An insight into the production, transport and purchase of cheese relating to the parish of Luccombe can be reconstructed from about 1615 until 1640. William Harrison, when aged about 20, took on farming at Wychanger farm, Luccombe, in about 1560 after his father, George, had died.1 Then, when William died in late 1615, aged 76.2 An inventory of all his goods at Wytchanger was taken in January 1616, which is now in the Harvard Law School Library.
The inventory records the contents of numerous buildings, including 14 kyne and heifers and, significantly, in the ‘Cheese Chamber’ 40 cheeses valued at 66s, one ‘Cheseracke and three shelves’ 6s, six ‘Chesevates’ 3s 6d and one ‘bearsyve with some pease’ 18d. There was a dairy house, a buttery and a larder house with numerous barrels, cheese wrings, 12 more cheese vats and three milking pails. There was also 14 gallons of butter, all of which could have been associated with cheese production on this substantial farm. Clearly cheese production was a significant part of the farming operation.3
William must have known the vicar of Luccombe, Laurence Byam, very well.4 Laurence was vicar from 1575 until his death in 1615. Laurence’s eldest son, Henry, was born in Luccombe in 1580, had an illustrious academic career at Oxford in the early 17th century and was recalled to Luccombe to become vicar after his father died.5 Little is known of Henry during the 1630s except for a famous sermon he preached at Minehead in 1627,6 so the recent ‘discovery’ of four letters from Luccombe, written by Henry Byam between 19 January 1639/40 and 27 April 1640, that mention some enormous cheeses that had been made on his farm in Luccombe, is a significant find.7
The letters in question were sent to the bishop of Bath and Wells’ registrars, James Huish and following his death, Alexander Jett. The letters to Alexander are friendly and contain a mix of personal and official business. Byam must have organised the making of the cheeses in 1638 as he wrote to Jett on 19 Jan. 1639/40 and asked him:
I desire to know how my Cheeses doe, whither they bee safe and sound and whither the keeper of them bee not weary. Some houswyfes tell mee That tis impossible such thick Cheeses in soe short a time should bee drye enough for Carriage, and that I must bee compelled to make timber cases to keepe them from bruisinge.8
The cheeses were for various people. The ‘greatest and the least’, including an 82lb cheese, were meant for the Bishop of Chichester ‘the princes Tutor’ in London, the ‘middle’ cheese, 72lbs, was for the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and another was for his son who was also at Oxford;9 the son in question was Henry junior, Henry senior’s eldest son, who was also at Christ Church Oxford.10
It appears that Byam wanted Jett to make the arrangements with a Wells carrier to get the cheeses and his letters transported to Oxford and London ‘as cheape as yow can’. Byam had arranged with Dr Duck, who was also in London, to present the cheeses to the bishop.11 The cheeses had only been made a relatively short time before dispatch, presumably in the May or June of 1638 in the summer cheese-making season. Whether-or-not Byam had any cases made is not known. What is known is that on 4 April 1640 Jett dispatched two of Byam’s cheeses to Mr Bellamie for the Bishop of Chichester. In a covering letter he wrote:
I have left the Carryag of the Cheeses to be paid for by you att the rate Mr Doctor payes for Carryage of his thinges if you can soe procure itt haveing told the Carryer that they are Mr doctors Cheese and leavinge the Cheeses with the Carryer untill I had written my lettre and then intendinge to have wrote a direccion on them the Carryer in my absence packed them upp without anie direccion but he had noe other Cheesed to Carry soe that uppon the receipte of my lettre you may send them and the Carryer hath faithfullie promised to deliver them.12
The cheese for Henry Byam junior was sent from Wells on 27 April 1640 by carrier. Jett wrote:
Worthie Sir By this Carrier you shall receave a Cheese sent you by your Father my assured Lovinge freind Mr Henrie Byam, which had sooner come unto you, yf convenient carriadge could have beene procured. The Carrier is satisfied for Portage, I latelie understood that your Father (God been praysed) is in good health.13
This was not the end of Jett’s activities with Somerset cheese. On 2 Dec. 1640 William Bellamie wrote to Jett from Doctors Commons asking him and ‘Mr Hill to provide him with some cheeses:
if you have gotten any I desire you would send them by the next; or if you have not yett provided any, I pray enquire of Mr Valentine Trym whether hee hath provided 4 which my Master desire him to gett for him: if I could have those 4 sent mee by Christmas, and 2 more itt will serve my time, or if I had only 4 sent mee by Christmas I can stay longer for the other. I beleeve Capt. Coward will pay you dome money for mee about this time, which if hee doth itt may goe towards the payment for the cheeses, tell him lett him provide 2 good ones for him, but if hee hath bought 4 allready I pray lett them bee sent. I desire you to conferre with him what course is best to bee taken for the carriage of them.14
On Boxing Day later that month 1640 Bellamie again wrote to Jett from Doctors Commons15 and like Jett’s letter16 the first subject discussed is cheese, which is a little surprising as the letter also contains news of the impending committal of the bishop of Bath and Wells!17 It appears Jett, as well as serving the bishop of Bath of Wells as his registrar was also involved with the cheese trade from Somerset to London and Oxford.
