There's Life in The Crown Inn, Munslow

By Bernard O'Connor

On the road between Craven Arms and Much Wenlock in Shropshire there are four pubs. One, the Crown Inn, formerly the Hundred House, boasts having a timber over the inglenook fireplace from one of Sir Francis Drake’s ships that defeated the Spanish Armada.
Used as a court for the Lord of the Manor to try local offenders, it subsequently was used for auctions, inquests, meetings as well as celebrating events in people’s lives, enjoying good food and ale, meeting others and generally enjoying the atmosphere of a beautiful old inn.
Bernard O’Connor’s ‘There’s Life in the Crown Inn, Munslow’ tells its story through historical records and nearly two hundred years of newspaper articles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781447721642

Book preview

There’s Life in the Crown Inn, Munslow

Bernard O’Connor

Copyright

Some rights reserved.

  Attempts have been made to locate, contact and acknowledge copyright holders of quotes and illustrations used in my work. They have all been credited within the text and/or in the bibliography. Much appreciation is given to those who have agreed that w include their work. Any copyright owners who are not properly identified and acknowledged, get in touch so that we may make any necessary corrections.

  Small parts of this book may be reproduced in similar academic works providing due acknowledgement is given in the introduction and within the text. Any errors or suggested additions can be forwarded to the authors for future editions. 

ISBN: 978-1-4477-2164-2

The Crown Inn, Munslow SO5287 1312

The Crown Inn in Munslow, a small village in Upper Corvedale, Southwest Shropshire, was formerly known as the Hundred House.  There are numerous Hundred Houses in England, and an explanation of the term was found on the rowberry website.

The Hundred was an ancient administrative subdivision of the shire or county, their origin being now lost in the mists of time. They are mentioned in the Laws of Edgar in 1000. They are usually taken to have been formed from a hundred hides of land [a hide referred to in the Domesday Book of 1086 referred to the amount of land a peasant needed to keep a family. The amount of land that made up one hide would vary from one part of Britain to another.], each of which furnished a warrior to the host. [The host referred to the King who could call on warriors to fight in times of war.] Whatever their origin they had their own court, the Hundred Moot (the Anglo-Saxon word for court), the business of which was both administrative as well as judicial. It met every few weeks and each local township sent its reeve and four men. Established before the Norman Conquest these courts continued to function after it, unconcerned at the vagaries of national politics, deciding questions of minor offences such as trespass, obstruction of the highway, etc. The president of the moot was the hundred man, but twice a year (normally the courts held after Easter and Michaelmas) the sheriff of the county would appear to act as president. He would hold a view of Frankpledge, cross-examining the representatives of each township about offences committed there. The population was divided into tithings, or groups of neighbours (original comprised of ten householders), and if no perpetrator could be identified, the entire tithing in which the offence was committed would be fined. This sheriff's tourn was an important event and the sheriff would arrest those accused of major crimes and fine petty offenders. The hundred courts gradually lost their powers after the 15th century and lost most of their functions after the County Court Act of 1867. They had been disbanded altogether by 1886. (http://www.rowberry.org/ hhhist.html)

The Munslow Hundred was detailed on the British History Online website. The references are included after the article.

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.

Footnotes

1. The hist. of Munslow hund. as a whole is reserved for treatment in a future vol. of this Hist. Cf. V.C.H. Salop. iii. 45; iv. 205.

2. The other two were Culmington (a detached part of the divn.) and Wistanstow (half of which lay in Purslow hund.).

3. S.R.O., q. sess. order bk. 1828-31, p. 214; V.C.H. Salop. ii. 209.

4. Below, Lib. and Boro. of Wenlock.

5. Cf. figs 3, 16.

6. The apparently much greater complications in Alnodestreu have now been convincingly explained away: sources cited below, n. 8.

7. V.C.H. Salop. iii. 8 (including Stretton-en-le-Dale, perhaps wrongly, in Leintwardine hund.); Dom. Bk.: Salop. ed F. and C. Thorn (1986); Salop. acc. to Dom. Bk. (map, 1990) in Salop. Domesday: Folios and Maps, ed. R. W. H. Erskine (1988).

8. Arguing editorial mistakes during the writing of Great Domesday: C. P. Lewis, 'Intro. to Salop. Domesday', Salop. Domesday, ed. A. Williams and R. W. H. Erskine (1990), 4-6; F. R. Thorn, 'Hundreds and Wapentakes', ibid. 28-39.

9. V.C.H. Salop. i. 293, 316; iii. 6, 9.

10. Cf. maps ibid. ii. 24; iii. 8.

11. Consisting of Acton Scott and Alcaston; Chelmick; Minton; Wistanstow, Strefford, Whittingslow, and Woolston; and Cheney Longville.

12. V.C.H. Salop. iii. 43. Cf. C. P. Lewis, 'Eng. and Norman govt. and lordship in Welsh borders 1039-87' (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1985), 222-3, 238-49.

