CHAPTER VII.

AGRICULTURE IN OPEN FIELD PARISHES A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

A glance at the accompanying Enclosure Map of England will indicate the importance of common fields in the social life of rural England at certain dates. It was prepared in the following manner: On the Ordnance County diagrams each parish which had an Enclosure Act by which common field arable was enclosed was coloured; if the Act was passed between 1700 and 1801 it was coloured yellow; if passed after the general Enclosure Act of 1801 and before that of 1845, it was coloured green; if after 1845, purple. A map of England was drawn summarising the results of the county maps. On this _at least_ all purple patches showed parishes which possessed open field arable in 1845; _at least_ all the green and purple area combined indicated parishes which had open field arable in 1802; _at least_ all the coloured area had open field arable in 1700. In the printed map these colours are represented by three forms of shading. Of the unshaded area one can simply say that the Enclosure Acts throw no light upon its agricultural history so far as the land under tillage is concerned. To a very great extent it was undoubtedly being enclosed otherwise than by Act of Parliament simultaneously with the progress of Parliamentary enclosure, but to a still greater extent it either never passed through the common field system or was enclosed before 1700. This statement raises questions which are dealt with below. For the present I have to deal with the general history of those parishes which did pass through the common field system.

The original Board of Agriculture, which was an association on similar lines to those of the Royal Agricultural Society, but enjoying a grant from the Treasury, was founded in 1793, with Arthur Young as secretary and Sir John Sinclair as president. It immediately took in hand the work of making an agricultural survey of Great Britain, county by county. Some counties were surveyed several times, but the original survey of England was completed in the years 1793 and 1794. William Marshall, the ablest agricultural writer of the time, single-handed accomplished an agricultural survey of England, ignoring county divisions and dividing the country according to natural divisions marked by similarity of soil, crops and agricultural methods. The two surveys together give us ample information on the different methods of cultivating open or common fields at the end of the eighteenth century.

On the whole, the most general system, particularly in the midland counties where common fields remained most numerous, was the following form of the three-field system:--

“One part” (or one of the three fields) “is annually fallowed, a moiety of which is folded with sheep and sown with wheat; another moiety is dunged and sown with barley in the succeeding spring. The part which produces wheat is broken up and sown with oats, and the part which produces barley is at the same time generally sown with peas or beans, and then it comes in routine to be again fallowed the third year.”[16] This gives us the following rotation of crops: (1), wheat; (2), oats; (3), fallow; (4), barley; (5), peas or beans; (6), fallow. This was the system prevailing in Huntingdon.

[16] Maxwell, “Huntingdon,” p. 9.

The same system prevailed in the heavy clay lands of Bedfordshire, but in the lighter lands sometimes a four-field course was adopted, sometimes the half of the nominally fallow field that had the previous year given crops of wheat and oats was sown with turnips, and clover was sown with barley the succeeding year.[17]

[17] T. Stone, “Bedfordshire,” p. 8.

The commonest four-field course is that described for Isleham, Cambridgeshire: (1), wheat; (2), barley; (3), pulse or oats; (4), fallow; the fallow field being dunged or folded with sheep. At Castle Camps, also in Cambridge, a two-field course of alternate crop and fallow obtained.[18]

[18] Vancouver, “Cambridgeshire,” p. 33.

Coming further south for Hertfordshire, we are told that the “common fields are mostly by agreement among the owners and occupiers cultivated nearly in the same way as in the enclosed state.”[19] In Buckinghamshire the regular three-fields course was followed in some parts, but in Upton, Eton, Dorney, Datchett, Maysbury and Horton, “the occupiers have exploded entirely the old usage of two crops and a fallow, and now have a crop every year.”

[19] D. Walker, “Hertfordshire,” p. 49.

