Site of Medieval Grange at Cryfield Grange
The possible site of a Medieval grange, an outlying farm, which belonged to Stoneleigh Abbey. It has also been suggested that this may be one of the original sites of Stoneleigh Abbey. It is situated 1km north of Crackley.
1 Cryfield was said to have been the site of a royal residence called the Burystede, which was (presumably during the Anarchy) occupied by a foreign lord who was a highway robber. Later, it was the first site given to Stoneleigh Abbey when it moved from Radmore in Cannock Chase. The monks found the presence of the road too distracting and were eventually resettled at Stoneleigh. Information exists on ownership after the Dissolution.
2 The present Cryfield Grange was probably built on or near the site of the Medieval grange.
3 It is not certain that this was the first site of Stoneleigh Abbey (WA 2905), as there is an alternative site at Cryfield House Farm (WA 8351). However, it was one of the granges of the Abbey from 1204, when all Stoneleigh land became subject to the Abbey. Cryfield Grange is referred to in the Stoneleigh Ledger Book of 1305. It remained Abbey land until the Dissolution. The Grange was known as Old Cryfield in 1736 (by which time Cryfield House Farm, or New Cryfield, had been cut out of the estate).
4 Documentary evidence about the original site of Stoneleigh Abbey.
- For the sources of these notes, see the
- Timetrail record
- produced by the Historic Environment Record.
Comments
If Cryfield was considered to include the modern Westwood Heath, might it not be possible that the original location of the abbey to be known as Stoneleigh was in the region of Bockendon Grange. I advance this as the sites there show two separate patterns of water management. One, “the pools”, being highly sophisticated, and the other by the modern farm Bockendon Grange being rather simplistic. An explanation could be that after arriving from Cannock (three nuns at Bretford makes a Nunnery, there may not have been many monks) invested in a low level of development, but not of such a large extent as to discourage them from moving to a more isolated site near Stoneleigh.
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