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Mills, fisheries, turbaries, ponds, mineral
rights, rights of passage
(13/15)
Cistercian monks fully exploited
their environment, and required a variety of holdings to support
a self-sufficient community. These included mills, fisheries, mining
rights, and turbaries (the right to cut turf) such as those at
Flotmanby and Mulethorpe.
Another important resource was salt. This was vital for preserving
food, but was also needed for the manufacture of cheese, to tan
leather, cure shoes and even to solder pipes.(40) The monks did
not, however, mine salt but collected it through evaporation at
salt
pans.
Mills
The Cistercian Order prohibited its abbeys to receive revenues
from mills, since this ran counter to its ideal that the monks
should live by the sweat of their own brows and not that of others.
Whilst communities could have mills for their own use, they were
not to profit from these by collecting ‘multure’, the
tax paid by those who were compelled to use the mill to grind their
corn. Rievaulx certainly owned mills – an early record is
the bishop of Durham’s grant of a mill in Crosby in 1152;
a later example is a mill in Fryton, called ‘Poketo’,
which was given to the community in 1222 by Hugh de Flammeville
and was later leased to the nearby canons of Newburgh for the yearly
rent of two marks.(41) Although
it is nowhere explicit, it is likely that in some cases these mills
did not simply serve the monks but
provided the Rievaulx community with income.(42) The
monks of Roche, near Maltby, had a windmill in Todwick, where locals
had to pay a sum of money (multure) to grind their corn. This was clearly
the cause of considerable resentment and in 1329, in a show of hostility,
a group of embittered locals broke the abbey’s windmill here.
Fishing rights
Fish ponds (stews) within the abbey precinct were generally used for
storage rather than for breeding.
[Williams, Cistercians, p. 365]
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Fish was an important part of the monastic diet, especially on
feast days and festive periods such as Advent and Lent, when the
use of animal fat, eggs, milk
and milk products was either prohibited or restricted.
Fisheries were therefore
an extremely valuable possession. In the late twelfth century
Rievaulx acquired a number of these along the River Tees at places
such
as Newsham, Girsby and Normanby, and also at Scarborough, on the Yorkshire coast.(43) A
grant of fishing rights might include permission to fish in the area, free movement
of passage for the community’s boats, the right to build a fishpond
or to take stones and turf for the upkeep and repair of the fisheries – such
was the case at Newsham, near Yarm. It might also include a house where the lay-brothers could
stay, and where fish could be stored, dried and salted.(44) The
abbey’s fishery at Girsby
was at the centre of a dispute in 1302, when the abbot of Rievaulx accused John
Conyers and other of breaking
his weir here and taking his nets.(45)
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