fishponds

Latin, piscina, vivarium.

Fishponds occur on 16 manors, all in circuits 3 and 6. At Tudworth, one of only two manors with ponds in Yorkshire, 20 ponds rendering 20,000 eels are recorded (YKS 25W25). It is improbable that 2000 other manors in the county were unable to muster more than one further pond (YKS 13W1) between them, and equally improbable that there were no fishponds at all in four entire circuits. Even allowing for fact that the substantial costs of construction and maintenance may have restricted ponds to the estates of the the more substantial landowners, Domesday fishponds can only be a minute fraction of the numbers which existed in 1086.

For the importance of fish, see Medieval fish, fisheries, and fishponds in England, edited by Michael A. Aston (1988); and Christopher C. Dyer, Everyday life in medieval England (2000).

See also fisheries.