BARDOLFS MANOR

Identity: likely — The registry location is Caister next Yarmouth, Norfolk, and medieval and antiquarian evidence identifies a manor of Caister associated with the Bardolf family. Inquisitions post mortem describe William Bardolf holding the manor of Caister in Fleggburgh by Yarmouth, while a 1425 fine explicitly calls the property “Castre called Bardolfys” in the parishes of Caister Holy Trinity and Caister St Edmund. The surviving registry and archive leads therefore most plausibly refer to the Caister Bardolf manor, although the accessible sources do not reproduce the MDR authority record’s fuller historical-name field.
Representative point: 52.65048, 1.70168
Basis: documented_manor_house — Caister Castle occupies the site of the medieval fortified manor house at Caister. The site is in historic West Caister, within the Caister manorial complex, and is the best surviving identifiable manorial centre associated with the Bardolf Caister holding.
Point confidence: medium
Boundary status: representative_point_only
Boundary period: Medieval to early modern; exact period of the MDR record’s territorial definition not established
Boundary confidence: none
Boundary basis: The sources establish the manor’s location and historical association with the Bardolf family but do not provide a sufficiently explicit surveyed perimeter for the manorial land. Evidence mentioning lands in East and West Caister occurs in records for related or overlapping holdings and cannot safely be converted into a boundary for Bardolfs Manor. The modern parish, civil-parish, or settlement boundary must not be substituted.
Sources:
- The National Archives: Manorial Documents Register record F238522: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F238522 — Registry record for BARDOLFS MANOR, located at Caister next Yarmouth, Norfolk.
- Feet of Fines: CP 25/1/291/65, no. 37: https://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/abstracts/CP_25_1_291_65.shtml — A 1425 fine identifies the manors of Caister called Bardolfys in Caister Holy Trinity and Caister St Edmund, directly supporting the historical identification of Bardolfs Manor at Caister.
- Mapping the Medieval Countryside: Inquisition 18-789: https://inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/18-789/794.html — The 1403 inquisition states that William Bardolf held the manor of Caister in Fleggburgh by Yarmouth and had enfeoffed it to his son William Bardolf.
- Mapping the Medieval Countryside: Inquisition 25-481: https://inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/25-481/484.html — The later inquisition describes Caister as the manor lately held by William Bardolf and values it at £20 yearly, confirming continuity of the Caister-Bardolf manor.
- Historic England: Caister Castle, West Caister, listing 1287573: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1287573 — Documents the surviving Caister Castle site at National Grid Reference TG5044012279, corresponding approximately to 52.65048, 1.70168; the listing identifies it as a major medieval manorial/fortified-house site in West Caister.
- Norfolk Record Office: MC 2944/1/7-11, court books with Pastons: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/N14263054 — Archive lead for court books dated 1632-1840, potentially containing the most useful later boundary and tenurial evidence for the manor.
Warnings / uncertainty:
- The representative point is defensible as the surviving manorial centre/site, but the accessible evidence does not prove that every part of Caister Castle’s later estate corresponds exactly to the medieval Bardolf manor.
- No historical manor polygon has been returned because the available evidence does not define a reliable perimeter.
- The Caister parish and modern West Caister boundaries were not used as substitutes for the manorial extent.