Cloverley
A
history of Cloverley in the Middle Ages
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The Dods of Cloverly, from whom
the Dods of Highfields were descended, were in turn a cadet branch of the Dods
of Edge, who had held that manor, near Malpas in
Cheshire, since the reign of Henry II and, as Wolley Dod, are still seated
there today (Robinson, John Martin (1991), Highfields,
Audlem, Cheshire, Seat of John Bellyse Baker, Country Life 31 January 1991,
page 48).
See also an accompanying
chronology regarding the history of Ightfield.
Claverley and Cloverley
There was a separate ancient
demesne called the manor of Claverley, also in
Shropshire, near Bridgnorth. Claverley was recorded
in the Domesday Book of 1086, held directly by the Crown, and later contained
several smaller sub-manors, most famously Ludstone
Hall. Because it was a major royal estate, it frequently appeared in medieval
Inquisitions post mortem whenever the Crown's direct
tenants-in-chief passed away. For instance in the
Inquisition Post Mortem of William de Ferrariis of Groby, knight, taken at Shrewsbury on 21 March
1370, the manor of Claverleye, an ancient demesne
of the king, was held in tail male of the king in chief, free of rent.
(Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Volume 13, (Edward
III, 1370 to 1373), Folio 87
(page
67)). The King granted a
highly protected estate, the manor of Claverleye,
directly to a nobleman, which could only be inherited by his male descendants,
and they did not have to pay cash rent to the Crown for it. The manor of Claverleye
originally belonged to the Crown's private estate. Lands designated as ancient
demesne carried unique legal protections. The tenants living on this land
had specific privileges, such as exemption from certain royal taxes (tallages) and freedom from regular county court jurisdictions.
Even when the King granted the land away to a lord, it retained this
prestigious, protected status. There were strict legal
rule of inheritance applied to this property, known as a fee tail male. The manor could only be passed
down to the direct, legitimate male heirs of the original grantee (e.g., eldest
sons, grandsons, or brothers). If a landholder died leaving only daughters, the
daughters could not inherit it. Instead, the land would automatically default
and "escheat" (revert) back into the hands of the King.
Claverley is not the same as the estate of
Cloverley Manor and Cloverley Hall, located in the parish of Calverhall. Cloverley was historically the ancestral seat
of the Dod family, who styled themselves of Cloverley from around the
fourteenth century, and later the Heywood family. While it has deep medieval
roots, including a medieval moated site, Cloverley was not the grand royal
ancient demesne manor of Claverley.
For instance, the financial
accounts rendered by the Sheriff of Shropshire, Salopesbir,
included Robert de Girros, 17s 6d, in Claverley. (The
Great Roll of the Pipe, John (1200 to 1201), page 121).
Cloverley
During the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, the relationship between the Manor of Cloverley, historically
associated with Calverhall, and the Manor of Ightfield in
Shropshire was defined by close geographical proximity, shared administrative
boundaries, and a marital alliance that reshaped their ownership. John Dod, a
descendant of the Dod family of Edge Hall, married Johanna Warren, who was the daughter
and co-heiress of John Warren of Ightfield. Through this marital alliance, the
estate of Cloverley passed to the Dod family. Their son, Hugh Dod, became the
first member of the family to be formally styled as of Cloverley,
establishing a centuries-long family seat at the manor.
1339
Calverhale was held as a knight's fee, a moiety
of a fee or half-fee, as part of a larger feudal estate belonging to the
wealthy barony of Giles de Badelesmere. Following his death, his vast inheritance
was divided among his sisters, including Margaret, wife of John Tibetot, with
the assent of major English magnates like William de Ros, John de Veer (Earl of
Oxford), and William de Bohun (Earl of Northampton). There was an order to
deliver to John Tibetot and Margaret his wife, sister of Giles de
Badelesmere, the knights' fees in that bailiwick of those which the king has
assigned to them of that inheritance with the assent of William de Ros and Margery,
John de Veer and Matilda, and William de Bohnn and Elizabeth, to wit : … a
moiety of a fee in Calverhale, co. Salop, which
William de Calverhale son of Laurence de Calverhale holds, extended at Ł10 yearly (Close Rolls of the reign of Edward III, 1339 to 1341,
page 283).
William de Calverhale, son of
Laurence de Calverhale, was the sitting tenant
holding the land in the mid fourteenth century, two generations of the
Norman-descended de Calverhale family who governed
the estate locally before it later passed by marriage to the Dod family.
