RE: Burgage House

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:07:03 GMT

For Horsham the importance of owning a burgage was related to the voting rights attached to it. If you owned a burgage house you could 'advise' the occupant which MP they should select in the public vote. I think there were about 57 burgage plots and as they came onto the housing market their value increased as they could hold the balance of power in an election.

Horsham used to to have two MPs and so each plot could have two votes.

That is how I understand it although I welcome additions or corrections!

One of the future plans for Hidden Horsham is to set up a Burgage House Trail that can be seen on line then followed in the town around the remaining houses and plots

Burgage House

DotNetWebs — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:20:15 GMT

I have just been given a bit of feedback from the IndiGo Brasserie about one of their customers who had found their details on Visit Horsham. The customer had seen the Denne Road entry which refers to the building currently occupied by the Indigo Brasserie as a “Burgage House”. The question was asked “what was a burgage house”?

My understanding is that a burgage was a property that was rented by the wealthy from land owned by a lord or the king. (the less fortunate ‘peasants’ would be given accommodation in return for labour).

There is a good definition here:

http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/glossary.html#burgage

The above article has been simplified in the Wiki Entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgage

Here is an article the puts into context some of the Horsham burgages.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=18350

Anyway that’s my understanding of the term. Perhaps M (our resident historian) or anybody else can comment further.

Regards

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RE: Burgage House

Burgage House