerge. While little evidence for how and where beasts were housed is presented, one good example is cited – although Margetts gives no date – from Milton Regis (Kent), where part of the ‘Cowhous’ called the ‘Somerhous’ where cheese, butter and dairy products were made was 18 feet wide and 48 feet long (p. 43). Chapter 8 presents the evidence of bones from excavations, but despite the precise percentages given in tabulations the general picture only reflects what we already know (as is often the case with archaeological bone reports).

Less speculative are the chapters where Margetts presents the results of two excavations on the Weald, both suggested to be the product of tenth-/eleventh-century colonization of land previously exploited as seasonal pasture. One was at Wickhurst Green, west of Horsham, West Sussex, where, by the late Saxon period, there were enclosures associated with droveways. The other was at Hayworth, in Cuckfield, West Sussex, where a park-scale oval enclosure thought to have late-Saxon origins was found, one of the many in the region suggested to be associated with cattle herding and seasonal transhumance. Here, within ditched enclosures, stood a long (34m), apparently open-fronted shelter. On the balance of probabilities, it is suggested that cattle ranching and dairying were carried on here, in other words it was probably a vaccary. This is a site which (like Chris Dyer’s complementary work on sheepcotes on the Cotswolds) will be cited in future studies of the medieval agrarian economy, and it is worth flagging that Margetts published a slightly fuller account of the site, with excellent colour illustrations, in Medieval Archaeology 61 (2017), pp. 117–48.