ESSEX AS A WINE-PRODUCING COUNTY.
41
yard, Morant says 22 that it was situated "on the west side of
the Castle, between it and Baylie Street, [at a spot since] called
the Lord's Orchard, where lately grew wild vines, bearing red
grapes."
(8.) At "Belcamp" (possibly Belchamp Walter, or
perhaps, Down Hall, in Hatfield Broad Oak, as Chisenhale-
Marsh suggests), also on the land of Alberic de Vere, there were
"xi. arpenni of vineyard, i. of which bears" (fo. clii.).
It thus appears that, in 1086, nineteen years after the Con-
quest, there were in Essex at least forty-two arpenni and a half
of vineyards, of which over thirteen arpenni had not yet come
into bearing.
Mr. J. Horace Round has submitted these eight entries to
careful examination 23 and has called attention to the facts that,
in every case, the vineyards in question were new, having been
planted since the days of King Edward the Confessor ; that, in
several cases, they had been so newly planted that parts of them
had not yet come into bearing ; that they are all measured by the
arpent—a French measure ; and that they were all, or nearly all,
situated upon, or near to, manors held in demesne by a tenant
in capite and on which such tenant resided. From these facts,
Mr. Round draws the conclusion (which the entries seem fully to
justify) that, whether or not viniculture had been carried on here
by the Romans, it had fallen into disuse during the days of the
Saxons—a beer-drinking people—and had been revived again,
after the Conquest, by the Norman nobles, who felt the need of
the wine to which they had been accustomed in their native land,
and therefore planted vineyards in the vicinity of their chief
residences.
We may now turn from Domesday Book to notice other
early records proving the former existence of vineyards in this
county.
Mr. Horace Round, in his paper above alluded to, refers to
an entry on the Roll of 1130 which mentions the making of two
vineyards on Peverell's land at Maldon, gives particulars of the
pay and clothing of a vineyard man, and speaks of sixteen barrels
22 Hist. of Essex (1768), ii., p. 291.
23 Mr. Round's paper on the subject, which was read at the forty-sixth Annual Meeting
of the Essex Archaeological Society at Colchester, on April 20th 1899, since this article
was written, appears in the Transactions of the Society (vol. vii., n.s., pp. 249-251).