Richard was born around 1240 and was known to be living in the reign of Edward III . This means that he was born during the reign of Henry III and he must have been about 87 when he died. Probably a forester of the Forest of Rossendale he was witness to a charter granting Heywood by Rochdale in County Lancaster by Adam de Bury to Peter Heywood in 1280. This charter, reproduced below, would have been similar to the charter granting land to the de Notehoe family. Richard had a son, Henry.

The Heywood Charter

Around 1280, Adam de Bury granted ‘one parcel of land hereinafter called Hewode’ to Peter de Hewode. The charter was written in Latin and the beginning translates as:

‘Let it be known now and to all posterity that I, Adam of Bury, have given and conceded and by this my present charter have confirmed unto Peter of Hewode and his heirs, in return for their homage and service, one parcel of land hereinafter called Hewode…’

This land was described as:

‘Beginning at Golden and thence following the Golden to its junction with the River Roach, and thence following the Rached, ascending as far as the Hedene and so following the Hedene, ascending as far as the boundary stone of Adam of Bury and Roger of Midleton.’

The ‘Golden’ or ‘Gooden’ brook, starting near Hopwood, later became the Cartridge (and probably Wrigley) Brook, and the Hedene is now Millers Brook near Queen’s Park. This places Hewode’s land directly to the eastern boundary of the Monk Bretton land, and would have looked something like the area shaded in green below (all spelling is correct):

As a place, Heywood was actually a local latecomer, and by the time the charter was signed much of the surrounding district had already been settled and named. The larger villages of Bury, Middleton and Rochdale (or Racchedal as it was called then) with their manor houses were a few miles away, but closer to Heywood was the village of Lumhalghs, later known as Lomax. This place name survives in Higher Lomax Lane and Lomax Wood, as well as being a local surname. The eastern border of Lumhalghs was also the western border of the later Heywood land.

Near Lumhalghs were Heap and Bridge Hall, which derived its name from the old area of Bridge, where a William de Bridge was living in 1278. There was also Pilsworth, which around 1260 was given to William de Radcliffe in exchange for a yearly rent of two pairs of white gloves. 

To the north was Bamford, which was held during the reign of Henry III (1216-72) by Thomas de Baumford. It had been granted to Thomas by Adam de Bury. Next to that was Ashworth, which was variously spelled as Assewrthe (1236), Hesseworthe (c.1260) and Asschewrth (c.1270) and was part of the lands held under the lord of Middleton. The earliest record of it is in a grant made around 1180–90 by Roger (son of Alexander de Middleton) to Geoffrey (son of Robert the Dean of Whalley) of the whole of Ashworth. One of the witnesses to this grant was Jordan de Ashworth, who was probably the immediate tenant. Another place predating the Heywood charter was Birtle (named as Brithull in 1243, and Birkil in 1246), which was recorded in 1197 and was held by Roger de Birtle in 1246 under the lord of Middleton.

Hopwood, on the southern side of Heywood, was held by the lord of Middleton and was recorded as Hoppewode in 1292. The side closer to Heywood was Gooden (Guldene in the Heywood charter) and later Gulden or Golden. The de Gulden family was mentioned in records from 1282. This old name is used for Gooden Street now, but was once more widespread. The area round the junction at St John’s Church was known as Gooden Gate in the 1850s. Both Gooden and Birch were once hamlets within the township of Hopwood. 

All this took place around two centuries after the Norman Invasion, when England was organised under a feudal system with the king and nobility at the top of the social scale. Senior abbots and bishops also had noble status, and between them the Crown, nobility and church (totalling about 200 men) owned about 75% of English land. Immediately below them were men who had been made knights in return for outstanding service or because they had become wealthy in their own right. 

Adam de Bury was one of those knights, and the people who lived on his land were either villani or freemen. Villani (serfs) made up the largest class of the population (about 40%) and did not own land but instead farmed their own holdings, which they were allowed to occupy in exchange for labour services for the landowner. A common arrangement was to work for three days each week, with more at harvest time. 

Free men (also known as ‘sokemen’) made up about one in six of the national population and owned about 20% of the land. These men and their descendants had free land tenure in return for carrying out defined services such as light labor and paying a fixed rent. Peter de Hewode was a freeman under Adam de Bury, to whom he paid two shillings every year ‘on the feast of St. Oswald the King* in lieu of all services and demands’. One of the few conditions was that if de Bury’s pigs entered into ‘the wood of Heywode’, Peter was required to remove them without impounding them.

England at that time was divided into administrative areas called ‘Hundreds’ and de Bury’s land was a part of the Salford Hundred (also known as Salfordshire, and shown in the map below [yellow border] as it looked circa 1610).

It is not known how long the Hewode family had been living in the area, but some sources have a Peter de Hewode in the locale as far back as AD 1164. He had a son called Robert, and his grandson Peter de Hewode turns up in the records in 1234. It is possible that the family owned land to some extent before the 1260s charter, because in 1246 the young Peter de Hewode had ‘recovered 2 acres of land in Heywood against Gervase de Halliwell’, who owned land around Bury.

A number of other men were granted land at the same time as Peter de Hewode, and Roger de Noteho may have been one of those, although, as we have seen, we know that Walter de Noteho held lands near Bury from King John, for which he paid a fine, or rent. They, in return, had to ‘do homage’ by swearing an oath of loyalty to the giver of the land. The signing would have taken place at the manor house of the de Bury family, in front of a group of notable locals with now-familiar surnames, including Chetham, Pilkington, Prestwich, Middleton, Walmsley, Radcliffe, Brandlesome… and de Noteho.

Several centuries were to pass before Heywood grew in stature and absorbed many of the surrounding folds and hamlets into its municipal borders, but at its inception it was just another small piece in a mosaic of landholdings owned by freemen serving the surrounding lords and knights.