The Ten Towns of Coquetdale
Much ink has been spilt on the subject of the ‘Ten Towns of Coquetdale’, the ten townships within the Barony of Alnwick which were subinfeudated to the neighbouring Umfraville lord. The ten comprised Ingram, with its members Reaveley and Hartside, Fawdon, ‘Chirmundesden’ (Peels), Biddlestone, Clennell, Netherton, Burradon, Sharperton, Farnham and Alwinton. The townships did not form a single geographical territory.
Ingram and Fawdon in the Breamish Valley were separated from the main block of eight townships in Coquetdale by the four townships of Alnham Parish, namely Prendwick, Scrainwood, Unthank and Alnham. The apparent allocation of Breamish Valley townships to Coquetdale may appears a little odd today, but in this context Coquetdale seems to refer to the ancient administrative subdivision, or ‘ward’, of Northumberland, which also bore that title, rather than the vale itself. The names given to such administrative districts often have an air of artificiality about them, today just as much as in the past.
The Ten Towns have aroused much interest because it is rather uncommon for such a large and compact block of manors to be subinfeudated to a neighbouring baronial lineage, the Umfravilles, whose status was equivalent to that of the Vescis, the baronial ‘tenants in chief’. In effect there would appear to be two levels of tenants in chief or superior tenant in these vills above the direct manorial lord. Furthermore, by the end of the medieval period, the inhabitants of the ten townships were tied by obligations of military service to Harbottle castle, the capital of the liberty of Redesdale (later the royal manor of Harbottle). This obligation is most clearly expressed in the 1604 Border Survey:
(The ten towns in Coquetdale) by their ancient custome owe their service to Harbotle in Rydsdale to be comaunded by the Capten there to serve in feild on horse or on foote in the Princes affaires for the defence of the Border lands (1604 Survey, 116).
It has been suggested that the customary service of the ten Coquetdale townships represented a relic of some Anglo-Saxon – perhaps even Anglian – military estate or district centred on Harbottle and embracing the Ten Towns, plus presumably the rest of upper Coquetdale at the very least (Anon. 1864; Dixon 1903, 177-8; NCH XV (1940), 472). Harbottle is one of a number placenames in northern England and southern Scotland which incorporate the Old English suffix -botl, generally translated as 'lord's hall'. The suffix is perhaps the equivalent of the Latin term villa, which is used frequently in the works of Bede and his contemporaries to denote royal and ecclesiastical estates (cf. Higham 1986, 293).
This class of place name has been considered to represent an early element in Anglian place-name formation, i.e. belonging to the 5th-6th centuries, but it has recently been the subject reconsideration by Barrow (1998, 67-9), who points out that its distribution across southern Scotland suggests some of these names could have originated later on, in the 7th-8th centuries. Such a defensive arrangement is not of itself implausible.
However the evidence from earlier documents presents a rather different picture from those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the Inquisition Post Mortem for Robert de Umfraville, taken in 1325, the tenants holding all or part of the manors of Clennell, Biddlestone and Burradon were each listed as having to to pay sums for the guard of the castle of Alnwick, not Harbottle, as part of their dues (Cal IPM vi, no.607; see the Harbottle Village Report).
This was repeated as a simple total - '30s for the ward of the castle of Alnewike' - when the inquest into Robert's holdings at death was retaken in 1331 (Cal IPM vii, no.390). This suggests that the manorial tenants of the ten townships retained some military obligations to the Alnwick barony up until at least the early 14th century. Furthermore none of the 13th and 14th century inquisitions specify that the tenants of the ten townships had to perform castle guard at Harbottle.
Perhaps even more significantly, the obligatory military service performed by tenants of the Coquetdale was recorded in the 16th and 17th centuries, after centuries of association between the former Umfraville liberty of Redesdale and the Ten Towns, and following the profound transformation of the character of the Border as a result of the prolonged warfare and chronic insecurity prevalent during the late medieval period. In other words, the obligatory military service of the Coquetdale tenantry at Harbottle may result from the circumstances of the late medieval period rather than representing a fossilised relic of very much earlier arrangements.
More recently O’Brien (2002, 66-7) has put forward an alternative interpretation, arguing that the Ten Towns represent the territory of an early medieval ‘multiple estate’ or shire, which he labels ‘Bromic’. As discussed above, there is convincing evidence that the Breamish Valley once formed part of monastic estate held by St Cuthbert’s house of Lindisfarne, perhaps between the 7th-9th centuries. However the relevant passage of the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto simply refers to Lindisfarne’s lands (Lindisfarnensis terrae) embracing ‘all the land lying to either side of the River Breamish (Bromic), right up to its source’.
There is no mention of the estate embracing other areas further to the south, in upper Coquetdale and Alnham parish (which O’Brien also considers part of the shire of ‘Bromic’ although it never formed part of the Ten Towns). In the light of this, it would therefore seem preferable to regard both theories with great caution, unless new information emerges.
Indeed, there may be more straightforward reasons why a large block of the barony of Alnwick’s vills was granted to the Umfravilles, which relate to the Anglo-Norman monarchy’s goal of imposing order on the Northumbrian uplands (cf. Kapelle 1979). It is possible, for instance, that the Umfraville lords, with their powerful castle at nearby Harbottle, were considered by the royal authorities - or perhaps by the Vescis themselves - to be much better placed to maintain control over these vulnerable border townships, than the Vescis were, whose main stronghold lay down in the coastal plain at Alnwick.
