Gorwyn

Parish of Cheriton Bishop, Manor of Eggbeer

by

Sophia Lambert (June 2005 and 2016)

   Gorwyn has had many spellings over the years: Gorefenne in 1288 (the first definite recording of the name, in a court case at the Exeter Assizes); Gorfenne (in a 1314 document in the Devon Record Office); “Gorven alias Gorwin” (in a 1696 document); and Gorwyn, Gorwin, Gorwyng, Gorven, Gorvin, Gorin, Goring, Gorrin and Gorring in the 17th-19th century parish records. The 18th and 19th century pronunciation seems to have been “Gorren” and it was still thus pronounced in the early 20th century (it is thus spelt in an article in the Western Times in 1865, for instance).. The name is Anglo-Saxon and means “muddy fen”. The name “Gorwyn House” is modern; it was always simply “Gorwyn”.

   The house is of considerable architectural interest and was given a Grade II* listing 1985. Pevsner, in his guide to Devon buildings, comments that “it must once have been a superior medieval house.” 

Historic England description of Gorwyn

Farmhouse, now house. Probably 15th century, with 16th and 17th century improvements, 17th and 18th century extensions; modernised circa 1960. 

Plastered cob on rubble footings; stone stacks of dressed volcanic stone and granite, some topped with 19th century brick; thatched roof. Original three-room-and-through-passage plan with inner room at north-west end. 17th century wing behind inner room and 18th century extension to service end and contemporary rear block behind. Now 2 storeys throughout, facing south-west. Axial stacks backing onto both sides of through passage and kitchen stack on gable end of 17th century wing. 5 window front of 20th century wooden casements, 2, 3 or 4 lights of different sizes, all with glazing bars. Chamber window above hall rises into thatch. Central door behind 20th century open-sided timber porch with hipped thatched roof. Main roof is half-hipped to left, hipped to right, and 16th century dressed granite stack projects above the ridge. 

Well-preserved interior of a house with a long and complex structural history. Smoke-blackened roof timbers and thatch over hall, inner room and passage suggests an original house heated by an open hearth fire and divided by low partitions. Two trusses survive over hall, both jointed crucks resting on wooden plates 0.75m above ground level. Truss towards inner room is a plain, face-pegged jointed cruck but the other is unusually elaborate. The side-pegged jointed cruck truss has chamfered arch-bracing below the collar and evidence of a (removed) carved boss at the apex. The cruck posts are fashioned with a moulded false corbel on a chamfered shaft which descends below the present face to an area of rough face where carving (possibly an angel) has been removed. In later 16th century full-height cob cross walls were inserted at the upper end of the hall and lower side of the passage, the inner room was floored with plain joists, a chamber created over the passage resting on a step stopped beam, the hall fireplace (dressed volcanic stone with oak lintel) inserted, and the small oak flat-arched door to right of fireplace may have led to stairs and passage chamber. Service room probably floored about same time but no beams exposed and granite fireplace rebuilt in 20th century. Hall floored in mid-17th century with moulded beams and bar-runout stops. 19th century kitchen block has stone fireplace with oak lintel and (rebuilt) brick side oven. Second rear block apparently rebuilt as service wing (possibly stables etc) with plain chamfered cross-beams and was converted into self-contained accommodation in 20th century with south-east front in same style as main front. Pitched-stone courtyard to rear enclosed by wings and high cob wall with thatched top.

An important farmhouse with most of its early structure preserved. The decorative false corbels and shafts of the hall cruck-posts may be unique in Devon.

   Although Historic England suggests that the house is probably 15th century, recent restoration works have uncovered a number of interesting features (including some 16th century cobbled flooring), some of which suggest that the core could have been built as early as 1380. It is pretty clear, however, that it began life as a double height open-hearth hall (the blackening of the thatch from the fire can still be seen), with the building of a bedroom later above the old hall. There is still smoke-blackened thatch above the old hall.  It has the normal cross-passage of a Devon long-house, and the animals would have been kept at the lower end. The two wings added in the 17th and 18th centuries give it the shape of an “E” without the middle stroke and make it more substantial than it appears from its front view.

