The 1500s Town -
The very earliest reference to a named street in Marlow that I have found is the will of Robert Sands of Harleyford, proved 1509, in which the testator left his daughter Jane a house and plot in Oxford Lane, now called Oxford Road. West Street is mentioned in 1574 and a little later we hear of "Hawkins Lane" leading to Hawkins Farm. We know too that the High Street, Dean Street, Spittal Street, Chapel Street, St Peter Street (and what we now call Station Road leading to it), Old Pound Lane and the part of Pound Lane which connects old Pound Lane to the High Street all existed in the 1500s though not necessarily under those names in all cases. In the first few years of the 1600s Quoiting Square (as Quoiting Place) and Potlands are mentioned and it is safe to assume that they were also present in the 1500s. The Potlands (note not "Portlands" as today) area included a footpath down to the river and church. This is now known as Portland Alley. It has been speculated that this might have been an actual roadway in the even more distant past. Similarly the idea of an old roadway connecting Spittal Street at around the site of the Cross Keys to St Peter's Street has been floated. In the 1610s we find mention of the Medmenham Highway (now Henley Road), Dedmere Highway (Dedmere Road) and Gun Lane (now Trinity Road). All were likely also present in the late 1500s at least.
The Danger of Smoke Free Homes..
In the collaborative Hollinshed's Chronicle of England, Scotland and Ireland published in 1577 writer William Harrison wrote that there had been recently a huge increase in domestic building in England. "Never so much oke hath been spent in a hundred years before as in ten years of our time, for everie man almost is a builder, and he that hath bought any small parcel of ground, be it ever so little, will not be quiet till he have pulled downe the old house if anie were there standing, and set up a new after his own device" As well as the new cottages and houses springing up there was much expansion and alteration to the older style homes of the rich.
The population of England had grown considerably, doubling since the 1510s, so the need for new properties was obvious. It is likely therefore that the footprint of Marlow grew during the Elizabethan era and that individual streets became more crowded with buildings.
The building boom led to a nationwide shortage of timber by the end of the 1500s. Brick and stone buildings were both now commonly used for homes for the better off but wood was still needed for them. According to architectural historian Nickolaus Pevesner the hall of the Old Parsonage in St Peter Street Marlow was constructed the previous century if not earlier, of chalk with stone windows which shows another option that 1500s housebuilders of Marlow may also have used. There was a chalk pit up at Harleyford by the 1550s. The origin of the Old Parsonage is not certainly known.
The raising of the oak frame of a timber framed house occured once the frame had been left to season for a while by the carpenter who crafted it. The raising must have been a significant job, and probably involved helpers other than the householder and carpenter's workmen as it was common to have a little feast, drink distribution and celebration on the day of the raising, which sounds like a community thankyou.
If you think of a timber framed building of the 1500s you probably picture a black and white or black wood and brick structure but according to the authors of The Cottage Homes of England this blackening of the wood was often done artificially in the 1800s, and Tudor woodwork would have been left naturally greyish most of the time. I have seen elsewhere however reports of house frames being "burnt" before use which implies possible deliberate darkening of the wood. Perhaps it was down to individual choice.
Only a few people had glass windows, the rest had holes in the wall, covered by translucent cloth. Floors downstairs in humble cottages were often of compacted earth. These were skillfully laid and not quite the equivalent of kicking around in the mud as you might imagine. Don't worry though, with unpaved streets 1500s Marlovians had plenty of opportunity to squelch their way about the town following any rainfall.
Chimneys had become common by the mid Elizabethan era, and indeed fancy chimneys, were a status symbol. Poorer people still made do by and large with a hole in the roof to allow the escape of smoke. Some household smoke was thought to cure and strengthen the timber used in the construction, and even to make the inhabitants healthier! It also smoked any cheese or meat hung from the beams and rafters of the house. For this reason the clearing of the air in the home caused by new efficient chimneys was regretted by more than a few people, including William Harrison. He couldn't believe the amount of coughing, choking and rheumatism caused by living in a smoke free home!
Smoke would have deterred domestic flies but it doesn't seem that mice found it too off-putting. Though keeping cats as mousers was common, an attitude of resignation as to living with some mice had to prevail. There were as yet no daddy long legs spiders in English homes however. They cadged a lift on ships from warmer climbs a century later.
