This must have been a major undertaking for John Martin. The parish was big, it not only encompassed the village of Stratton but also that of Grimstone. Rising from the valley of the River Frome the land ascended steeply to a height of about 150m and there was a lot of it. Some one thousand six hundred and thirty six acres of which a mere twelve acres was tithe free and which in large part was still farmed under the open or common field system. To add to his problems ownership of the land in the parish was not simple. The agreement is the longest of any of the commutations that he did. It is shown below for no other reason that it demonstrates how complicated commutations could be. It is worth noting that there is not a single punctuation mark in the whole document and one of the brackets is missing towards the end of the document.

The long and short of it was that the impropriate [lay] Rector was the Revd. George Pickard of Warmwell who we met at Charminster. Although he was a clerk [in the religious sense] he was not receiving the tithes in any clerical role but because he had been left the right to claim the tithe under the will of one John Trenchard. He was in fact an impropriate rector who happened to be a cleric. He received £275.10s 7d. The person responsible for the day to day care of the souls in the parish was the perpetual curate Robert Albion Cox, who we also met at Charminster and who got £5 12s 0d.

Cox was entitled to the tithe payable on the cattle of the parish [4d per cow so long as the “pasture is fed” i.e. grazed by the cattle] together with the tithe due on gardens. Today most images of Victorian gardens emphasise the ornamental flower gardens or the vegetable gardens of large houses but in Martins time most were used as productive areas of agriculture. If they were subject to the rent-charge it would have been money down the drain to have grown flowers. Tithe on gardens seems to have been apportioned variably in most parishes. In Rampisham for example one garden of two roods was apportioned at 2s as was another of one rood. The majority however attracted no rent charge at all. This kind of variation was found in most parishes but in Stratton there was a flat rate modus of 6d per garden and Martin records that some twenty five acres of gardens were titheable.

The apportionment document is presented in an unusual form. Instead of listing the individual pieces of land and assigning each a unique plot number he allots a single number to an owner and applies it to all of the owners holdings. Uniquely in any of his commutations he includes farmers rights of common. As we saw in the section on his estate work rights of common in Stratton were called ‘whole places’ or ‘half places’ and the example below is for one William Davis a whole place holder.

The result of this unusual presentation was that on the map numerous plots bore the same number and this was picked up by that eagle eyed ATC Lieut. Dawson who wrote to Martin questioning why. Martin’s reply was as follows;

“Before I made the Maps of Stratton I wrote to the Commissioners and informed them what sort of Maps Mr Pattison the Lord of the Manor had in his possession and desired to be informed if they could be used for the commutation. And the answer was whatever Map three fourths in Number and Value of the Landowners adopted would not be objected to. The Maps are certainly numbered different from Maps in general and the reason is this. That the Reference Book wherein the Measure of each piece of Land in the Common Arable Fields and the Common Meadows were particularised is lost. But Mr Pattison had a Book of Reference where the Totals of the different pieces belonging to each persons tenement in the Common Fields and Meadows were given. But not each piece separately, consequently I adopted the Plan of letting each tenement have but one number. And you will observe in the Common Meadows that there are in some instances two or three different Numbers in the same piece, and the reason of this is that two or three different persons have a right in such places alternately.

The estates ( except the Manor Farms and a tenement or two which are in hand) are held for lives under Mr Pattison, who has not renewed for many Years, and the Estates, ere long, of the whole Parish will be in the hands of Mr Pattison as lessee under the Prebendaries of Stratton and Grimston.

The Proprietors were desirous of saving the Expense of a New Survey which obliged me to make Copies from the Old Maps. And I knew of no better method than the one I have adopted in numbering the Maps for commutations

I have the honor to be Sir your very obedient servant John Martin” [1]

The original map was signed by the landowners but the copy omits this detail. The various fields and farms are separated by a red line to distinguish them. On the original there is a small building and a parcel of land was not numbered initially and at some time later an arrow pointing to it has been added with “This has been accepted as ### 40” next to it and underneath 19/209/7”. The plot concerned garden worth 6d to the curate – well he did need the money after all. There is no mention of the cottage to which the garden was attached in the apportionment. The copy map shows the cottage but no garden.

Most tithe maps have an outer border drawn in but the original map Stratton map has a discontinuous square line within the frame and surrounding the map with intersections across it and, rotated diagonally across the map the following:

28 5/8”+15” and +

The significance of these lines and marks is not known. As they are on the original map they must have been added at the tithe commission and they are absent from the copy map. The Stratton maps also have a charming drawing of the church on them.

The diary entries for Stratton represent the most comprehensive set of entries about the commutation process and it is in the middle of this commutation that his wife took ill and died. We have no date for when he started work but the agreement was made on 14th of November 1837 at the Bull Inn.[2] Assuming that he started shortly after this time the whole commutation took about seven months of intermittent work.

List of Commutations under the Tithe Commutation Act