   There was certainly a dwelling on the site well before the present building. One historian has suggested that Gorwyn is the Rook’s Fen mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon charter dating from 976. “Gorfenne” starts appearing in the written records from the 13th century, so it was certainly already a dwelling by that time. The Domesday Book records four villein farms in the Manor of Eggbeer in 1086, and it is very possible that Gorwyn was one of these. W. G. Hoskins, in his Provincial England: Essays in Social and Economic History, tries to identify these farms but rather curiously does not mention Gorwyn, even though it would seem an obvious candidate, not least as Thomas Gorefen is mentioned as one of the eight freeholders in the manor of Eggbeer paying feudal dues in 1428. (Hoskins makes much of the fact the Lower Eggbeer contains the remains of a fifteenth century “great hall”, while apparently ignorant of the fact that the manor also included Gorwyn, to which the same applied, maybe because documentation has since come to light that was not available to him.)

   The first definite mention of Gorwyn is in a court case in 1288, which refers to the house of Richard de Gorefenne at Gorefenne. Most people only acquired surnames in the 12th and 13th centuries, and anybody holding land would normally take the name of their property, as it seems was the case here. Richard Gorefenne was almost certainly the ancestor of the yeoman farmer family called Gorfenne/Gorven/Gorwyn (later Lambert-Gorwyn) who farmed at Gorwyn until the end of the 17th century and at other farms in Cheriton Bishop until the 1950s.

   They were clearly successful farmers from the very beginning. In a 1314 document in the Devon Heritage Centre, Robert de Gorfenne granted land in the ‘new borough of Crediton’ to his tenant John de Herpford, so he was already then a landowner with at least one tenant. Other medieval documents show them owning land in other neighbouring parishes as well, and they seems also to have had a good genetic inheritance, surviving the Black Death and no doubt picking up land left vacant by the deaths of other less fortunate families.. It may be this good fortune that enabled them to replace their old house by the “superior medieval residence” that stands there today.

    The extended Gorwyn family seem to have been unusually static, owning farms in Cheriton Bishop and several neighbouring parishes, but never venturing further afield.  There is one possible exception. The legal records of the mid-1400s contain a number of references to a Walter Gorfen or Gorfyn who was active in other parts of the country in trustee-type roles. In a 1460 document, for instance, he is described as “late Receiver of the Duchy of Lancashire in the South parts”. Given that the name is so unusual, he could well be of the family. Such a position would have provided plenty of opportunity for the accumulation of wealth, and with the pickings from his job Walter might well have decided to build himself a new, grander house.

    By the 17th century, there were two branches of the Gorwyn family, one – probably the senior branch – living at Gorwyn and another who had acquired the nearby farm of Lambert (changing their name to Lambert-Gorwyn) as well as several other properties. Whereas the latter branch went from strength to strength, the Gorwyns at Gorwyn were on a downward trend. It seems that they got into debt and were forced to sell the house sometime in the second half of the 17th century. From that time on it ceased to be a family-owned farm and for the next 300 years or so it was a rental asset belonging to a large landowner, probably let on a series of 99-year leases. 

   The following are the main references to Gorwyn in the archives.

•    1288: A suspected livestock thief called Julian Peny was arrested at 3 o’clock in the afternoon at the house of Richard de Gorefenne at Gorefenne. It is not clear from the record of the ensuing court case at the Exeter Assizes whether Richard de Gorefenne was harbouring the thief or had turned him in. 

•    1332: Edward III raised a “lay subsidy”, a tax to provide “for great and arduous affairs in Ireland and elsewhere”. It was levied on all people with moveable goods worth 10s or over, quite a high threshold at the time. William Gorefenne is listed as paying two shillings on his movable assets, which made him the third largest tax-payer in the area, after William Knouston at Medland paying 4s and Margaret Kelly (from the family that owned the Manor of Eggbeer), who was paying 3s.4d. William de Gorefenne was incidentally paying considerably more than his subsequently grander neighbours, the Fulfords of Great Fulford. So it seems that at that time the Gorefennes were a family of substance. Indeed, 13th and 14th century deeds in the Devon Record Office show that the family had landholdings in three parishes. 

•    c.1450 or earlier: the Gorefennes constructed a new house at Gorefenne, which remains the core of the present building.  As Pevsner comments, it was “a superior medieval house”. So the Gorefennes, having survived the Black Death, were clearly still doing well. Their wealth must have gone on increasing in the 16th and 17th centuries allowing them to improve the house and build on new wings.