A surge in home furnishings also occurred in the homes of all but the poorest (but remember that they made up the majority of the English population). William Harrison wrote that inferior artisans and mean farmers (his description!) "have for the most part learned also to garnish their cupboards with plate, their beds with tapestries and silke hangings, and their tables with carpets and fine naperie".
All household items cost far more in real terms than they do today so that items that we would not consider special were seen as worth singling out as gifts for loved ones and friends in wills. Reynold Shirwood of Marlow who left his will in 1528 as well as his valuable pewter bequeathed tablecloths and napkins. His wife Margaret mentioned napkins too and even a towel alongside her more obviously valuable amber beads, ring, girdle and raw cash.
The poorest people lived in cottages with one or two room downstairs, often with sleeping compartments reached by ladder above them. A yeoman family usually had more rooms downstairs, and might have a fully floored upper storey for sleeping, though that was still reached by ladder not a staircase. It is presumed that any people who could not manage ladders would bed themselves down on the lower floors. Most beds were straw filled pallets. Homeowners could expect beds with frames on which hangings for warmth and privacy could be attached, but other family members in the same household were not always so lucky. Servants did not expect any covering on their beds beyond an over sheet, and maybe not even that.
William, Lord Paget had Great Marlow Manor by grant from Queen Mary in 1554. The manor had been in Crown hands since early in the reign of Henry 8th. Tucher Bold had Harleyford Manor Marlow from 1516. In 1542 he got a license to have a preacher there to officiate worship as his home was so far from the parish church in Marlow. William Lord Paget ended up holding both Harleyford and Great Marlow. The other Marlow manors of the day were Semers or Seymours and Widmere. John, Lord Russell occupied Widmere from 1571. Earlier it was held successively by the Widmere family, the Knight Templars and Knight Hospitallers.
Little Marlow Manor was in the hands of the abbess of the priory there, until of course the Dissolution.
Commercial life
Marlow is known to have had multiple inns and the like during the 1500s. The Upper Crown existed by 1596 (where Boots is now). Shopkeepers usually served customers from their homes. Marlow for generations had had two fairs a year which provided additional retail opportunities, as did the weekly market. In later times this market focused on meat sales but there is no reason to think it was not a general market in the 1500s.
Self-sufficiency was key for most people rather than commercial consumption. A cottage's garden was the medicine chest, perfumery, and culinary flavouring resource for it's residents. Some would keep bees for honey. It is often said that honey was the only sweetener available in England before the arrival of sugar but that is not strictly true. Sweet birch sap, and pollen from various flowers were available. Sucking the sweet young flowers of white dead nettles was the 1500s version of sucking a lollypop for the kids. Linden tree blossom could also be sucked as a sweet and made into a floral-scented tea. The roots and leaves of angelica plants, cultivated in gardens, also sweetened dishes.
The Bridge
There had been a bridge crossing the Thames at Marlow since at least the late 1200s. It is presumed that the bridge of 1500s Marlow and earlier stood at the bottom of St Peter Street, as the new bridge constructed in the 1780s certainly did. Davy Shirwood / Sherwood left money for the repair of Marlow Bridge in his 1524 will. Historically the people of Marlow seem to have been pretty poor at maintaining the structure despite our bridge trustees having multiple pieces of land in their hands to rent out and thus gain income for necessary repairs.
The People
While most people were not too far ranging during their lifetime it shouldn't be presumed that all the residents of the town in the 1500s were from ancient Marlow families. Not many of the last names of 1500s Marlovians were names that had been present in the 1400s and vice versa, implying plenty of population movement, even if it was only to and from the wider local area. A 1524 tax list for the town shows us one resident had come much further away - Henry Conrade the Dutchman. He'd be subject as a foreigner to additional tax. His occupation isn't known though quite a few Dutch and Flemish iron workers came to England at this time. I have some in my own family, though they set up in the Sussex Weald, a known iron making area, rather than Buckinghamshire.
