Henry de Ferrers was one of the most powerful Norman magnates to cross to England with William the Conqueror in 1066. Rewarded with an extraordinary grant of some 210 manors across England and Wales – the greater part of them in Derbyshire – he established Tutbury Castle as the centre of his English honour and became the founding ancestor of the Earls of Derby. It was under his lordship that the Domesday Book of 1086 recorded the manor of Barctune – the settlement that would later be known as Barton Bakepuiz, and ultimately as Barton Blount.
He held Barton not in his own hand but through a sub-infeudation: the Domesday survey records that a man named Ralph held Barctune from Henry de Ferrers. Ralph has traditionally been identified with the Bakepuiz family, whose Norman origins lay close to those of the Ferrers themselves. Through this arrangement Henry de Ferrers stands as the original post-Conquest overlord of the manor, with the Bakepuiz as his under-tenants from the outset.
Origins and the Norman Conquest
Henry de Ferrers took his name from the village of Ferrières-Saint-Hilaire in the Eure département of Normandy, a centre of ironworking whose name – derived from the Latin ferraria – passed to the family. His father, Vauquelin de Ferrers (also rendered Walkelin or Walchelin), held this estate, and Henry succeeded to it around 1040. He was Lord of Longueville in Normandy before the Conquest.
Henry almost certainly participated in the Battle of Hastings in 1066, though direct documentary proof of his presence at the battle does not survive. His subsequent rewards from William I were on a scale that leaves little doubt of distinguished service. He arrived with a retinue that included several knight-families from villages close to his own Norman estates – among them the de Curzons, the de Baskervilles and the de Levetts – all of whom subsequently held English lands as his under-tenants, replicating in England the feudal bonds they had maintained in Normandy.
His Derbyshire and Staffordshire lands arrived in stages. An early grant, around 1066–67, gave him the former holdings of Goderic, the pre-Conquest sheriff of Berkshire. By the end of 1068 he had acquired lands in four further shires that had belonged to Bondi the Staller. After the 1071 revolt he received the lands of Siward Barn across Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire, and – crucially – took over the Wapentake of Appletree, centred on Tutbury Castle. It is within this Wapentake of Appletree, in the hundred of the same name, that Barton Blount lies.
Henry de Ferrers and the Domesday Survey
In 1086 Henry de Ferrers served as one of the royal commissioners appointed by William I to supervise the compilation of the Domesday survey – a remarkable mark of royal confidence. The same survey records him as tenant-in-chief of approximately 210 manors in England, with the overwhelming concentration in Derbyshire, where the list of his holdings occupies five folios of the Domesday Book. Among them, in the Hundred of Appletree, is the entry for Barctune: ‘Ralph from Henry de Ferrers. Church, 2 mills.’
The entry is brief but revealing. Henry held the manor as tenant-in-chief – that is, directly of the Crown – while Ralph held it of Henry. A church and two mills indicate that Barctune was in 1086 a substantial agricultural settlement, with its 31 recorded households placing it in the largest 40% of settlements recorded in the entire Domesday survey.
Tutbury and religious foundations
Henry made Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire his caput, or chief seat, of the English honour. Around 1080 he and his wife Bertha – possibly a member of the l’Aigle family – founded Tutbury Priory as a Benedictine house, later endowing it with tithes from many of his Derbyshire manors. He also built castles at Duffield in Derbyshire and Pilsbury in the Peak. He was buried at Tutbury Priory, which remained the principal Ferrers mausoleum through successive generations.
Death and succession
Henry de Ferrers died between September 1093 and September 1100, almost certainly at or near Tutbury. His succession was complicated. His eldest son William inherited the Norman estates; another son, Enguenulph, held Duffield Castle but did not long outlive his father. It was his third son, Robert, who inherited the English estates. Robert de Ferrers was subsequently created 1st Earl of Derby by King Stephen, and the family thereafter held the Earldom of Derby for six generations, maintaining overlordship over the very manors – including Barton – which Henry had established.
Following the rebellion of Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby, against King Henry III in 1264–66, the Ferrers estates were forfeited to the Crown and passed to Henry III’s son Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. From that point the overlordship of the former Ferrers manors, including the Honour of Tutbury, was absorbed into the Duchy of Lancaster. The Bakepuiz family’s tenure of Barton, however, appears to have continued under the successive overlords without interruption until their sale to Walter Blount in 1381.
A note on name spellings
The family name appears variously in primary and secondary sources as Ferrers, Ferrars, Ferrieres, de Ferrières and de Ferieres (the last form appearing in the Domesday survey transcript, which records him as Henricus de Ferrariis). The spelling Ferrers is standard in English historical usage and is preferred here. The variant Ferrars, used by later branches in England, should be distinguished from the Derbyshire Earls of Derby, who are conventionally styled Ferrers.
A note on uncertainty
Two points warrant editorial caution. First, Henry’s presence at Hastings is traditional rather than documented: no battle-roll or chronicle names him unambiguously, though his subsequent rewards are consistent with distinguished service. Second, the identification of the Domesday ‘Ralph’ with the Bakepuiz family is a probable, not a certain, identification – the Domesday text gives only the forename, and the surname rests on later local evidence of the family’s possession of Barton. The phrase ‘under Henry de Ferrers’ most accurately describes the arrangement as it stood in 1086, rather than a continuous personal relationship through to 1381.