The manor was extended at Ł10
yearly. In the fourteenth century, a Ł10 annual valuation was a substantial
sum for a single half-knight's fee, indicating that the arable land, tenant
services, and local agricultural output of Calverhall
and Cloverley were highly productive and economically valuable to the Crown and
its tenants-in-chief.
Historically, Calverhall
and Cloverley were intimately linked. Calverhall was
the medieval village and main manor named in this record, and the Cloverley
estate sat within the same boundary. The original medieval moated manor house
of the de Calverhalls was located at Cloverley, where
a medieval moat still exists behind the modern Cloverley Hall, so this record traces
the ancestral roots of both modern locations.
1385
On 6 December 1385 at Westminster
a Commission was granted to a large number of individuals to levy and collect
from all cities, boroughs and towns, all secular lords of towns and other lay
persons having goods and possessios and from various
other sources, the tenth and fifteenth and moiety of a tenth and fifteenth in
taxation. The list included Thomas Dode and Roger de Cloreley for
Shropshire except Shrewsbury (Fine Rolls of
the reign of Richard II, 1383 to 1391, page 116). This round of taxation
amounting to one and a half tenths and fifteenths followed a combination of
failed military ventures, intense threats of a French invasion, and
deteriorating domestic politics under the young King Richard II. Then again in 1392,
Roger de Cloverley was commissioned for tax collection (Fine
Rolls of the reign of Richard II, 1391 to 1399,
page 26).
Roger de Cloreley was then given another tax collecting commission by Henry IV
in 1402 (Fine Rolls of the reign of Henry IV, 1399 to 1405,
page 189).
1388
In an assignment of dower to Joan, the widow of Henry
de Ferrariis of Groby, knight, taken on 12 April 1388, in the manor of Stoke
upon Tierne, Roger de Cloverley was named as a tenant
among many others. (Calendar
of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Volume 16, (Richard II, 1384 to 1392),
Folio 571).
Stoke upon Tern, historically spelled Stoke upon Tierne,
Stoke-upon-Tern or Stoke super Tearne, is a village
located in north-east Shropshire, to the southwest of Market Drayton and about
5 kilometres south of Cloverley and Ightfield. A number of field names were listed.
Henry de Ferrers, 4th Baron Ferrers of Groby,
Leicestershire (1355 to 1388) was an English peer, military commander, and member
of Parliament during the reign of King Richard II. He Married Joan, often
identified as Joan de Poynings or the daughter of Sir Thomas de Hoo, before
April 1371. They had children including William (his heir) and Henry. He was
summoned to Parliament regularly from August 1377 to December 1387 under the
Latinised name Henrico de Ferrariis de Groby. His
Shropshire lands came into the Ferrers of Groby family through his grandmother,
Isabel de Verdun, often recorded as the Heiress of Ludlow. Upon the death
of her father, Theobald de Verdun, the massive de Verdun estates were split,
and her share brought significant Shropshire properties into the Ferrers
lineage. The Manor of Stoke upon Tern was the primary seat of his land
interests in Shropshire. As the overlord of the manor, Henry collected rents,
managed tenantry, and held legal jurisdiction over the estate. Historical
records from his lifetime note that smaller neighbouring hamlets and estates (such
as Stirchley) answered directly to Henry as part of his broader manor of Stoke
upon Tern.
1400
By the early fifteenth century, Cloverley, located
near Calverhall in the parish of Ightfield, Shropshire, was centred around a medieval
moated manor house and the rise of the Dod family. The estate was held by a
junior branch of the Dod family of Edge Hall, Cheshire. During the transition
into the fifteenth century, John Dod married Johanna, the co-heiress of John
Warren of Ightfield. Their son, Hugh Dod, became
the first member of the family to be officially styled as of Cloverley,
firmly establishing the family's seat at the estate for the following
generations.
The fifteenth century estate did not feature the grand
Victorian mansion seen today, but rather a fortified, moated domestic manor
house. In medieval Shropshire, such moats were highly popular among the
wealthy. Rather than serving an active military or defensive purpose, the moat functioned
primarily as a status symbol to display the Dod family's growing local
prominence and affluence. The physical footprint of this medieval moat survived
for centuries, remaining visible long after the original house was replaced.
The broader landscape surrounding the Cloverley estate
during the 1400s was marked by abandonment. Nearby settlement patterns suggest
that local populations had been displaced or wiped out by the Black Death in the
prior century, or moved by landowners shifting toward
livestock farming. Cloverley therefore functioned as a somewhat isolated,
prominent manorial centre within a largely rural, agricultural parish.