The logistics of making these very large cheeses at Luccombe was considerable. Between one and one and a quarter gallons of cow’s milk is needed to make one pound of cheese. The 82lb cheese may have needed as much as 100 gallons of milk. Large wooden barrels and a large cheese wring would have been required. Given that a cow may give one, to one and a half gallons of milk at one milking, it is clear that about 70 cows would have been necessary to produce the 100 gallons of milk in one milking. If the evening milk was kept cool overnight and added to the morning milk of the next day, then about 35 cows were needed. With no electrical refrigeration available, the cheese would have needed to have been made on the same day. Henry’s dairy, on the cool north-facing side of his parsonage house may not have been cold enough to store the milk, so the cheeses would have been made is clearly marked on a historic plan of his home, which was demolished and replaced by a 19th-century vicarage.18
Something of the capacity of the farm can be seen in a document from 1634, when the glebe lands of Luccombe amounted to about 50 acres plus orchards and woodland. The parsonage was described in 1634 as ‘newly built’ with a ‘fair barn and shippon’; a shippon was a building where cattle were stalled. There were at least 6 acres of meadow where dairy cows grazed and grass would have been grown for winter fodder.19
How did Henry obtain access to milk from 35 cows at one time? The largest west Somerset herd of cows so far discovered from probate inventories is in fact William Harrison’s at Luccombe in 1615, that consisted of 14 cows and heifers, a short distance from Byam’s rectory. Not all of these would have been in milk at any one time. The next largest was a herd of eight cows belonging to Andrew Frost at Dulverton, but that was in 1670.20 Most west Somerset farmers only kept two or three cows,21 for example, in the early 1640s Luccombe farmers William Hole had only one cow, whilst John Kent owned three.22 Byam ran his own parsonage farm in Luccombe that contained about 50 acres, but had married the daughter of the rector of Selworthy and took on the incumbency there in 1617.23 So in addition to the benefits of Luccombe he would have benefitted from the profits from the glebe land at neighbouring Selworthy, as well as tithes arising from the keeping of dairy cows in the parish, specifically mentioned in Selworthy’s glebe terrier of 1634.24
Henry’s will of 1669 gives further clues to his farming empire. It is clear he managed ‘Easter Knowle’, land to the east of Luccombe church and meadows known as Whitman’s Moor. Furthermore, he managed Burrowhayes and other land in West Luccombe. Also he had tenants of meadow, land suitable for milk production in Porlock, and on the hill farms of Buckethole, Cloutsham and Sweetworthy in Luccombe, as well as three tenements at Wilmersham and one more at Tarr Ball, all in Stoke Pero parish. Thus, taking into account Henry Byam’s directly managed land, contacts with other dairy farmers in Luccombe and calling in favours from his several tenants on surrounding farms, it is possible to understand how enough milk was obtained to prepare the large cheeses. One can envisage milk maids, packhorses and small carts, all bringing milk from a number of local farms to the rectory farm on the appointed day in the summer of 1638. It is worth noting that in order for the cheese to be made a calf would need to have been slaughtered for the rennet in its stomach and salt acquired from the imported stores at Porlock or Minehead.25
What were the early seventeenth century cows like which provided milk for the cheeses of Wytchanger farm and the Rectory farm at Luccombe? A note read out in church in Luccombe in the 1620s or 1630s, regarding a lost cow contained in the village pound, described it as being red in colour.26 Every September, at this time, there was an important fair at Wootten Courtenay, an adjoining parish to Luccombe, where significant numbers of cows from west Somerset were sold. In 1638, Luccombe farmers Ames Bickham and John Hill each sold a cow there, but sadly their colour was not recorded. In 1641, Porlock’s John Chapman sold a ‘sparked’ red cow, as did Selworthy’s John How in 1642.27 Further cows sold by farmers from other neighbouring parishes were often described as red or black. From this information it appears that the well defined Red Devon cattle, native to west Somerset by the late 18th century, had not yet emerged, but it is clear that bovine genes giving cows a red or predominantly red colour were common in the district in the 1630s.
