What is a manor and who owns it?

Answer 1

A manor was a large farming estate. It included a manor house, fields, farming buildings, cottages for the peasants who lived on it, and other areas. The peasant cottages were usually organized into one or more communities, which might include a town and hamlets. If there was a town, then there was a church. There might have been various shops, including a blacksmith's shop. Also, there was likely to be a mill for milling flour. The manor was controlled by a lord of one type or another. Its day to day operation was done by various officers, including a reeve. There was likely to be a manorial court, to deal with any local legal or criminal matters, though anything really important would have been referred to a higher court.

This is probably for an online history quiz (ps thats what i was looking for) and I got a 100% so... mill, village, fields, manor house and a church.

Answer 2

A manor is the lords estates, especially his home and related buildings. Medieval means the Middle Ages. So a medieval manor is where the lords lived or did most of their work in the Middle Ages.

Answer 3

Note: This answer is the same text I wrote for a very similar question with a few edits.

A manor is the basic unit of feudal land holding. Often a manor was comprised of one village, but in some cases a manor might include several villages, or in rare cases the lands of a particular village might be divided between more than one manor.

For simplicity lets assume we have a manor that includes a single village. The village was a small settlement that ranged in size from a few as 50 to as many as 500 or more people, but on average was home to 200 to 300 people. The village consisted of a cluster of houses and a few other buildings such as a church, a mill, etc. The village was surrounded by three large areas of fields, each surrounded by a combinations of hedges and fences. The large open fields were divided into areas called furlongs, where were further divided into strips of farmland. Some of these strips were held by the lord, others were held by farmers in the village. There would have also been areas for pasturing animals, meadows for growing hay, and waste areas for gathering Natural Resources such as wood, peat, rushes, thatch, etc.

The peasants of the village were of two types, free and serfs, also called villeins. Free villagers would have owed an annual rent based on the amount of land they held, and certain taxes and fees, but did not owe labor to the lord, or only a token amount. A free man could leave the manor if he so chose, and would serve as a member of the manor court.

Villeins were bondsmen. In addition to rents and taxes they owed labor to the lord, the amount of which varied by location but it could be up to two days per week. This time was spent working the lord's farmland in the village fields. The produce from these farms was a major source of income for the aristocracy. The other days of the week they worked their own land in the village fields, which provided for their basic needs and generated (hopefully) a small surplus to sell. Villeins could travel short distances to nearby market towns, but could not permanently leave the manor without permission, although this was sometimes arranged in exchange for an annual fee.

Villeins should not be confused with slaves, however. Villeins could own their own houses and movable property to which the lord had no claim, and were free to accumulate wealth if they found the means to do so. A villein could not be sold to another lord, nor could they be denied access to their land. A villein could bring a complaint to the manor court, and were not chattel. While not fully free, they had considerable rights.

Not all peasants had the same level of wealth. The poorest, who were known as cotters or cottagers, held only a house, a small farmyard, and a garden of an acre of less. This was inadequate to provide for their needs and they would have to hire out as labor to support themselves. A peasant who controlled 10-12 acres probably could provide for their own basic needs. Some peasants controlled thirty for forty acres, in rare cases even more, and would have generated significant surplus to bring to market. Also, being free was not always equated with greater wealth, nor were villeins always poor. Some villeins did well enough financially to hire others to replace them for their labor obligations, and there are even records of villeins with enough wealth to hire servants.

Most people in a village farmed. There would have been a few professionals or craftsmen, the most common being a miller and a blacksmith. These people sometimes also farmed as well as practicing their craft.

Most villages were withing a day round trip of a town with a market. The smallest of these towns were not necessarily any larger than a large village, but their economy was focused on trade and crafts. They had regular market days and would have been an opportunity for the peasants to sell their surplus and buy manufactured goods they could not acquire in the village.

Answer 4

Life in a manor, in the medieval ages, was tough. All the peasants in the Middle Ages surrounded themanor. A manor is an area of land that was owned by the feudal lord. The lords either lived in manorhouses or castles.

Answer 5

A manor is a piece of land that a lord owns.

Answer 6

it is an estate that is manorial