Affpuddle, Dorset
in the 19th Century

This Being Page One: The Parish

Page Two being the Manor of Affpuddle.

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My interest in the parish, which is one-tenth the size in area of my home town of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, stemmed from recording the genealogy my great-grandfather who was the tenant farmer of East farm for the last twenty-five years of his life. In extending the families of his wife, grandparents, parents, granduncles, and cousins, it became apparent that much of the parish was a “family affair” during the nineteenth century. Those connections are explored in the second page. This page is more about the entire parish of some thirty-eight hundred acres.

In the 19th century the ancient parish lands that comprise Affpuddle were originally the Affpuddle Manor and Bryantspuddle Manor, so named in the Domesday Book. Even then the its land had been shaped by Saxons five centuries earlier, parceled into small divisions. The written history of Affpuddle begins in the year 987 with the Foundation Charter of the Benedictine Abbey of Cerne; the written history of Bryantspuddle with the assessment for the Geld Tax in 1084. The parish is bisected by the River Piddle (Puddle or Trent) and bordered on the south by the Frome. The two rivers join and flow into Poole Harbor and the sea.

These rivers gave rise to a system of watermeadows by which the water was run over the flat fields to manure and irrigate them. Watercress is grown and farmed at the south end of the parish.

Anyone picking up Joan Brocklebank’s Affpuddle in the County of Dorset will likely be overwhelmed by the amount of detail and information in her remarkable history of the parish. My two pages, the Parish and the Manor, are interested in the farms of the 19th century, where for decades my family, great grandfathers and their wives, sons and daughters, farmed the principle farms of West and East farm, Waddock and Pallington. To identify the tenant farmers, I have used the tax records, Kelly’s directories, the tithe map of 1839, and the censuses.

By the mid-nineteenth century the parish was well established into eight major farms……..

For most of the 19th century the parish was 3818 acres, or 5.96 square miles. It was reduced from 4,940 acres in 1831 to 3818 in 1851 where it remained until 1891 when it was again reduced to 3,631 acres.

Population of the Parish

The following table is from Brocklebank and "Vision of Britain through Time."

• Affpuddle Farm of 287 Acres [East Farm]
  • Mrs. Branston (Widow) [Mary Ann Woodrow, wid William Henry Branston My 2nd great grandparents]
  • 2 sons aged 26, 18, 12 [James, Charles, George Woodrow]
  • 11 Agricultural Labourers
• Affpuddle Farm of 400 Acres [West Farm]
  • William Pitt [Age 76 My 3rd great grandfather]
  • Son aged 40, Nephew aged 56 [James Pitt, William Jones]
  • 17 Agricultural Labourers
• Rogers Hill Farm of 450 Acres
  • Robert Besant
  • 12 Agricultural Labourers
• Waddock Farm of 380 Acres
  • William Seare
  • 2 sons aged 26, 22 [Robert, William]
  • 18 Agricultural Labourers
  • 1 boy
  • 2 women
• Briantspuddle Farm of 370 Acres
  • Edward Hooper
  • 1 son aged 15 [Edward]
  • 13 Agricultural Laboures
• Pallington - Scutt's holding of 5 Acres
  • Henry Scutt [aged 22]
• Pallington Farm of 220 Acres
  • Thomas Parmiter
  • 12 Agricultural Labourers

2112 total acreage

8 sons, 83 Laboures, 1 boy, 2 women. An average of 25.44 labourers per acre.

Close up of Affpuddle in the 1885-1888 Ordinance Survey map showing the mill.

The mill at Affpuddle has longer history than any other property in the parish, it being mentioned in the Domesday Book along with the mill at Bryantspuddle. (Footnote: Brocklebank, page 85 ) By the beginning of the nineteenth century the leaseholder was William Hooper by virtue of his marriage, to Elizabeth Crisdy, the daughter of Elizabeth Crisdy who died in 1798. William held the mill until the 1855 when it passed to William Hall and then to James Cox in 1862. A member of the Cox family operated it until 1889 when William Billey took it over and operated it until 1923 when it ceased work. It lay in distress for decades until, evidently, it was converted into living space.

There are a number of pictures of and archival descriptions at the Mills Archive.

There is also a 1948 picture of the Briantspuddle Mill House which I imagine is now long gone.

Affpuddle mill looking west showing the spillway and the church in the background.