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About King’s Cliffe
King’s Cliffe lies in the northern tip of Northamptonshire, within
the ancient Forest of Rockingham. Originally a Saxon settlement,
the village of ‘Cliffe’ or ‘Clyve’ took its name from the sloping
banks of the Willowbrook valley on which it was built. Before the
Norman Conquest, Clyve was held by Earl Aelfgar, an important
Mercian nobleman and son of Lady Godiva – she who made that
legendary bare-back ride through Coventry! After the Norman
Conquest, King William made Clyve into a royal manor, and so it
became ‘Clyve Regis’ or King’s Cliffe. It remained a royal manor
until 1812, when it was bought from the Crown by the Earl of
Exeter of Burghley House, Stamford.
Forest Law applied throughout the royal hunting forests of
England, giving the King exclusive rights to the hunting, grazing,
minerals and timber within the forest. The villagers of King’s
Cliffe, as with other forest villages, had only restricted ‘rights of
common’ allowing them to graze their animals in certain places,
to let pigs feed on beech mast and acorns in the woods, and to
gather only fallen or dead wood for fuel. The villagers grew their
arable crops, mostly peas and wheat, in strips across five open
fields, and common meadow-lands either side of the Willowbrook
river were managed for pasture.
Mediaeval kings visited Cliffe to hunt, using a hunting lodge
referred to as ‘the King’s House’, which probably stood south of
the church. In 1249 King Henry III granted King’s Cliffe a charter
for a 3-day annual fair in late October and a weekly Tuesday
market. As a market town, King’s Cliffe was of some importance
until a disastrous fire in 1462 destroyed over a hundred houses,
the ‘King’s house’ among them. With no resident lord of the manor
to take an interest in its prosperity, the village fell into depression,
the fair and market were suspended and not reinstated until 1604
‘for relief of the poor’.
1
King’s Cliffe lies in the northern tip of Northamptonshire, within
the ancient Forest of Rockingham. Originally a Saxon settlement,
the village of ‘Cliffe’ or ‘Clyve’ took its name from the sloping
banks of the Willowbrook valley on which it was built. Before the
Norman Conquest, Clyve was held by Earl Aelfgar, an important
Mercian nobleman and son of Lady Godiva – she who made that
legendary bare-back ride through Coventry! After the Norman
Conquest, King William made Clyve into a royal manor, and so it
became ‘Clyve Regis’ or King’s Cliffe. It remained a royal manor
until 1812, when it was bought from the Crown by the Earl of
Exeter of Burghley House, Stamford.
Forest Law applied throughout the royal hunting forests of
England, giving the King exclusive rights to the hunting, grazing,
minerals and timber within the forest. The villagers of King’s
Cliffe, as with other forest villages, had only restricted ‘rights of
common’ allowing them to graze their animals in certain places,
to let pigs feed on beech mast and acorns in the woods, and to
gather only fallen or dead wood for fuel. The villagers grew their
arable crops, mostly peas and wheat, in strips across five open
fields, and common meadow-lands either side of the Willowbrook
river were managed for pasture.
Mediaeval kings visited Cliffe to hunt, using a hunting lodge
referred to as ‘the King’s House’, which probably stood south of
the church. In 1249 King Henry III granted King’s Cliffe a charter
for a 3-day annual fair in late October and a weekly Tuesday
market. As a market town, King’s Cliffe was of some importance
until a disastrous fire in 1462 destroyed over a hundred houses,
the ‘King’s house’ among them. With no resident lord of the manor
to take an interest in its prosperity, the village fell into depression,
the fair and market were suspended and not reinstated until 1604
‘for relief of the poor’.
1
