CHAPTER I.

_THE ENGLISH OPEN FIELD SYSTEM EXAMINED IN ITS MODERN REMAINS._

I. THE DISTINCTIVE MARKS OF THE OPEN FIELD SYSTEM.

The distinctive marks of the open or common field system once prevalent in England will be most easily learned by the study of an example.

«Open fields of Hitchin Manor.»

The township of Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, will answer the purpose. From the time of Edward the Confessor--and probably from much earlier times--with intervals of private ownership, it has been a royal manor.[1] And the Queen being still the lady of the manor, the remains of its open fields have never been swept away by the ruthless broom of an Enclosure Act.

Annexed is a reduced tracing of a map of the [p002] township without the hamlets, made about the year 1816, and showing all the divisions into which its fields wore then cut up.

It will be seen at once that it presents almost the features of a spiders web. A great part of the township at that date, probably nearly the whole of it in earlier times, was divided up into little narrow strips.

«Divided into strips or seliones, _i.e._ acres, by balks.»

«Form of the acre.»

These strips, common to open fields all over England, were separated from each other not by hedges, but by green balks of unploughed turf, and are of great historical interest. They vary more or less in size even in the same fields, as in the examples given on the map of a portion of the Hitchin Purwell field. There are 'long' strips and 'short' strips. But taking them generally, and comparing them with the statute acre of the scale at the corner of the map, it will be seen at once that the normal strip is roughly identical with it. The length of the statute acre of the scale is a furlong of 40 rods or poles. It is 4 rods in width. Now 40 rods in length and 1 rod in width make 40 square rods, or a _rood_; and thus, as there are 4 rods in breadth, the acre of the scale with which the normal strips coincide is an _acre_ made up of 4 roods lying side by side.

Thus the strips are in fact roughly cut 'acres,' of the proper shape for ploughing. For the furlong is the 'furrow long,' _i.e._ the length of the drive of the plough before it is turned; and that this by long custom was fixed at 40 rods, is shown by the use of the Latin word '_quarentena_' for furlong. The word 'rood' naturally corresponds with as many furrows in the ploughing as are contained in the breadth of one rod. And four of these roods lying side by side made [p003] the acre strip in the open fields, and still make up the statute acre.

«Very ancient.»

This form of the acre is very ancient. Six hundred years ago, in the earliest English law fixing the size of the statute acre (33 Ed. I.), it is declared that '40 perches in length and 4 in breadth make an acre.'[2] And further, we shall find that more than a thousand years ago in Bavaria the shape of the strip in the open fields for ploughing was also 40 rods in length and 4 rods in width, but the rod was in that case the Greek and Roman rod of 10 ft. instead of the English rod of 16½ ft.

«Half-acres.»

But to return to the English strips. In many places the open fields were formerly divided into half-acre strips, which were called 'half-acres.' That is to say, a turf balk separated every two rods or roods in the ploughing, the length of the furrow remaining the same.

The strips in the open fields are generally known by country folk as 'balks,' and the Latin word used in terriers and cartularies for the strip is generally '_selio_,' corresponding with the French word '_sillon_,' (meaning furrow). In Scotland and Ireland the same strips generally are known as 'rigs,' and the open field system is known accordingly as the 'run-rig' system.

The whole arable area of an uninclosed township was usually divided up by turf balks into as many thousands of these strips as its limits would contain, and the tithing maps of many parishes besides Hitchin, dating sixty or eighty years ago, show remains of [p004] them still existing, although the process of ploughing up the balks and throwing many strips together had gradually been going on for centuries.

* * * * *

«Shots or furlongs, or _quarentenæ_.»

Next, it will be seen that the strips on the map lie side by side in groups, forming larger divisions of the field. These larger divisions are called 'shots,' or 'furlongs,' and in Latin documents '_quarentenæ_,' being always a furrow-long in width. Throughout their whole length the furrows in the ploughing run parallel from end to end; the balks which divide them into strips being, as the word implies, simply two or three furrows left unploughed between them.[3]

The shots or furlongs are divided from one another by broader balks, generally overgrown with bushes.

«Headlands.»

This grouping of the strips in furlongs or shots is a further invariable feature of the English open field system. And it involves another little feature which is also universally met with, viz. the _headland_.

It will be seen on the map that mostly a common field-way gives access to the strips; _i.e._ it runs along the side of the furlong and the ends of the strips. But this is not always the case; and when it is not, then there is a strip running along the length of the furlong inside its boundaries and across the ends of the strips composing it.[4] This is the _headland_. Sometimes when the strips of the one furlong run at right angles to the strips of its neighbour, the first strip in the one furlong does [p005] duty as the headland giving access to the strips in the other. In either case all the owners of the strips in a furlong have the right to turn their plough upon the headland, and thus the owner of the headland must wait until all the other strips are ploughed before he can plough his own. The Latin term for the headland is '_forera_;' the Welsh, '_pen tir_;' the Scotch, '_headrig_;' and the German (from the turning of the plough upon it), '_anwende_.'