•    1598: a Fulford rent book in the Devon Heritage Centre records that “John Gorven holdeth by knight’s service” two separate sets of land at Gorven paying 4s for each. Originally, knight’s service meant producing a fully armed man when the king needed to go to war (part of a cross-bow mechanism was recently found during work on the house) and these sums no doubt represented a cash commutation of this obligation.

•    1635:  John Gorven of Gorven was sued by his younger son Francis.  Francis is described as dwelling with his wife and apparently two babies in the “kitchen chamber” of the house, presumably the room above the present kitchen. The case is about whether John had promised Francis a leasehold of the premises after his death, the premises being entailed on Francis’s elder brother John. John Gorven’s account of the affair survives in the National Archives and makes clear that he had serious money problems. He describes himself as being much indebted because of his “great charge of children” and indeed was even imprisoned for debt.

•    1649: there were further legal proceedings involving Gorwyn, this time between John Gorven, probably the son of the one above, and one Thomas Croate to whom John had granted a lease of half of Gorven for 99 years, determinable on three lives (not specified), to begin after the death of Mary, John Gorven’s mother. The rent was 13s.4d a year and in addition Croate agreed to pay some of John’s debts.   This is the last mention of Gorvens at Gorven, and they were clearly by this time overwhelmed by debt (although another branch of the family was flourishing at the nearby property of Lambert). 

•    Late 1600s: The property seems to have been sold either directly to the Davy family of Medland Manor or first to the Fulfords of Great Fulford in Dunsford (there is a reference in a late 18th century Fulford rent book to its being sold to “heirs of Davy”, so it seems possible that it was first acquired by the Fulfords, who then sold it on to the Davys). The Davy family presumably bought Gorwyn because it marched with their land and nicely added to their estate. Both Fulfords and Davys would have bought Gorwyn for the sake of its rental income, and from then on it was a tenanted farm.

•    1732-3: John Skinner is recorded as paying the church rate for Gorwyn, so he must have been the tenant in those years. The property seems to have had a number of short term tenants around this time, as in 1737-8 John Murch (of an old Cheriton Bishop yeoman family) was paying the church rate; in 1739-40 it was Robert Snow; and between 1741 and 1743 it was Matthew Lock.

•    1785: William Saffin was the tenant, with a lease expiring in 1815. He was still there in 1814. In 1800, he took a 7-year old apprentice called Simon Passmore to work at Gorwyn.

•    1814: after the death of John Davy Foulkes, who had inherited the Davy property, the whole of the 1,300 acre Medland estate was sold at auction. Medland Manor and several other properties, including Gorwyn, were acquired by George Lambert Gorwyn of Spreyton (1763-1837), thus bringing the property briefly back into Gorwyn hands. George paid £2,200 for Gorwyn, which was described as a farm of 117 acres. He continued to let the property.

•    1816-20: A Mary Davy seems to have been the first serious tenant after William Saffin, as she is recorded as taking an apprentice for “Gorring” in 1816 and was listed in the land tax records as the tenant in 1820. But she may not have lived there, as at the time of the 1821 census, she was living at Cheriton Cross and Gorwyn was inhabited by a 68-year-old labourer called Jonathan Laskey and his wife (it was common for richer farmers to own or rent several farms, living in one of the farmhouses and putting their farmworkers in the others). 

•    1824: George Lambert Gorwyn, who seems to have over-reached himself financially, sold Medland along with Gorwyn and the adjoining 5-acre smallholding of Crediton Lane End. They passed into the hands of Seth Hyde, a prosperous Exeter merchant apparently intent on becoming a country gentleman. The Medland estate, including Gorwyn, then descended through Hyde’s daughter to his grandson George Bryce Pennell, after which it was again sold at the end of the 19th century.

•    1841: John Davy, presumably the son of Mary, appears to have taken over her lease and moved into the house, as  at the time of the 1841 census he was listed as living there, described as a farmer aged 50. Living with him at Gorwyn were two female servants; five agricultural labourers ranging in age from 14 to 60; and an 85-year-old lodger of independent means called John Blanchford (the Blanchfords were another old Cheriton Bishop yeoman family). John Davy continued to hold the leasehold of Gorwyn until 1842 (when Gorwyn was described in the tithe apportionment survey as a farm of 137 acres).  

