MUNSLOW HUNDRED (part)
About 1831 the eleven parishes whose histories follow this article lay
wholly or mainly in the northern part of Munslow hundred. (fn. 1) They
comprise five of the seven parishes then wholly or partly in the hundred's
Upper division (fn. 2) and six of the fourteen wholly or partly in the Lower
division. (fn. 3)
For some three centuries, beginning in 1198, an extensive north-eastern part of
the large county division based on Munslow hundred was occupied by the manors
and townships that formed a hundredal liberty, or leet, subject to the privileged
jurisdiction of Wenlock priory. In 1468 a quarter sessions borough of Wenlock
was incorporated, and, in ways that seem to have been unintended (at least by the
Crown), the new corporation's municipal privileges were extended to the whole of
the priory liberty. That seems to have happened fairly promptly, otherwise such
an odd borough could never have been conceived. More gradually, in the late 15th
and earlier 16th centuries, the borough or liberty-eventually known as the
Franchise-of Wenlock became a new division of the county. (fn. 4)
Distinct as the Munslow hundred and Wenlock Franchise county divisions thus
became, in the area treated in this volume their parishes and townships interlocked
in a way that was more complicated than in any other part of Shropshire. (fn. 5) Moreover
the same area of Shropshire that became so oddly arranged after 1468 was also
virtually the only area of the county described in 1086 which had complicated
hundred territories: (fn. 6) then a detachment of Leintwardine hundred met the western
end of Patton hundred and thus made the northern part of Culvestan hundred a
detachment. (fn. 7) The later territorial complexity of the area can be attributed to the
local interpretation of the 1468 charter (tolerated by the Crown), and the earlier
situation too requires explanation. That would necessarily be more speculative,
and here it can only be indicated that suggestions towards simplifying the
Shropshire hundred boundaries as they are revealed in Domesday Book (fn. 8) have made
it easier to detect pairings of eight of the nine south Shropshire hundreds; some
pairs coincided with rural deaneries. Culvestan and Patton indeed were paired
formally, having a common caput. (fn. 9) They coincided with two deaneries (Ludlow
and Wenlock) rather than one. (fn. 10) A big break in that pattern, and prime cause of
the complexity of hundred territories in the area treated in this volume, is the
northern detachment of Leintwardine hundred comprising nine estates amounting
to 21½ hides; (fn. 11) the detachment does not correspond with the medieval ruridecanal
boundaries, and if, as long the Shropshire-Staffordshire border, ecclesiastical
boundaries long survived to represent ancient secular boundaries, then the
Leintwardine detachment may not have been ancient. It may have resulted from
a reorganization of hundreds in south-west Shropshire by Earl Roger, who certainly
altered them in the south-east. (fn. 12)
Leintwardine hundred disappeared after 1086, and the estates in its northern
detachment were distributed to other hundreds, some to Munslow, thus introducing
(or restoring) a simpler pattern of hundred territories in the area. (fn. 13)
Munslow was a new hundred formed by amalgamating Patton and Culvestan
hundreds. Eyton considered that there was a wholesale reorganization of the Shropshire
hundreds in Henry I's reign, but that seems unlikely: changes may have been spread
over the 12th century, (fn. 14) the union of Patton and Culvestan perhaps achieved a century
earlier than that of Hodnet and Wrockwardine. (fn. 15) The Domesday hundreds that went
to form Bradford hundred had not had a common caput. Patton and Culvestan,
however, had one, at Corfham, and a degree of union-the transaction of the business
of two hundreds in the same place and on the same occasions-may be assumed to be
implicit in the possession of a single caput. The process of union, however, may have
been pushed towards completion by the choice of a new caput. At first glance the
likeliest time for the abandonment of Corfham may seem to be the moment when the
manor was alienated by the Crown in 1155, (fn. 16) but the choice of Munslow as the new
meeting place at that date seems inexplicable, for Munslow was in Aston manor, which
had probably been held in chief since c. 1115 or earlier by the Banastre family, (fn. 17)
prominent landowners outside Shropshire; (fn. 18) it was certainly not a royal estate in 1155.
For a dozen or more years after 1086, on the other hand, Corfham was held in chief
by the earl of Shrewsbury (fn. 19) while Aston was held of him by his sheriff. (fn. 20) The routine
of hundred business fell to the sheriff and his officers; it thus seems reasonable to
suppose that it was at some time between 1086 and the destruction of the earl's power
in 1102 that the sheriff, doubtless with his overlord's acquiescence, shifted the hundred
meeting place just across the river: removing it from Corfham (on a by-road from
Diddlebury to Peaton) to his own manor of Aston, where a more eligible situation on
the principal highway along Corve Dale was marked out by a well known tumulus-
Munslow. (fn. 21)
The relocation of hundred business at Munslow was doubtless a real convenience
for the sheriff and the many suitors and others concerned in it, for the road past
Munslow ran from Much Wenlock to Ludlow and was thus the quickest route through
the two hundreds. The change may not, however, have struck contemporaries
as of great import, for as late as 1233 the name Culvestan was still in at least occasional
use to indicate lower Corve Dale. (fn. 22) Thus the term Munslow hundred may have
gained currency as gradually as the use of Culvestan declined.