1414
There was an Inquisition in 1414 before John Delves,
the escheator of Stafford into divers
felonies including that Richard Gawley of Cloverley had a brass pot
worth 3s and household utensils worth 5s (Calendar
of Miscellaneous Inquisitions (chancery),
Volume 7, 1399
to 1422, Folios 498,
500). The escheator of Stafford’s royal appointment and administrative
jurisdiction frequently encompassed both Staffordshire and Salop (Shropshire),
along with the adjacent Marches of Wales. When John Delves convened this local
jury in 1414, the goal was not necessarily to try the crimes themselves, but to
conduct an asset-valuation inventory. Under medieval English common law, the
personal goods (chattels) and lands of a convicted or outlawed felon were
legally forfeited to the Crown. The inquiry meticulously appraised Richard
Gawley’s worldly possessions in order to ensure the
Crown received its exact due. The items listed, a brass pot worth 3s and
household utensils worth 5s, represent typical domestic assets of the period.
Brass pots were cast metal and highly durable, making them valuable and liquid
commodities that were frequently singled out by name in medieval legal
inventories and wills. In fifteenth century
English common law, a felony was an exceptionally grave category of
crime. Because all felonies carried the dual penalty of capital punishment
(hanging) and the total forfeiture of lands and goods to the Crown, the
escheator only stepped in for high-stakes offences. The unrecorded crime of
Richard Gawley may therefore have been theft of assets worth more than 1s,
murder or treason.
1418
The estate originally belonged to the de Calverhall family. When their male line became extinct, the
property descended to the heiress Agnes de Calverhall, who married Hugh Dod in 1418. His father
John Dod of
Farndon, had married Johanna, daughter and co-heiress of Ightfield in the reign of Richard II.
The property,
at that time, was the seat of the Dod family, a junior branch of the family
from Edge Hall in Cheshire (now the Wolley-Dod family), who descended from
John, son of Roger Dod of Edge who was living in circa 1350. John’s
great-grandson and namesake, who married Johanna, daughter and co-heiress of
John Warren of Ightfield, in the reign of Richard II, had a son called Hugh. He
seems to have been the first of the family that was styled as of Cloverley. (Williams, Gareth (2023),
65 – Cloverley Hall, in The Country Houses of Shropshire).
1430
Hugh Dod, became the first in the lineage to be explicitly
styled as of Cloverley. Historical records from 1430 show him active in
local governance, serving as a juror on royal inquisitions post-mortem in the
region.
In the Inquisition of Thomas de Roos,
knight, in assessing his lands in Shropshire and the Adjacent March of Wales, Hugh Dod of Cloverley was one
of the jurors, giving evidence that in respect of Shropshire and the Adjacent
March of Wales, he held no lands or tenements in demesne or service of the
king or any other, but was lately seised of
property in demesne as of fee at the manor of Adderley with Spoonley (The National Archives C
139/50/48 mm.19, 30 and Mapping
the Medieval Countryside, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Volume 23 (Henry VI, 1427 to
1432), Folio 541).
Sir Thomas de Ros (or Roos),
8th Baron Ros of Helmsley, was an English
peer and knight who died on 18 August 1430. He was the son of William de Ros
and Margaret FitzAlan. The FitzAlan
family were the Earls of Arundel and one of the absolute most powerful dynasties
in Shropshire and the Welsh Borders. During the early 1400s, Shropshire was a highly volatile frontier
region, heavily fortified following the Owain Glyndŵr
rising. For a young, ambitious knight like Thomas, maintaining strong
administrative and military alignment with Shropshire's border lords was
critical for securing family properties from Welsh border raids and providing
tactical retinues including men-at-arms and archers, which Shropshire was
famous for providing to English campaigns. Thomas spent much of his short adult career heavily involved in
the Hundred Years' War in France. He was knighted in 1426 by the young King
Henry VI and took part in major French campaigns. His ties to Shropshire and
his English estates were abruptly cut short on 18 August 1430, when he
tragically drowned while attempting to ford the Marne River in France following
a military engagement. Because his son and heir, Thomas de Ros, 9th Baron, was
only three years old at the time, the Crown stepped in to conduct Inquisitions Post Mortem to assess and seize control of his vast estate
holdings.
1434
Like his father-in-law, Roger de Cloverley, Hugh Dodd of Cloreley was commissioned as a tax collector for the
Crown on 1 February 1434. (Fine Rolls of the reign of Henry VI, 1430
to 1437, page 194).
The order was to levy a Tenth and a Fifteenth. The Fifteenth was assessed upon
lay rural communities, requiring a tax equal to 1/15th, about 6.67%,
of the value of their movable goods and personal property. The Tenth was
targeted at urban boroughs, cities, and royal demesnes, charging a higher
fractional rate of 1/10th or 10% of movable assets. The proceeds of these fractional subsidies were intended by
Parliament to cover urgent public expenditure, primarily the defence of the
realm and funding military campaigns during the later stages of the Hundred
Years' War.
