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Mills, fisheries, turbaries, ponds, mineral
rights, rights of passage
(13/15)
A distant view of Kirkstall Abbey from the
south west. Oil painting by Joseph Rhodes (1782-1855). The scene
in the foreground may represent the Bramley Fall quarries
© Abbey House Museum
<click to enlarge>
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Mills, fisheries, turbaries, ponds, mineral
rights, rights of passage
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. The monks of Kirkstall shared the right to cut
turf at Bessacar with Peter of Bessacar. To ensure that there was
sufficient peat for both parties, an agreement was drawn up in
1187 which stipulated that neither Peter nor the monks should give
away or sell any of the peat there, but simply remove what they
required for themselves. (26)
The Cistercian Order prohibited its abbeys from receiving revenues
from mills, since this undermined the ideal that monks should live
by the sweat of their own brows and not that of others. Communities
could, however, have mills for their own use, but were not to profit
from these by collecting ‘multure’, the tax demanded
from those who were obliged to grind their corn at the mill. This
prohibition was not always observed and it was sometimes difficult
to uphold if the benefactor granted land with a mill included.
Indeed, Kirkstall acquired a mill at Mickley in the twelfth century
from Robert le Peitevin. The Bramhope family gave the community
the village mill at Bramhope, which the monks leased to St Leonard’s
Hospital, York, in 1274, for 40s p.a.(27)
In 1288 one of Kirkstall’s mills
was used to crush oak bar, to tan leather.
[Bond, ‘Water management’, p. 114.] |
Most monastic mills were powered by water and used to grind grain;
others were driven by horsepower. There are remains of a mill
within Kirkstall’s precinct. (28) <back><next>
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