•    1843: another member of the extended Gorwyn family, John Gorwyn (1813-after 1890) took a lease of Gorwyn and farmed there for some 20 years. The 1851 and 1861 censuses record him as living at Gorwyn with his wife Ann (the daughter of the miller at Fingle Mill) and five children, employing one agricultural labourer. He was the last member of the Gorwyn family to live in the family’s ancestral home.

•    1860s: John Gorwyn moved to a smaller farm owned by his family in the neighbouring village of Hittisleigh and Gorwyn was leased to a widow called Mary Leach and her son Joseph. May Leach probably acquired the lease in 1865, as the Western Times announce the invitation of tenders for the lease in that year, describing the estate as consisting of “a respectable farmhouse and suitable outbuildings, two labourers’ cottages and about 130 acres”. Mary was still there at the time of the 1871 census, with her three sons in their 20s, all working on the farm; three daughters and a “farm servant”, John Webber.

•    1879: George Bryce Pennell sold the “Venbridge estate”, consisting of Venbridge, Upper Mounson, Gorwyn and Crediton Lane End, to Charles Noble of Hyde Park. Noble appears almost immediately to have mortgaged his purchase. The Venbridge estate remained as an entity at least until 1937, when it was once again sold (there had also been an earlier sale in 1911), so Gorwyn no doubt continued throughout that period as a tenanted farm.

•    1881 (census): John Hutchings and his wife Jane were the tenants. He was described as a farmer of 103 acres, employing two menservants and one maidservants. In fact three male “farm servants” (an alternative term to “farm labourer” were shown as living in the house, along with the maidservant and the Hutchings’ two young children.

•    1891 (census): There was yet another tenant farmer, William Hawkins and his family. Living in the house with him were his wife and five children, the four elder ones all working as “farm assistants”, and a grand-daughter. The Hawkins family were still thereat the time of the 1901 and 1911 censuse

   Although Gorwyn seems always to have been a freehold property, its owners would originally have owed various duties to the Lords of the Manor of Eggbeer.  In early times, Eggbeer belonged to the Kelly family of Kelly in West Devon. But it passed to the Fulfords of Great Fulford during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307). The Fulfords, one of the oldest families in Devon and still living today at Great Fulford, are probably still technically Lords of the Manor of Eggbeer. The Fulford rent books show that an annual 4s. “chief rent” was still being collected from the owners or inhabitants of Gorwyn at least until the end of the 18th century. This was probably a feudal due commuted into cash, witness the reference in the 1598 Fulford rent book to John Gorven holding by knight’s service two separate sets of land at Gorven paying 4s for each.

     Until the 20th century, Gorwyn was always a working farm. The farmyard was a little distance from the house – somewhat unusually as more often than not farmyards adjoined the farmhouse. Perhaps this was a deliberate attempt by the builder of the house to make it more like a gentleman’s residence. The farm buildings have almost entirely disappeared, but the mid-20th century local historian C. W. Copeland says that Gorwyn had a poundhouse with an old cider press; and a quadrangle of thatched barns mainly of cob. A 1911 sale document describes the farm buildings as comprising:

•    Four division stable with loft over; 
•    Tool house adjoining house; 
•    Fowl house with loft over; 
•    Enclosed yard formed by cellar, shippen to tie four, open shed with crib, young bullocks’ house in four parts, open shippen to tie six, all with loft over;
•    Large barn with apple mill, cider press and apple loft over;
•    Round house adjoining the yard buildings and a part-tiled and part-galvanised lean-to cart shed with piece at end divided off to form garage; 
•    Cob and thatched corn and manure shed adjoining entrance road.

    The acreage of the farm probably varied considerably over time. In the mid-19th century, at the time of the tithe apportionment survey (the first definitive survey), it was nearly 140 acres. This was quite large for a Devon farm in a good agricultural area. But the fact that in 1598 John Gorven was paying 4s each for two sets of land at Gorwyn and that later only one 4s was being collected by the Lords of the Manor indicates that the property may once have been  much larger. Perhaps the indebted 17th century Gorwyns sold off part of their land. During the 19th century, the acreage fluctuated regularly due to the landowners detaching or attaching fields when the farm was next rented out or estates were sold. Almost 30 acres of Gorwyn land had been let to somebody else at the time the property was put on sale in 1876 and the acreage of the farm thereafter was around 100 acres.

  Late 19th century map of Gorwyn

*40 perches = 1 rood; 4 roods = 1 acre