1443
In the Inquisition of John Tiptoft, knight, Lord Tiptoft and Powis, in assessing his lands in Shropshire and
the Adjacent March of Wales, Hugh Dod of Cloverley was one of the
jurors, hiving evidence on 13 February 1443 that he died on 20 February 1442;
that John Typtoft, aged 17 was his son and heir and that he held no lands or
tenements in demesne or in service of the king or of any other (The National Archives E 149/174/2 m. 6 and Mapping
the Medieval Countryside, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Volume 26 (Henry VI, 1442 to
1447), Folio 96).
Sir John Tiptoft, 1st Baron Tiptoft
(c 1375 to 27 January 1443, though often associated with the 1442/3 fiscal year
in administrative records) was a highly prominent English statesman, diplomat,
and landowner who served as Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord High
Treasurer, and Chief Butler of England. His primary connection to Shropshire
and his adoption of the title and of Powis stemmed entirely from his
strategic second marriage to Joyce Cherleton, the daughter and co-heiress of
Edward Cherleton, 5th Baron Cherleton of Powis. When
Edward Cherleton died in March 1421, his vast estates in Shropshire and the
bordering Marches were split between his two daughters, Joan and Joyce. Tiptoft married Joyce by royal licence in February 1422.
Through her, he acquired a major share of the traditional Cherleton
lands located both within Shropshire proper and along its highly volatile Welsh
borderland.
Managing land in Shropshire during the early fifteenth
century required aggressive political manoeuvring due to its proximity to
Wales. Tiptoft used the immense revenues from his
newly acquired Shropshire, Cambridgeshire, and Hampshire estates to establish
himself as one of the wealthiest peers in England.
His Shropshire and Marcher interests were passed down
to his only son, John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester, the infamous Butcher
of England. The younger Tiptoft would eventually
formalise the family's hold over these western lands when he was later summoned
to parliament as John de Charleton de Powys.
John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester, the son of the
Lord Tiptoft who died in 1442, was dubbed the Butcher
of England due to his unprecedented brutality, use of torture, and horrific
execution methods while serving as Edward IV's chief enforcer during the Wars
of the Roses. In
1470, Tiptoft presided over the trial of a group of
Lancastrian rebels captured at sea. He ordered twenty of them to be hanged,
drawn, and quartered, a standard medieval punishment for treason. However, he went
a step further, instructing that their severed heads and quartered limbs be
impaled upside down on sharp stakes. This public display of impalement was
deeply shocking to the English public, violating the contemporary standards of
Christian decency regarding the dead. Tiptoft's cruelty ensured he had no
friends when the political tides turned. When the Lancastrians briefly restored
Henry VI to the throne in the autumn of 1470, Tiptoft
was found hiding in a forest, abandoned by his allies.
Throughout the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, the seat of the estate was a traditional medieval
moated manor house. It was constructed around an open courtyard, surrounded by
a defensive moat and accessed via a bridge. The original medieval moat still
survives as an archaeological feature behind the modern Cloverley Hall. (History, Cloverley Hall, Parks
and Gardens).
1450
John Dod of Cloverley Hall
married Matilda, daughter of Ludovic Eyton of Eyton, Shropshire, cementing
their status among the Shropshire elite.
Ludovic Eyton, also
recorded in historical genealogies as Lodovicus,
Lewis, or Lewys Eyton, was an English landowner and member of the
Shropshire gentry. He eventually became the Lord of the Manor of Eyton upon the
Weald Moors in Shropshire. He was the second son of Nicholas Eyton of Eyton,
who served as a tax assessor and local official in Shropshire, and Katherine Talbot,
a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. He married Anne Savage,
the daughter of Sir John Savage of Rock Savage. Together they had several
children, including Frances, Anne, Fulk, and his eldest son and heir, Henry
Eyton.
John Burke’s History of
the Commoners and certain
historic pedigree charts of the Dod Family of Highfields explicitly state that
John Dod of Cloverley (who lived in the late 1450s to early 1500s) married
Matilda, daughter of Ludovic (Lewis) Eyton of Eyton. Conversely, the official Visitation of Shropshire
by the heralds records her
name as Anna (or Anne) Eyton. Furthermore, the heralds place her one generation
earlier, stating she married John’s father, William Dod of Cloverley.