«Lynches, or linces.»

A less universal but equally peculiar feature of the open field system in hilly districts is the 'lynch,' and it may often be observed remaining when every other trace of an open field has been removed by enclosure. Its right of survival lies in its indestructibility. When a hill-side formed part of the open field the strips almost always were made to run, not up and down the hill, but horizontally along it; and in ploughing, the custom for ages was always to turn the sod of the furrow downhill, the plough consequently always returning one way idle. If the whole hill-side were ploughed in one field, this would result in a gradual travelling of the soil from the top to the bottom of the field, and it might not be noticed. But as in the open field system the hill-side was ploughed in strips with unploughed balks between them, no sod could pass in the ploughing from one strip to the next; but the process of moving the sod downwards would go on age after age just the same within each individual strip. In other words, every year's ploughing took a sod from the higher edge of the strip and put it on the lower edge; and the result was that the strips became in time long level terraces one above the other, and the balks between them [p006] grew into steep rough banks of long grass covered often with natural self-sown brambles and bushes. These banks between the plough-made terraces are generally called _lynches_, or _linces_; and the word is often applied to the terraced strips themselves, which go by the name of 'the linces.'[5]

«Butts.»

Where the strips abruptly meet others, or _abut_ upon a boundary at right angles, they are sometimes called _butts_.

«Gored acres.»

«No man's land.»

Two other small details marking the open field system require only to be simply mentioned. Corners of the fields which, from their shape, could not be cut up into the usual acre or half-acre strips, were sometimes divided into tapering strips pointed at one end, and called 'gores,' or 'gored acres.' In other cases little odds and ends of unused land remained, which from time immemorial were called 'no man's land,' or 'any one's land,' or 'Jack's land,' as the case might be.

Thus there are plenty of outward marks and traits by which the open common field may be recognised wherever it occurs,--the acre or half-acre [p007] strips or _seliones_, the gored shape of some of them, the balks and sometimes lynches between them, the shots or furlongs (_quarentenæ_) in which they lie in groups, the headlands which give access to the strips when they lie off the field-ways, the butts, and lastly the odds and ends of 'no man's land.'

II. SCATTERED AND INTERMIXED OWNERSHIP IN THE OPEN FIELDS.

«Scattered or intermixed ownership.»

Passing from these little outward marks to the matter of ownership, a most inconvenient peculiarity presents itself, which is by far the most remarkable and important feature of the open field system wherever it is found. It is the fact that neither the strips nor the furlongs represented a complete holding or property, but that the several holdings were made up of a multitude of strips scattered about on all sides of the township, one in this furlong and another in that, intermixed, and it might almost be said entangled together, as though some one blindfold had thrown them about on all sides of him.

The extent to which this was the case in the Hitchin common fields, even so late as the beginning of the present century, will be realised by reference to the map annexed. It is a reduced tracing of a map showing the ownership of the strips in one division of the open fields of Hitchin called the _Purwell_ field. The strips are numbered, and correspond with the owners' names given in the tally at the side. The strips belonging to two of the owners are also coloured, so as at once to catch the eye, and the area of each separate piece is marked upon it. The number [p008] of scattered pieces held by each owner is also given in the note below; and as the map embraces only about one-third of the Hitchin fields, it should be noticed that each owner probably held in the parish three times as many separate pieces as are there described![6] Further, at the side of the map of the Hitchin township, is a reduced tracing of a plan of the estate of a single landowner in the townfields of Hitchin, which shows very clearly the curious scattering of the strips in a single ownership all over the fields, notwithstanding that the tendency towards consolidation of the holdings by exchanges and purchases had evidently made some progress.

III. THE OPEN FIELDS WERE THE COMMON FIELDS OF A VILLAGE COMMUNITY OR TOWNSHIP UNDER A MANOR.

The next fact to be noted is that under the English system the open fields were the common fields--the arable land--of a village community or township under a manorial lordship. This could hardly be more clearly illustrated than by the Hitchin example. [p009]

«Periodical presentment of the jurors and the homage of the manor.»

The Hitchin manor was, as already stated, a royal manor. The _Court Leet_ and _View of Frankpledge_ were held concurrently with the _Court Baron_ of the manor. Periodically at this joint court a record was made on the presentment of the jurors and homage of various particulars relating to both the manor and township.

The record for the year 1819 will be found at length in Appendix A, and it may be taken as a common form.

The jurors and homage first present that the manor comprises the township of Hitchin and hamlet of Walsworth, and includes within it three lesser manors; also that it extends into other hamlets and parishes.

«The boundaries.»

