A Royal Licence and a Changing Landscape
In 1337 Edward III granted Simon de Rugeley permission to enclose one hundred acres at le Haukeserd as a private deer park. At first sight this might seem a small event in the history of Hawkesyard, yet it tells us much about Simon’s standing, his relationship with the Crown and the medieval landscape that surrounded the old Hall.
On the Edge of the King’s Hunting Ground
Hawkesyard stood on the eastern edge of Cannock Chase, one of the King’s great medieval hunting preserves. Today the Chase is valued for its woodland and heathland, but in the fourteenth century it served a very different purpose. It was a royal chase, where the right to hunt deer and other game belonged to the Crown and was carefully controlled.
Against that backdrop, Simon de Rugeley’s licence to create a deer park becomes even more significant.
Although his estate lay beside the royal Chase, Simon’s park was entirely separate from it. Created under royal licence within his own lands, it allowed him to maintain his own herd of deer, entertain important visitors and reinforce his position among Staffordshire’s leading county gentlemen.
A Royal Privilege
A medieval deer park was far more than an area where deer happened to live.
Unlike the royal Chase, which was defined by law rather than by visible boundaries, a deer park was a physically enclosed landscape. It was surrounded by an earth bank, an internal ditch and a timber fence known as a park pale, designed to keep deer in and people out.
The right to create such a park rested entirely with the Crown. A licence to empark was therefore both a practical permission and a public mark of royal favour. It demonstrated that the owner enjoyed sufficient standing and influence to receive the King’s approval.
For Simon, whose career included service as sheriff, commissioner and Member of Parliament, the licence formed another sign of the confidence Edward III placed in one of his trusted Staffordshire gentlemen.
More Than Hunting
A deer park represented a considerable investment. The enclosure had to be built and maintained, while the deer themselves required careful management. The reward was not only a supply of venison for the household but also the prestige that came with possessing something that relatively few gentlemen could claim.
The Park and the Hall
The deer park formed only part of the Hawkesyard estate.
The medieval Hall remained on the lower ground beside the River Trent, where access to water, meadow and fishponds made it a practical place for a fourteenth-century household. The park occupied the higher sandstone ground overlooking the valley, land better suited to grazing deer and scattered woodland than to the everyday business of the Hall.
The two complemented one another. Together they formed the heart of the medieval estate.
A Changing Landscape
The deer park outlived the medieval Hall by many centuries.
As tastes changed, so too did ideas about where a country house should stand. By the eighteenth century, Nathaniel Lister no longer wanted to build beside the river. Instead, he chose the higher ground occupied by the old deer park. His reasons were very different from Simon’s. An eighteenth-century gentleman sought healthier ground, wider views and a setting suitable for landscaped gardens rather than a practical medieval estate.
The old Hall remained below on the valley floor until it eventually disappeared during the construction of Rugeley Power Station, its site becoming part of the cooling lagoon. Today the power station has gone as well, leaving only the lake to mark where the medieval Hawkesyard once stood.
Above it, on the hillside, Hawkesyard House still occupies the former deer park.
The two sites belong to different periods and reflect very different ways of living. Yet both were shaped by the same piece of ground: one beside the river, the other on the rising land above it.