Glossary of Words, Names and Terms

Below is a glossary of words, names and terms which you may find useful in your readings of the history of Tickhill.

They can found, used in context, in the Brief General History of Tickhill.

barker or berker:  a leather tanner, also a stripper of bark off trees for use in tanning process.

bordar:  a smallholder

burgage plots: long, narrow strips of land with a house and yard running at right angles to and fronting onto a main street.

burgesses:  townspeople

capital messuage: a large house, with yard, outbuildings and land.

cartulary: a collection of deeds and charters.

cartwright: a cart maker and repairer

Conesborght: Conisbrough

couper: a barrelmaker

Daeddi: thought to derive from Daeddi, an Old English (OE) personal noun.

Domesday Book: the great land survey commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086.

draper: a dealer in cloth

Elkeslay: Elkesley

flesschewer: a butcher

garth: old Norse word meaning ‘enclosure’ it is normally used to describe a yard or a small enclosed space.

gata:  Old Norse word meaning ‘way, road or street’.

gild (or guild): a term used in the Middle Ages to describe a company of craftsmen, also an urban religious brotherhood.

groat: a coin equal to 4 old pennies

Honour of Tickhill: the collective name given to all Roger de Busli’s estates.

Horncastell: Horncastle

hyll: OE meaning ‘hill’.

lay subsidy: a tax levied on non-churchmen by the king for a specific purpose; it was known as the Tenth or Fifteenth because it was levied on one-tenth of all moveable property in a town and one-fifteenth of all moveable property in the countryside.

leah: OE meaning ‘forest glade’ or ‘clearing’.

Leuerton: Leverton

Maison de Dieu: House of God – almshouses

mark: a coin equal to 13s.4d. in old money (approx 67p today)

mason: a skilled worker with stone

meller: a beekeeper or maker of honey

mercer: a merchant of fine cloth, particularly silk.

Mistirton: Misterton

OE: Old English

ostler: a person who looked after horses, usually at an inn

Poll Tax: a tax per head of population over the age of fifteen.

Schefeld: Sheffield

souter: a shoemaker

spicer: a grocer

Stansall: Stancil

Styrap: Styrrup

sundor-land: OE meaning ‘land set aside for a special purpose’.

thveit: Old Danish meaning ‘clearing, meadow or paddock ‘.

Tica: OE personal noun.

villein: a tenant farmer

webster: a female weaver

wright: a craftsman builder