IV
Page 44
THE MANOR OF BEERMARSH: MEANING
OF NAME. ITS LORDS: THE LE
METONS, MORE, LEIGHS, MORTONS
AND SEYMERS. THE MILL
Bere or Beermarsh.
Hutchins states that "Bere is a manor, hamlet and farm a little north of Shillingstone, of which we have but a slender and not very ancient account." It was held by the Lord of the Manor of Shillingstone subject to a nominal rent, and must have been created before 1290, the date of the Statute of "Quia Emptores" which was passed to prevent the subdivision of Manors. Bere or Beer enters into the name of many Dorset places, e.g., Bere Regis, Bere Hacket Bere Peverell, Bere Horniden, Bugbere, Todbere, Colbere, Hazelbere, etc., and Hutchins, vol. I 136, says:
"Bere in British is a breadth of underwood or scrub or copse or withy-bed, a bramble or thorn-bed. Many Beres occur in Dorset—the local peculiarities of these places in Dorset favour this derivation. Lying in low, moist situations, they would naturally be covered with a growth of wet land wood, such as willows, and might be the stores whence the people dwelling near drew their supplies of supple material for wattling their huts or to manufacture into basket-work, for the beauty of which they were celebrated."
This seems particularly appropriate to the district of La Bere, Beer or Beermarsh with which we are now dealing In 1267-8 the family of Le Meton, who traced their descent from the Eskellings, held land in La Bere, and in 1342 and 1340 a mill, 8 acres of land and 12 acres of meadow, were acquired by Adam Attemore and Anastasia his wife, for which they were to pay to the chief lords of Shillingstone one rose annually at the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.1 This was without doubt part of what was known later as the Manor of Bere or Beermarsh, which continued in the More family for some 160 years, when it passed by marriage to the Newburghs, and from them also by marriage to the Leyes. The heiress of the Leyes (or Leighs) married Sir George de la Lynde, and on his death the Manor was divided between his three daughters, Agnes wife of Thomas Trenchard, Warburgh wife of Thomas Morton, and Ann wife of Robert William.
1 Feet of Fines, 16 Ed. Ill, also 131 77 Ed. Ill, also 137.
Thomas Morton eventually became possessed of the two other portions of the Manor, and in 1616 l his son George Morton sold Beermarsh to Robert Seymer, of Hanford, who held it of Sir Edward Coke as of his Manor of Shillingstone on payment of 1 lb. of cinnamon at the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel. It continued in the Seymer family till 1886, when it was sold to Viscount Portman, who united the Manors of Shillingstone and Beermarsh after they had been in possession of distinct Lords for some 700 years. In 1426 and 1524 the Manor was returned as worth £20. In 1528, 1611, and 1625, it was valued at £21 8s. 9d. In 1563, 1604, 1634, and 1638, the Fry family occupied part of Beermarsh farm and other land there, and were in occupation of some of the "Midge " property till 1841. This is but a brief sketch of the descent of the Manor, and the following notes of the families referred to may be worth recording.
1 Feet of Fines, Midi. 14 Jas. I
More or Attemore.
This was an ancient family with a seat at More, or Moreside, in Marnhull, now a farm called More Court. There is a notice of the family in Hutchins, iv. 317. Joan, widow of Robert More, the last of the family, died in 1439, when the Manor of Bere came to Joan and Agnes, daughters of John Newburgh, in right of their mother Edith, daughter of Robert More. Joan, the eldest of these daughters, married John Leye, or Leigh, and carried Bere into that family.
Leye or Leigh
. This family was of Flamsbstone, Wilts, and Godshill, Isle of Wight. John Leigh, son of John Leigh and Joan Newburgh, died 2nd February, 1524, and his will is in the P.C.C. (18 Bodfelde). His son, Henry Leigh, predeceased him, leaving a daughter, Mary, who married, first, William Long, and second, Sir George de la Lynde. She died without heirs, and Sir George afterwards married Ann Goring, daughter of Sir William Goring, of Sussex. From Sir George Beermarsh passed to his three sisters, Agnes, Warburgh, and Anne. The Manor thus became divided into three portions, but George Morton, son of Thomas and Warburgh (de la Lynde) became possessed of the whole, which he held at his death in 1595. It remained in the Morton family till 1616, when it was sold to Sir Robert Seymer, of Hanford, in whose family it remained for more than 200 years.1 The Beermarsh of to-day is very much what
it must have been hundreds of years ago, with the exception of the railway, which passes through it on an embankment. It consists .of a mill, a farm, and three or four cottages, and some meadows.
1 Sir Robert was Teller of the Exchequer
Hutchins alludes to a so-called fortification here "situated in a pasture ground near the mill, in the extremity of the parish, bordering on Hammoon." He says it is probably the only remaining trace of an old house.1 The railway, which runs quite close, has no doubt destroyed some of the evidences visible when Hutchins wrote, but enough remains to enable one to trace the moat and the irregular surface within it The mill doubtless occupies the site of that mentioned in Domesday, which was then of the annual value of 23s. 6d. In 14 Edward I (1286) there was trouble between William de Turberville and Juliana his wife, Bartholomew Turberville and Viviana his wife, and John Matravers, concerning a path which William obstructed, leading to the church, to a spring of water, and to a mill, which must have been that mill at Beermarsh.2 In 13 Henry VI (1411) Robert More, Lord of the Manor, proceeded against John Fannere, who had undertaken to construct a new sluice at the mill, but did not complete it in the agreed time, for which Robert claimed £10 damages.3
1 According to a family tradition among the Seymers, this was the site of the house in which they lived before
Hanford was built, but seeing that the present house at Hanford was built in 1604, on the site of an older house
destroyed by fire, and the Seymers acquired Beremarsh after 1616, this cannot be accurate.
2 Assize Roll, 1273 in 33
3 De Baneo Roll, 603 in 410.
Seymer.
This family claims to have occupied Hanford since Edward II. The original spelling was Seymore, later Seymour, and for the last 200 years Seymer. The present house at Hanford was completed in 1604 on the site of an older house destroyed by fire. The Seymer of that day seems to have been a Protestant, when most of the other county magnates were Roman Catholic recusants, for he denounced his fellow grand jurymen for conspiring not to present recusants for trial at Quarter Sessions. An earlier house still, also burnt down, was said to have been at Beremarsh. The direct line failed in 1918 on the death of Major Evelyn Clay-Ker-Seymer, who left the property to his cousin, entailed for two lives, Major Vivian Home Thomson, D.S.O., M.C., the son of Sir Basil Thomson, K.C.B., on condition that he assumed the name and arms of Seymer.