Discovering Medieval Doddesthorpe

Avril Lumley Prior

27 August 2007

When I arrived in the area in 1970, I was fascinated by the place-name ‘Dogsthorpe’. My curiosity intensified when I learnt that as late as 1821 the settlement was known as Dodsthorpe. The name appears to be a corruption of the Anglo-Scandinavian Doddesthorp, meaning an outlying farmstead associated with an individual called Dodd (1).

Variations of Doddesthorpe crop up with surprising frequency in medieval documents relating to Peterborough Abbey, founded on the site of the present Cathedral around AD 655, leading us to speculate that the hamlet once represented a significant monastic outpost. It is first mentioned in ‘King Eadgar’s Charter of AD 972’, by which Doddesthorpe, Ege (Eye) and Pastune (Paston) and numerous Northamptonshire estates were granted to Abbot Adulf and the monks of Peterborough (2). The document is a forgery, probably concocted by Abbot Ernulf in about 1109, but was considered important enough to be translated into Old English and copied into the Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle c. 1121 (3). Doddesthorp was confirmed to the abbey in a charter granted by Richard I in 1189 (4).

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Doddesthorpe, with its centre close to the site of the present Bluebell Inn and Angle Thatched Cottage, and Pastune were leased by the abbots of Peterborough to successive generations of the de Tot family, whose ancestor had fought alongside William of Normandy at Hastings in 1066 (5). In turn, the de Tots and their successors, the Everards, sub-let plots of land to peasant farmers in return for several days’ labour each week. On the remaining working-days the Dogsthorpe tenants sustained themselves by rearing livestock and by growing crops in two vast fields known as the Lammas and Great Wood Field, part of which survives as Woodfield Park Millennium Green (6). The peasants also were obliged to pay tithes to the abbey and upon Sundays and holy days to attend St. John’s parish church in Peterborough, over two miles to the south-east (7). Thus, the abbots of Peterborough were able to maintain a strict control over their parishioners. Indeed, when in 1342 John Love erected his own private chapel complete with belfry next to his Doddesthorpe farmhouse to save himself the journey into town, he found himself in serious trouble with Abbot Henry. A lengthy court case ensued which resulted in Love being fined heavily and ordered to demolish the offending structure (8).

In 1539, Peterborough Abbey was suppressed by Henry VIII. Its last abbot, John Chambers, was appointed bishop of the newly-established Cathedral in 1541, whilst his monks were either pensioned off or redeployed as cathedral officials (9). Doddesthorpe became the property of the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough and remained part of St. John’s parish until 1957. Most of the Lammas has disappeared beneath Dogsthorpe housing estate with Burford Lawns occupying the eastern portion of Great Wood Field and the Welland Estate straddling the northernmost sections of both fields. Therefore, readers of this article may be interested to learn that their homes sit upon an ancient field-system that formerly had supported generations of residents of medieval Doddesthorpe.