The countryside
It is an open question as to how native the beech woods of South Buckinghamshire are. What we see today may be largely the result of human manipulation due to the needs of the later furniture trade. That's not to say that beech trees are not native to England, or that the woods around Marlow did not anciently contain beeches. It is thought however that the woods started out as a mix of beech and other native species, most of which were slowly removed by humans so that mixed woodland became beech dominant woodland. Whatever woods there were would have been used as foraging spots for Marlow's free ranging domestic pigs by those residents who had pannage rights.
Work
Agricultural labouring would have occupied the majority of men, and women also worked on the land as a matter of routine. Marlow wills suggest that sheep were the predominant livestock kept in the town. Married couple Margaret and Reynold Shirwood who died within days of each other, probably from a contagious illness, in 1528 mention in their wills growing barley and wheat. They were clearly doing well as Margaret specified that her farm cart is a horse cart. Horses were expensive and the use of oxen was more usual. She also talked of the ploughs and harrows that she possessed in plural terms, so we know that she and Reynold could make use of at least two teams of workers at once when it came to ploughing and harrowing.
Farms known to have existed in the 1500s are: Blounts, Seymour Court Farm then just known as Seymours or Seymers and presumably part of the lost manor of Seymers, Hawkins Farm, and in Little Marlow Monkton Farm. Most of what we now consider Marlow would have been only farmland. Large swathes of land, were kept as common fields and divided into strips for individual holders. This system would continue for many years after the 1500s.
Field boundaries where they existed historically in England were mostly banks and ditches with a hedge of hawthorn atop the bank. Hawthorn known then as quickthorn or maythorn was chosen as it makes such a good animal barrier. Hedgerows were also strategically planted at intervals with those trees whose leaves provided extra fodder for livestock (cows love young lime leaves and other trees have foliage that can be dried and used for animals in the winter), or berries and hazelnuts for humans.
Even those who had other trades frequently farmed some land as well.
I published a reconstructed 1500s trade directory on the blog last year which can be read here. As you will see from that post I found multiple men in Marlow occupied as bargemen, butchers, carpenters, innkeepers (who were often brewers too or at least their wives were), shoemakers and weavers. We also found one off individuals who were bakers, blacksmiths, drapers, glove makers, millwrights, and wood merchants. Obviously we can recover traces of the occupations of only a fraction of Marlow people during this time. Commercial fisherman on the Thames at Marlow are known earlier and later so we can safely presume they existed in the 1500s.
Servants in grand houses such as the manors were usually male with the exception of laundresses and dairy maids. Only less well off families employed female servants (who were cheaper but carried no distinction). The male and female employees of farming families were routinely referred to as servants despite spending much of or all of their day out working on the land rather than in tasks we would associate with "servants". The word servant also referred to trade apprentices and shop assistants.
Young boys were sent out to fulfill apprenticeships as far afield as London if the example of young Peter Russell of Marlow apprenticed in 1512 is anything to go by.
Religion
The All Saints of the 1500s (not the church we see today) seems to have had a chapel dedicated to Saint Mary and probably still had an altar sacred to Saint Anne as it had done back in 1495 when Radulph Carter wrote his will and mentioned it. When chantry chapels were shut down by Henry 8th the one at Marlow was worth £8 13 shillings and 4 pence. The chantry priest then was a Sir James Grai (Grey, Gray, one of the most common last names in 1500s Marlow, probably in fact the most common).
The church warden accounts of the late 1500s show that the church bells, the ringing apparatus and the clock (vital for the town as virtually no one had any timepiece at home) required constant expenditure. A visit by Elizabeth 1st to Bisham caused one of the bells to be hastily mended in order for her to be saluted. Well you didn't want to upset Queen Lizzie did you? The church bells in the late 1500s were routinely rung at the anniversary of her coronation and on St Hugh's Day. I know what you're thinking- Saint who? Hugh's not well known today but he was once Bishop of Lincoln and Lincoln was the mother church of Marlow. Wills of 1500s Marlovians often mention gifts to the mother church as well as to Marlow church itself. Hugh's feast day was in November. He was the patron saint of amongst other things sick children, and appropriately for Marlow, swans. His pet swan at Lincoln had guarded him while he slept and followed him everywhere he went.
Above, medieval St Hugh. Public domain image.
