Heritage > Historic Houses
Beaulieu
The Monastic Estate
Agriculture on the monastic estate was based on large farm units called 'granges'. Theoretically, the 'granges' were to be within 20 miles of the Abbey itself, but Beaulieu owned 'granges' in Oxfordshire and Cornwall. By 1270 however, there were five 'granges' within 'The Great Close of Beaulieu': Sowley, Beufre, St. Leonard's, Otterwood and Hartford, together with the nearby Manor of Holbury which was organised as a farming unit.
The main topographical features of the 'granges' were the barns where grain was stored. The barns owned by the Beaulieu monks at St. Leonards and Coxwell still survive and their vast size is an indication of their importance. St. Leonards also had a grange house and chapel, the ruins of which still stand, the whole group being surrounded by a wall. The monks brought 3,500 acres of arable land, enough for 35 ploughs, into cultivation from forest and heathland. This manual work would have been carried out by the Lay Brothers.
However, the main source of Abbey revenue was not grain but sheep. The Abbey was exempt from the restrictions and penalties of New Forest jurisdiction, and it was granted rights to pasture animals within the Forest. About 4,000 sheep were reared for their fleeces, the operation centring on a holding at Bergerie. The wool was cleaned and graded into six types and, after the monks had taken what they needed for their own use, was sent to the Abbey's wool store in Southampton for export. It always fetched a high price, for the Abbey had a good reputation for quality.
The Abbey had direct access to the sea, and its charter gave the abbot exclusive rights over the Beaulieu River and the foreshore, rights which Lord Beaulieu still holds today. The monks established a fishery for local catches, probably keeping the boats at Gins, and maintained its own small fleet of ships; in 1269 one of them, the Salvata, was variously recorded as carrying wine, lead and coal. At Sowley the monks constructed a large pond from marshy ground fed by streams coming down from the forest to the sea. This became the chief fish breeding ground.
Hartford and Otterwood were in the centre of heavily wooded areas and supplied the Abbey with timber, fuel and bark, and were the abbot's hunting reserve.
In terms of cultivated land however, the monastic estate was smaller than it is today. Much of the land around Park, Warren, Gins and Need's Ore has been reclaimed since the end of the 17th century; in the monk's day it would have been marshland.
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