Nineteen Centuries of Drink in England: A HistoryFrench, Richard Valpy
History
Nineteen Centuries of Drink in England: A History
French, Richard Valpy
Drinking customs -- England; Drinking of alcoholic beverages -- Great Britain; England -- Social life and customs
As late as the year 1070 we are reminded of the intemperate propensity
of the Danes. During that year Sweyn visited this country. According to
the Saxon Chronicle they rifled the minster of Peterborough, put out to
sea with the spoil, and were arrested by a storm which scattered their
ships in all directions. Some of the spoil, it appears, was brought
back for safety, and placed in the identical church. Then afterwards,
continues the Chronicle, ‘through their carelessness and through their
drunkenness, on a certain night the church and all that was within it
was consumed with fire. Thus was the minster of Peterborough burnt and
harried.’
We have already enumerated the drinks adopted by the Saxons and the
Danes. They were principally ale, wine, mead, cider, morat, and
pigment. To these their Norman successors added clarré, garhiofilac,
and hippocras. Wine was perhaps more used than formerly, being chiefly
imported from France; but ale and mead were the common drinks. The
innumerable entries in Domesday Book show how large a proportion of the
productions of the country at this time consisted in honey, which was
used chiefly for the manufacture of mead.
New _plantations of vines_ seem to have been made about the time of
the Conquest, _e.g._ in the village of Westminster, at Chenetone in
Middlesex, Ware in Hertfordshire, Hanten in Worcestershire. They are
measured by arpents (arpenni). Holeburne had its vineyard, which came
into the possession of the Bishops of Ely, and subsequently gave its
name to a street which still exists. In Domesday Book (1086), among
the lands of Suein in Essex, is an entry respecting an enclosure of
six arpents, which in good seasons (_si bene procedit_) yielded twenty
modii of wine.
Vineyards were attached to the greater abbeys, especially in the south.
This is easily accountable: (1) The situation was in well sheltered
valleys, (2) Many of the monks were foreigners, and would know the
best modes of culture. Canterbury Church and St. Augustine’s Abbey had
vineyards; so had Colton, St. Martin’s, Chertham, Brook, Hollingburn,
and Halling, also Santlac near Battle, and Windsor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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