Westwood Nunnery and Dodderhill

In mediaeval Worcestershire there were three nunneries: Cookhill beyond Inkberrow near Alcester; Whiston, often called White Ladies, on the edge of Worcester; and Westwood outside Droitwich. Westwood nunnery lay west of Dodderhill about a mile from St Augustine’s Church. Osbert Fitz-Hugh and his mother Eustacia de Say founded it and this is the first link with Dodderhill Parish – Osbert was the grandson of Osbern/Osbert Fitz Richard who held the Wychbold manor soon after the Conquest. Osbern’s son married Eustacia de Say and it was she and her son Osbert Fitz Hugh who founded the nunnery. So from the beginning the nunnery was linked with Dodderhill. Probably the Westwood land was part of the Wychbold manor holdings. This was the time of Henry II – the mid 12th century – and no doubt Osbert and his mother Eustacia knew they couldn’t go wrong if their new nunnery followed the order of Fontevrault. This order, set up about 60 years before, was a favourite with the king and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The mother-house lay in France, not far from the Loire, central to the King’s and Queen’s French lands.

There were only three Fontevrault houses in England: Westwood; Nuneaton and Amesbury, the last founded by the king himself. They were of a double order – monks and nuns living in one enclosure – but it was an order primarily for women. They lived an austere enclosed Benedictine life, while the brothers who were there to serve and support them, followed the Augustine rule, which allowed them more freedom, presumably to ride out to outlying farms, granges and even the town if necessary.

Nash tells us that not only Osbert and Eustacia but also Osbert’s father Hugh and his grandfather Osbert all endowed the nunnery. The endowment included land at Westwood as well as the nunnery site, land at Crutch, a salt pit at Droitwich and the church of Cotheridge, and all the rights and profits of them. It was a time of great piety – 110 houses for women were founded between 1130 and 1200 and over the years many other benefactors both large and small gave to the nuns including Ralph, Earl of Chester and the Countess of Warwick and also Walter de Clifford. More humbly, in 1175 the mill then known as “Wychbold Mill”, the later Paper Mill, was obtained by mutual agreement with the monks of Worcester. John Engleys [English in modern spelling] sold, or possibly gave them Middlemulne (Middlemill). They also gained Briarmill beside the road leading from Droitwich to Ombersley. They gained a rent in Astwood – 3 shillings a year from land beside the brook, rent from Astwood Mill, and several small pieces of land in Wychbold came their way. They also leased out land as in 1393 when a lease was granted by: ‘Eleanor Porter, Prioress of Westwood and the convent there to John Tyler of Wychebaude of a tenement and land in Wychebaude opposite the mill and River Salwarpe, a tenement in Astewode and land in Astwodefeld.’
In the years after the founding, Stephen of Elmbridge, which was then part of Dodderhill parish, gave the nuns land in Droitwich, confirmed by his son, Ivardus; the land lay in Ruinestrete and they also had rights to land in Purshill and Elmbridge.

In monastic speak such grants and gifts as have been described for the monastery at Westwood are called temporalities; the nuns also gained an income from spiritualities. These were the greater tithes from any appropriated churches – such as their church at Cotheridge – and any other dues to the Rector or profits from the glebe land. The nuns would have to pay a priest to care for the church and parish but an appropriated church was always a valuable asset. This is why there was such a long and bitter battle over St. Augustine’s in Dodderhill. The nuns maintained it was theirs, part of the endowment by Osbert Fitz Hugh; the Prior and monks at Worcester Cathedral Priory said it was theirs and had been since the days of Osbern Fitz Richard, confirmed by his successors and the Bishop of Worcester. The Abbess of Fontevrault took up the cudgels for the women – she was not intimidated by priors or bishops. The dispute must have dragged on but finally with great dignity Abbess Adelburga agreed in 1178 to the bishop, Osbert the founder and two others deciding the dispute saying ‘Strife was unbecoming in a servant of God’ and going on to remark that she was surprised that the prior and the monks claimed the church as they had not objected when it was given to the nuns’. However the church was allotted to the monks of Worcester. But Westwood gained some compensation – they, rather than Worcester Priory, gained all the tithes of their lands in Dodderhill parish that is Westwood, Clerehall and Crutch and all the offerings and obventions (dues) for the church services carried out that went with them.