1. C. Chadwyck-Healey, The history of part of West Somerset (1901), 147-9.
2. Chadwyck-Healey, West Somerset, 147.
3. Harvard Law School Library, U.S.A., English deed collection 803, probate inventory for William Harrison, 1616.
4. T.N.A., C 8/48/76 Worth v Byam, 1641. This case describes how Lawrence Byam and William Harrison of Witchanger came to an accommodation regarding the collection of corn tithes. It also shows how Henry Byam came to court with William’s daughter, Mary, in her widowhood, over changes to the customary collection of corn tithes and an attempted imposition of tithes on cucumbers, kale, cabbages, parsnips, carrots and onions grown in gardens and small plots, as well as a wool tithe from sheep that had been sold away with their wool still on their backs.
5. Chadwyck-Healey, West Somerset, 168-9.
6. E. Kellet, A return from Argier: a sermon preached at Minehead, the 16 March 1627 by H. Byam (1628).
7. See below for the full references to these letters at the Somerset Heritage Centre under reference D/D/oc.
8. S.H.C., D/D/oc packet 1639, Byam to Jett, 19 Jan. 1639/40. Jett annotated this letter ‘Sent an answere of this lettre by Mr uppington 25 January 1639’.
9. S.H.C., D/D/oc packet 1639, Byam to Jett, 12 March 1639/40.
10. Chadwyck-Healey, West Somerset, between 170 and 171, interleaved Byam family tree.
11. S.H.C., D/D/oc packet 1639, Byam to Jett, 12 March 1639/40.
12. S.H.C., D/D/oc packet 1639, Jett to Bellamie, 4 April 1640.
13. S.H.C., D/D/oc packet 1639, Jett to Henry Byam junior, 27 April 1640.
14. S.H.C., D/D/oc packet 1640, Jett to Bellamie, 2 Dec. 1640.
15. S.H.C., D/D/oc packet 1640, Jett to Bellamie, 26 Dec. 1640.
16. S.H.C., D/D/oc packet 1639, Jett to Bellamie, 4 April 1640.
17. S.H.C., D/D/oc packet 1640, Jett to Bellamie, 26 Dec. 1640.
18. Chadwyck-Healey, West Somerset, 140.
19. S.H.C., D/P/luc/3/1/1 Luccombe glebe terrier, 1634.
20. S.H.C., DD/SP/1670/64, probate inventory of Andrew Frost of Dulverton, 1670.
21. P. Ashford, ‘Lorna Doone and Longhorns: Exmoor farming 1615-1715’ in Exmoor Review 43 (2002), 33.
22. S.H.C., DD/SP/1640/72 probate inventory of William Hole, 1640; DD/SP/ 1641/85 probate inventory for John Kent, 1641. John Kent is likely to have lived in the Doverhay area of Luccombe, ear Porlock; the Kent family paid poor rate on lands in that area from the 1640s onwards (T.L. Stoate, Luccombe parish registers and poor rates (1995), 51-8).
23. Healey, West Somerset, 225.
24. S.H.C, D/D/rg/358 Glebe terrier for Selworthy, 1634.
25. Sadly, there are few remaining overseas port books for Minehead for the late 1630s but French Salt did arrive in Minehead between Dec. 1637 and 1638. Earlier, in 1604, Robert Quirke of Minehead landed French salt at Porlock from a Bridgwater vessel. (T.N.A., E 190/1089/2 Minehead overseas port book, new impositions, Dec. 1637-Dec. 1638; E 190/1084/5 Bridgwater coastal port book, Dec. 1604-Dec. 1605). Other Minehead port books from the first half of the 17th century show a good deal of French salt arriving in Minehead.
26. Chadwyck-Healey, West Somerset, 184.
27. S.H.C., DD/WYp/2/19 Sir John Wyndham’s account book, 1619-1645, 133, 168, 178. Amias Bickham was appointed overseer for the poor in Luccombe for 1635-6 and seemed to live in the West Luccombe area in the 1640s as this is the location from which he and the Bickham family paid poor rate from the 1640s onwards. (W. Andrews ed, Curious church gleanings (1896), 271-4; T. Stoate, Luccombe parish registers and poor rates (1995), 51-8). John Chapman is likely to have lived in the Doverhay area of Luccombe, as he paid poor rate for land in that location between 1643 and the 1670s. (Stoate, Luccombe, 51-8).
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