Two Buckinghamshire parishes underwent experiences which have been wrongly cited as typical of the inconveniences of common fields, whereas they are rather instances of the lawless conduct of village bullies. Steeple Claydon had 2500 acres of common field, on which the customary course was one crop and a fallow. “About fourteen years ago” (_i.e._, about 1779) “the proprietors came to an agreement to have two crops and a fallow, but before the expiration of ten years one of the farmers broke through the agreement, and turned in his cattle upon the crops of beans, oats and barley, in which plan he was soon followed by the rest.”[20] The agreement, if that of a three-fourths majority (see below), was legally binding on all owners and occupiers, and the first farmer was liable to the same pains and penalties as if he had turned his cattle into crops standing on enclosed fields belonging to another farm. Possibly, however, the crops were a failure, and feeding them off with cattle was as good a way of dealing with them as another.

[20] William James and Jacob Malcolm, “Buckingham,” p. 30.

A still more difficult case to understand is that of Wendon (3000 acres common field). It is reported as follows:--“About fourteen years ago the parishioners came to an agreement and obtained an Act to lay the small pieces of land together.... When the division took place, the balks were of necessity ploughed up, by which a great portion of the sheep pasture was destroyed.[21] It then became expedient, and it was agreed upon at public vestry, to sow clover and turnips as a succedaneum for the balks. Two years since, one of the farmers, occupying 16 acres of these common fields, procured in the month of May a large flock of lean sheep, which he turned on the clover crops; being then nearly in bloom, the greater part of which they devoured.”

[21] James and Malcolm, “Buckingham,” p. 29. I have been unable to find any trace of this Act.

Of Oxfordshire we are told “the present course of husbandry is so various, particularly in the open fields, that to treat of all the different ways of management would render this report too voluminous. It may suffice generally to remark that some fields are in the course of one crop and fallow, others of two, and a few of three crops and a fallow. In divers unenclosed parishes the same rotation prevails over the whole of the open fields; but in others, the more homeward or bettermost land is oftener cropped, or sometimes cropped every year.”[22] Where one crop and a fallow was the custom the crop might be wheat, barley or oats; and sometimes tares were sown on the fallow field and cut green. The three and four-field systems prevalent were those described above.

[22] Richard Davis, “Oxfordshire,” p. 11.

In Berkshire a six-year course, evidently evolved from an older three-years course, was found:--(1), wheat; (2), barley; (3), oats, with seeds; (4), clover, mowed, and then grazed upon in common; (5), oats or barley; (6), fallow.

An agreement to withhold turning out stock during the time in which a field was commonable by ancient custom, in order that turnips, vetches, etc., might be grown, was practised, and termed “hitching the fields.”[23] We get the same expression for Wiltshire, where a part of a field set aside for vetches, peas, beans, turnips, or potatoes was called a “hookland” or “hitchland” field.[24] In Wiltshire customs similar to these described as surviving recently in Stratton and Grimstone were prevalent; clover was generally substituted for fallow, and was partly mowed for the individual benefit of particular occupiers, and partly fed upon by the village flock. The following systems are reported:--

(_a_) First, wheat; second, barley with clover; third, clover part mowed, part fed.

(_b_) First, wheat; second, barley; third, oats with clover; fourth, clover part mowed, part fed.

(_c_) First, wheat; second, barley with clover; third, clover mowed; fourth, clover fed (one-third or a quarter of this field being “hitchland”).[25]

[23] William Pearce, “Berkshire,” p. 29.

[24] Thomas Davis, “Wiltshire,” p. 43.

[25] Thomas Davis, “Wiltshire,” p. 43.

Turning northwards again from the centre of England, in Rutland the old three-year course of two crops and a fallow was universal in the unenclosed parishes;[26] in Lincoln two, three and four-field systems were practised;[27] the two-field course was also prevalent in Yorkshire.[28]

[26] John Crutchley, “Rutland,” p. 8.

[27] Thomas Stone, “Lincoln,” p. 26.

[28] Isaac Leatham, “East Riding,” p. 40.

A singular practice was followed in the East Riding Wolds. “The greater part of the Wold townships which lie open have a great quantity of out-field in leyland, _i.e._, land from which they take a crop every third, fourth, fifth, or sixth year, according to the custom of the township.”[29]

[29] Isaac Leatham, “East Riding,” p. 42.

In contrast we may mention the Battersea common fields, which were “sown with one uniform round of grain without intermission and consequently without fallowing.”[30]

[30] James and Malcolm, “Surrey,” p. 48.