The nuns still had the church at Cotheridge and also St Nicholas in Droitwich. This had come their way through their Order’s royal connection. Mathilda of Anjou, aunt of Henry II, (and once briefly married to his uncle, William, heir to the throne of England but drowned in the White Ship), became the second prioress of Fontevrault. She must have delighted in her nephew’s backing for the abbey’s houses in England and she encouraged his cousin, Count Matthew of Flanders, and Matthew’s daughter, Countess Ida, to give St Nicholas to the nuns. Ida as well gave them valuable benefits in Cotheridge and more land in Wych at the petition of her ‘most dear earthly mother’ – that is Abbess Mathilda. By the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries the church of St Nicholas has disappeared from Westwood’s holdings but they have acquired instead rights in St Mary’s.

Several account rolls of Westwood nunnery, and manor court rolls for their various manors, survive in addition to the leases and land grants. A transcription and translation of the account rolls can tell us quite a lot about Crutch, once in the parish of Dodderhill and other Dodderhill locations. For example, an account roll of 1337 for the manor of Westwood records rents coming in from Wychbold and Estwood and 2s 9d rent from Crutch. Hay from Crutch made 14s 3d. Under expenses Crutch features again. Iron had to be bought for the grange at Crutch costing 11s 11d and wages for the smith who worked it, 5d. Two plough irons were bought and a yoke for oxen, altogether 17d. Under mowing and reaping we find expenses, probably wages, of 7s 4d at Crutch and for reaping the harvest corn, 51s 10d. There must have been several reapers employed for several days, and other expenses to justify this large expenditure. A stacker at Crutch earned 4d a week, a reaper would surely not earn more.

The church at Crutch also needed money payments. Candles at Pentecost were bought for 3d. For St James’s Day, the patronal festival, the candles cost 9d, beef 3d and candles for strangers 2d. There was a monastic grange there and also land or property held by others – hence the rent. There were considerable fields both for hay and corn. There were oxen, ploughs, stabling, a smith and his workshop, carts which needed collars at 8d a time and wagons where a pair of wheels cost 2s 5d. There must have been a cart shed as well. Everything is minutely detailed from rents and sales of surplus produce to hogwash, shovels, sieves and riddles, to herrings for the prioress in Lent, costing 14d. There is a separate heading for mills and here we find that Middlemill needed a new millstone, which cost 7s 8d. At another mill, Briarmill, the convent paid a carpenter 8d and a meal a day, for two weeks’ work in making a new water wheel. Another worked for 2d a day but with no meal. It is interesting to note that after the Black Death, 12 years later, wages soared and had doubled by the end of the century.

There must have been many Dodderhill and Wychbold people as well as those mentioned in deeds who had other connections with Westwood, for example the Cassys. A place called the Cassies is mentioned in early documents, and this may well be connected with the Cassy family. Sir Thomas was lord of Hadzor in the 14th century and the name crops up in relation to land in Elmbridge. There were two Cassy nuns at Westwood in the 14th century – Isabella and Agnes. There may have been other Cassys at other times but the record has not survived. Isabella was an exceptional woman. Her name appears in 1337, 1384 and 1405. If the Isabella of 1337 is the same Isabella of 1405 she must by then have been at least 80, probably older. Then there is Joyce Acton, the last Prioress. Her kinsman, Robert Acton, and his son Charles gained Crutch at the Dissolution. Robert Acton had been one of the Valor Ecclesiasticus Commissioners who assessed the value of all Westwood’s holdings, both temporal and spiritual, in 1535. Another Acton, Thomas, was the last steward of the nunnery so it looks like an inside job! Maybe the Actons made a home at Crutch for the dispossessed Prioress – to be in familiar surroundings might have given her some comfort.

Although Robert Acton gained more of the monastic land than just Crutch, the main portion of Westwood’s possessions including the monastic site went to John Pakington. It was his great nephew, John ‘Lusty’ Pakington who built Westwood House. He was a man of great energy, hence the nickname which Queen Elizabeth gave him – he was a favourite of hers.

It is often maintained that he built Westwood House on the nunnery site but I think the actual nunnery buildings were elsewhere. I have read that the Pakingtons had too much respect for the charity of the nuns to build on their former home. One possible site for the convent is on the lower slopes of Nunnery wood – that is down the hill and beyond the lakes of the park, north west of the house. An inscribed stone coffin was found there, possibly from the nuns’ cemetery, the fish ponds and water are nearby and it is a south-facing slope, but it all needs investigation.

In the Victoria County History Westwood is described as most probably in Dodderhill parish at its founding. Certainly it had close links with the parish, geographically, ecclesiastically, in its personnel and in its land and property owning. Undoubtedly Westwood nunnery and Dodderhill parish would have known much about each other and we hope would have been good neighbours.

Based on information provided by Margaret Goodrich