In 1595 some players were paid by the church to "play" in the "church loft" the location of which isn't certainly known. Presumably these were performing a religious play for the townspeople. The payment was made in May, the traditional time for Mummers plays. As well as the Church Loft there was also an unplaced "church house" in Marlow. Church lofts are referenced elsewhere, including at West Wycombe, where it was a separate building (and still exists). The phrase could also refer to the musicians' gallery common to churches then and which was usually sited above the rood screen. Plays could be performed on such galleries.
The churchwardens had custody of a set of morris dancing costumes. They were willing to let other parishes borrow these. What morris dancing, rooted as it was in pagan pre-Christian rituals, was thought to have to do with the work of the church is anyone's guess. May Day or midsummer celebrations were the main times for Morris dancing in Tudor England.
Talking of unusual articles kept in a church, in some earlier Tudor parishes a communal plough was stored there ready for anyone to borrow but there is no evidence of this occurring in Marlow church.
At Little Marlow stood a church dedicated to St John and a small, moated Benedictine priory dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The priory was home to five to six nuns at a time. Margaret Vernun, prioress at the time of the Dissolution, received a transfer to the famous abbey of Malling in Kent, which would have been a significant promotion- albeit a short lived one as that was also forced to close just a couple of years later. The priory site at Little Marlow was given briefly to Bisham Abbey then leased to Elizabeth Restwold and John Titley. Elizabeth was already leasing some of the Priory's other lands when the nuns first left.
Margaret Vernun's origin is unknown but she was clearly from a wealthy family, most prioresses were. Before being based at Little Marlow she had served at St Albans. Margaret was a friend of Thomas Cromwell, to whom she wrote many times. How they met is unknown but the friendship was genuine. She kept and educated his son Gregory at her priory, and it appears Thomas visited her socially at Little Marlow. She and her other nuns had also gone to dine with him and invited him to Little Marlow in return. Entertaining one of the King's senior ministers was perfectly acceptable for a cloistered woman. Nuns in this era don't generally seem to have been as closed off from the world of men as we might suppose, indeed it wasn't an option for any prioress or abbess to live that way. They were landlords and administrators of the finances of their institution, ladies of business. The priory held lands not only in Little Marlow, but at various times also at Great Marlow, Hambledon, High Wycombe, Penn, Taplow, Wendover, Colebrook, Weston Turville, Beaconsfield and Benfield in Berkshire. At one point Margaret borrowed money from Cromwell in order to buy some extra land for the priory which she knew she could quickly turn a profit on.
The nuns of course had a live-in male chaplain for mass and confession. In 1835 Margaret paid him £5 6 shillings 8d a year. At least one priest engaged by Margaret for her nuns at Little Marlow brought with him his own pupil which he had previously been engaged to educate. It was the norm for parish priests to supplement their incomes by taking in pupils so it is likely that the priest at All Saints church in Marlow had his own little "school" too. No other known educational provision existed in 1500s Marlow.
The taking in of both male and female residential pupils was also very common for 1500s priories. Cromwell junior had left Margaret not long before the Dissolution but Margaret was hoping towards the end of the Priory's life to negotiate the arrival of new residential pupil, a little girl that she had heard of as staying in Bisham. Margaret hoped that if she came the girl would be a comfort to Margaret in her "old age". We know she had had multiple pupils at St Albans and pupils before Gregory Cromwell at Little Marlow too. Such children came from well off families and it is presumed those families paid well for the privilege. A male teacher was provided by his father for Gregory Cromwell at the Little Marlow Priory with Margaret supervising his work. Another little boy shared his lessons. The bringing in of outside teachers seems to have been the usual way of serving the pupils in priories.
As well as her income from pupils and land rentals Margaret raised money by selling wood. The priory owned 8 acres of woodland. Her priory was also entitled to offerings from a chapel at Colebrook, for unknown reasons.
Margaret's distress at the impending loss of her Little Marlow home was poured out in her letters. She pleaded with Cromwell to do what he could for her and her fellow nuns. He secured her the Malling post.When Malling too stood on the brink she again wrote asking to be allowed to sell one of the manors belonging to Malling to fund either a one off lump sum retirement payment or ongoing pensions for her nuns. There was only so much Cromwell could do. In the end the manor sell off was not allowed to take place but Margaret did manage to secure a £40 a year pension for herself.