Because Matilda and
Anna were frequently switched or conflated in these distinct versions of
the Shropshire gentry family trees, she is considered the same individual in
fluid fifteenth century historical tracking. Either way, a direct matrimonial alliance
firmly bonded Ludovic Eyton's house with the Dods of Cloverley during this era.
1539
A muster was taken on 10 April
1539 by Sir Richard Maynwaryng and Thomas Pygott for the Hundred
of Bradford, Shropshire, recording Ightfylde 19
names, and Calverhall, 5 names (Public
Records of the reign of Henry VIII, Volume 14 - Part 1, page
288). This was part of the
General Muster of 1539, a massive nationwide audit of England’s military
readiness ordered by Henry VIII. All men between the ages of 16 and 60 capable
of fighting, were recorded, generally categorising them into specific roles such
as archers or billmen. The spring of 1539 was a moment of profound geopolitical
crisis for Tudor England. The muster was not a routine administrative drill; it
was a urgent, defensive preparation against a very
real threat of a foreign Catholic invasion following the dissolution of the
monasteries and Rome’s excommunication.
Based on the numbers and the
standard format of the 1539 General Muster, the figures suggest that Ightfield
and Calverhall were agrarian, sparsely populated
settlements with very limited localised defensive capacity. Ightfield was a
small village capable of fielding roughly two squads of men. Calverhall was a tiny hamlet or a single large estate
cluster. Five men is barely enough to guard a local manor house, let alone form
a tactical military unit. If called upon, they would have been absorbed into
the larger infantry levy of the Bradford Hundred, which in turn joined the main
Shropshire county force under the command of the
regional gentry.
1790
In
circa 1790, the then owner, Robert Dod (1744 to 1801), High Sheriff of
Shropshire in 1773, who had married Mary, the daughter of Broughton Whitehall
of Broughton, is said to have rebuilt the house in Doric style. (Williams, Gareth (2023),
65 – Cloverley Hall, in The Country Houses of Shropshire).
1851
The
estate at Cloverley was previously occupied by a moated house, although in 1851
only the moat and bridge remained. (Williams,
Gareth (2023), 65 – Cloverley Hall, in The Country Houses of Shropshire).
1863
Robert
Dod’s grandson, John Whitehall Dodd (1797–1863), was, like his grandfather,
High Sheriff of Shropshire, serving in 1825, and he was also MP for North Shropshire
in 1849–59. In spite of his public offices, the
agricultural depression of the later nineteenth century affected the family
badly and, in 1863, J.W. Dod retired to Rhyl owing to his debts, dying soon
afterwards. (Williams, Gareth (2023),
65 – Cloverley Hall, in The Country Houses of Shropshire).
1864
Cloverley Hall is a grade II listed former Victorian
country house which stands to the south-east of the village. It was originally built
between 1864 and 1870 by architect William Eden Nesfield for Liverpool banker
John Pemberton Heywood. In its original form it was unusual in having a great
hall in a Victorian building but the main wing was
demolished and rebuilt in 1926-7. It is constructed in two storeys to an
L-shaped floor plan. After the Second World War it was converted for use as a
boys' school and since 1968 has been in use as a Christian Conference Centre.
Newstreet Lane
New
Street Lane, historically recorded as Newstreet Lane,
is a historic rural road and hamlet within the civil parish of Moreton Say,
Shropshire, tracking back centuries as a vital countryside link between the
village of Calverhall and the market town of Market
Drayton. The lane's history of human settlement stretches deep into the Middle
Ages. Its most significant archaeological feature is a medieval moated site in
Moat Plantation, or Newstreet Plantation. This
scheduled ancient monument features a rectangular moat platform typical of the
high-status medieval manor houses of wealthy families (Moated
site immediately north west of Cloverley Farm,
Historic England Scheduled Monument 1019654).
The moated site is adjacent to Cloverley Farm to the west of Cloverley Hall,
beyond the end of New Street Lane.
In
the mid-1500s, Hugh Chester resided at Newstreet Lane,
held extensive surrounding pastures. The
estate passed to William Dod of Newstreet Lane (c
1537–1599). The Dod family was highly prominent in the region and went on to
construct the nearby historic Highfields estate.
New
Street Lane Farmhouse, formerly Unity Farm, is a protected Grade II listed
building, which includes a seventeenth century timber-framed core that was heavily
remodelled with red brick in a Gothic style during the mid eighteenth century,
followed by a Victorian wing addition in the late nineteenth century.
Bibliography
Williams, Gareth (2023), 65 – Cloverley Hall,
in The Country Houses of Shropshire. *
History, Cloverley Hall, Parks
and Gardens.