13. V.C.H. Salop. iii. 34, 36, 40.

14. Ibid. 11; Eyton, v. 145.

15. V.C.H. Salop. xi. 93, 95.

16. Eyton, iii. 330; v. 146. It was briefly in the Crown's hands again 1175-7.

17. Ibid. v. 130-1.

18. V.C.H. Lancs. i. 366 sqq.

19. Eyton, v. 145; V.C.H. Salop. iii. 10.

20. Below, Munslow, manor; for the relationship betw. earl and sheriff cf. T.S.A.S. lvi. 247.

21. P.N. Salop. i (E.P.N.S.), 219-16.

22. V.C.H. Salop. iii. 11 n. 60.

(https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol10/pp7-8)

A map of the world Description automatically generated with low confidence

The Munslow Hundred (https://wikishire.co.uk/wiki/Munslow_Hundred)

To help readers understand some of the terminology used by early reporters, there were forty perches (p.) in a rood (r.), four roods in an acre (a.). One acre is 4,047m² or 2.45 hectares. There were twenty shillings (s. or /-) in a pound (often symbolised as l. before £. was used) and twelve pennies (p.) in a shilling. A guinea was 21 shillings, and a sovereign was a pound coin. There were 14 pounds (lb.) in a stone (st.) weight.

Graphical user interface, application, Word Description automatically generated

Extract of 1-inch Shropshire Sheet 166 1899

Extract from 6-inch Shropshire LXIV.NE 1884

Extract of 25-inch Shropshire LXIV.8 1884

Extract of 25-inch Shropshire LXIV.8 1884

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munslow

The Crown Country Inn Munslow

https://www.themobilefoodguide.com/restaurants/munslow/crown-country-inn

(https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1383334 Selwyn Ray)

The earliest part of the building is believed to be 17th century, but it was added to in the 18th century. Architectural details of the Crown Inn can be found on the Historic England website where it is described as a Grade II listed building. 

Public House, former Hundred House. Mid C18, with earlier, probably C17, core. Painted brick with floor bands, painted timber frame to rear and gable end. Plain-tiled roofs with brick coped parapet gables and cogged brick eaves, painted stone rubble extensions. Central stone chimney with axial C19 brick upper shaft, projecting stepped brick gable-end stack to right. Rectangular 3-unit plan parallel to road, with wings to rear. EXTERIOR: south-east front is an asymmetrical 3-storey, 6-window range of segmental-arched openings, with three 8/8 sashes with moulded cases and 3 blocked windows at the upper 2 levels, ground floor with 4 sashes of varying sizes, plain doorway at head of straight flight of steps on first floor, later doorway and gabled porch to ground storey with 4-panelled and boarded door. Left return side: lower storeys covered by painted stone rubble lean-to extension, casement in top storey. To left is single-storey and attic painted brick rear gabled extension wing. Right return side: lower storey covered by single-storey rubble stone extension with projecting gabled roof and flat roof to rear, central projecting stack, top floor with C20 casement and framed truss of tie beam, vertical strut and collar to right of stack only. Rear: partly covered by later lean-to extensions and with small square-framed gabled outshut at upper-storey level. INTERIOR: chamfered bridging beams. Large chamfered mantelbeam with C17 carving featuring cockerels. Listing NGR: SO5211987377 (https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1383334?section=official-list-entry)

Almost 200 years of newspaper articles which mention the Hundred House and the Crown Inn

Staffordshire Adviser, Saturday 18 August 1827, SHREWSBURY ASSIZES. The Commission of Assize [a court which formerly sat at intervals in each county of England and Wales to administer the civil and criminal law] was opened at Shrewsbury on Friday, where there were 35 prisoners for trial, and a heavy accumulation of business at Nisi Prius. [all legal actions tried before judges of the King's Bench Division] George Amisson, for stealing a pick, and several other articles, the property of the Right Hon. Earl Gower, persisted in pleading guilty, and was sentenced to be transported [to Australia or New Zealand] seven years. Richard Pinches, for stealing a black mare, the property of Mr. Dolphin, of All Stretton, had Judgment of Death recorded against him. —The prisoner was seen at All Stretton the day previous to the robbery, and he was afterwards seen passing through Bridgnorth with the mare in his possession. Mr. Milner, of Bridgnorth, who had seen the prisoner riding a mare without a saddle or bridle, had suspicion that it was stolen, and in consequence of information which he received proceeded to Birmingham, and there found that the mare had been sold by the prisoner to a horse-dealer named Mills, who afterwards sold it to a person living at Hales Owen, and at that place the mare was discovered Mr. Milner and a constable. The prisoner received a good character from a number of respectable persons.—Mr. Milner, who volunteered to go in pursuit of the prisoner, was highly complimented for his praiseworthy exertions. Thomas Jones, was indicted for stealing a parcel containing gloves (the property of Messrs. Rogers and Rage, Shrewsbury,) from the Prince of Orange coach travelling between Birmingham and Shrewsbury.— The coachman received the parcel at Wolverhampton, and put it into the hinder part the coach. The prisoner was coming out of Staffordshire, and seeing the coach, got up behind it, took the parcel from where it had been put by the coachman, and went off towards Ironbridge. He afterwards sold a part of the gloves to a person at Ironbridge and offered another part at a price which created suspicion. He was questioned as to where he obtained the gloves from, and he said his brother manufactured them in Birmingham. The constable immediately apprehended him. and the prisoner confessed having hid the remainder the gloves in a barley field near Shifnal, where they were found, together with the invoice.—Verdict, guilty; to be transported 7 years. William Jones and Charles Weale were convicted of breaking into the cheese-room of Mr. Robert Binnell, farmer, of Wrockwardine.—It appeared in evidence that the prisoners had taken a horse and cart to within 300 yards of Mr. Binnell’s house; a key was found in Jones’s pocket which would unlock the cheese-room door, by which means they entered the room, and carried away 23 cheeses, 5 sheets, 5 bags, &,c. Owing to a particular mark made by a small nail between the joints of the