The closure of Little Marlow happened over several months. First the king's men came to assess whether any nuns aged under 24 were present and if so to declare them no longer nuns. The state didn't want young people starting out in the cloistered life. Margaret had 3 such women and the day they were ordered out she lost most of her community. A few months later the priory was shut entirely and Margaret and her last remaining colleague left. Four servants and a priest lost their places along with the nuns.
Before the Dissolution Henry 8th happily allowed the persecution of the growing number of Protestants in the country who were challenging Catholic beliefs. Marlow did not escape these persecutions. At some point between 1518 and 1521 John Gardiner of Marlow reported his own sister Agnes, by marriage Agnes Ward, also of Marlow for blasphemous (as in Protestant) beliefs. He also pointed the finger at a slew of other Marlovians at the same time, including Reynold Shirwood we heard of earlier in this post. There were clearly other snitches and spies about- poor John "Simonnds" and his wife (probably the same woman as Mrs John "Simon" above) were on a separate occasion charged with having a book of the Gospels written in English. This was a great crime as it implied you were exploring your faith yourself rather than relying on the interpretation from Latin of your approved local priest. Another time John and Isabel Gardiner of Marlow -the same John?- had to be forced to swear to the fact that they had heard Thomas Rave (perhaps Reeve) of Marlow say that pilgrimages were worthless and chapels dedicated to the saints pointless. Rave was already in trouble having been ordered to go to the Bishop of Lincoln to do penance for an unknown religious offence. Whilst in Lincoln he disrupted mass and was clearly unrepentant. The Bishop got rid of him to finish his penance in High Wycombe, unsuccessfully. The fate of the other accused Marlovians is not known to me.
Both Margaret and Reynold Shirwood, and other 1500s residents asked to be buried in the churchyard of Marlow. Burial inside the church itself required deep pockets. The Shirwoods could have afforded it but some people thought expensive memorials an example of sinful pride so would not ask for them regardless. Outside graves were not typically permanently marked in this era.
Written and researched by Charlotte Day.
©Marlow Ancestors.
Selected Sources=
The Urban Experience: A Sourcebook : English, Scottish, and Welsh Towns, 1450-1700. Kiribati, Manchester University Press, 1983.
Copy of returns of vintners, innkeepers and alehousekeepers 1577 Bucks Archives ref=
D-X423/1 bucks archives
The Cottage Homes of England by Helen Allingham and Stewart D-ck 1909 published by Edward Arnold, London (population increase).
The Holinshed Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland Volume 1, compiled by Raphael Hollinshed for the Stationers Company, 1577, London.
History and Topography of Buckinghamshire by James Joseph Sheahan, published by Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1862.
Many wills including those of Thomas Bevington, Reynold Shirwood, Margaret Shirwood, David Shirwood, Robert Sands. All are at the National Archives.
The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe by John Foxe, revised edition published by Seeley's of London 1856.
Home Counties Magazine article by Miss E.M Walford (quoting bridge land property records from 1617) https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Home_Counties_Magazine.html?id=_HIaAQAAIAAJ#v=onepage&q=Marlow%20%22high%20street%22&f=false 1899 published by F.E Robinson. Volume one.
Records of Buckinghamshire Volume 5 compiled by James Pickburn 1878 for Buckinghamshire Architectural and Archaeological Society, Aylesbury. Via Google Books.
Peter Russell of Marlow apprenticeship https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C5522927
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_of_Lincoln
Account of the Nunnery of Little Marlow by Walter De Gray Birch, published in Records Of Buckinghamshire Volume 4, 1871. Via the Archaeology Data Service https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/details.xhtml?recordId=3254649&recordType=Journal
Reading and Writing during the Dissolution: Monks, Friars and Nuns 1530-58 by Mary C. Earlier. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Memorials of the Danvers Family (of Dauntsey and Culworth) by Francis Nottidge Macnamara published by Hardy and Page 1895, London. Via Google Books.
Historic England record for Little Marlow Priory https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archsearch/record?titleId=1036080
Lovelace vs unknown Six Clerks Office National Archives ref=