They then record the _boundaries_ of the township (including the hamlet of Walsworth) as follows, viz.:--

'From Orton Head to Burford Ray, and from thence to a Water Mill called Hide Mill, and from thence to Willberry Hills, and from thence to a place called Bossendell, and from thence to a Water Mill called Purwell Mill, and from thence to a Brook or River called Ippollitt's Brook, and from thence to Maydencroft Lane, and from thence to a place called Wellhead, and from thence to a place called Stubborn Bush, and from thence to a place called Offley Cross, and from thence to Five Borough Hills [Five Barrows], and from thence back to Orton Head, where the boundaries commenced.'

The form in which these boundaries are given is of great antiquity. It is a form used by the Romans two thousand years ago, and almost continuously followed from that time to this.[7] Its importance for [p010] the purpose in hand will be manifest as the inquiry proceeds.

«The courts.»

The jurisdiction of the Court Leet and View of Frankpledge is recorded to extend within the foregoing boundaries, _i.e._ over the township, that of the Court Baron beyond them over the whole manor, which was more extensive than the township. The Court Leet is therefore the Court of the township, the Court Baron that of the manor.

It is then stated that in the Court Leet at Michaelmas the jurors of the king elect and present to the lord--

«The officers.»

Two constables,

Six headboroughs (two for each of the three wards),

Two ale-conners,

Two leather-searchers and sealers, and

A bellman, who is also the watchman and crier of the town.

All the foregoing presentments have reference to the township, and are those of 'the jurors of our lord the King (_i.e._ of the Court Leet), and the homage of the Court' [Baron] of the manor.

«Reliefs, fines, &c.»

«Pound and stocks.»

Then come presentments of the homage of the Court of the Manor alone, describing the reliefs of freeholders and the fines, &c., of copyholders under the manor, and various particulars as to powers of leasing, [p011] forfeiture, cutting timber, heriots, &c.; the freedom of grain from toll in the market, the provision by the lord of the _common pound_ and the _stocks_ for the use of the tenants of the manor, and the right of the lord with the consent of the homage to grant out portions of the waste by copy of court roll at a rent and the customary services.

Next the _commons_ are described.

«Green commons. Lammas meadows.»

(1) The portions coloured dark green on the map are described as _Green Commons_, and those coloured light green as _Lammas Meadows_;[8] and every occupier of an ancient messuage or cottage in the township has certain defined rights of common thereon, the obligation to find the common bull falling upon the rectory, and a common herdsman being elected by the homage at a Court Baron.

«Common fields.»

«The three fields and rotation of crops.»

(2) The _common fields_ are stated to be--

{Purwell field, Welshman's croft,} {Burford field, Spital field,} {Moremead field, Bury field;}

and it is recorded that these common fields have immemorially been, and ought to be, kept and cultivated in three successive seasons of _tilth grain_, _etch grain_, and _fallow_: Purwell field and Welshman's croft being fallow one year; Burford field and Spital field the next year; Moremead field and Bury field the year after, and so on in regular rotation. [p012]

«Common rights over the open fields when not under crop.»

It is stated that every occupier of unenclosed land in any of the common fields of the township may pasture his sheep over the rest of the field after the corn is cut and carried, and when it is fallow. If he choose to enclose his own portion of the common field he may do so, but he then gives up for ever his right of pasture over the rest. It is under this custom that the strips and balks are gradually disappearing.

«Hamlet.»

The ancient messuages and cottages in the hamlet of Walsworth had their separate green common and herdsman, but (at this date) no common fields, because they had already been some time ago enclosed.

It will be seen from the map how very small a proportion of the land of the township was in meadow or pasture. The open arable fields occupied nearly the whole of it. The community to which it belonged, and to whose wants it was fitted, was evidently a community occupied mainly in agriculture.

«Copyholds and freeholds intermixed.»

Another feature requiring notice was the fact that in the open fields freehold and copyhold land were intermixed; some of the strips being freehold, whilst the next strip was copyhold, instead of all the freehold and all the copyhold lying together. And in the same way the lands belonging to the three lesser or sub-manors lay intermixed, and not all apart by themselves. The open field system overrode the whole.

Thus, if the Hitchin example may be taken as a typical one of the English open field system, it may be regarded generally as having belonged to a village or township under a manor. We may assume that the holdings were composed of numbers of strips scattered [p013] over the three open fields: and that the husbandry was controlled by those rules as to rotation of crops and fallow in three seasons which marked the three-field system, and secured uniformity of tillage throughout each field. Lastly, whilst fallow after the crop was gathered, the open fields were probably everywhere subject to the common rights of pasture. The sheep of the whole township wandered and pastured all over the strips and balks of its fields, while the cows of the township were daily driven by a common herdsman to the green commons, or, after Lammas Day, when the hay crop of the owners was secured, to the lammas meadows.

IV. THE WIDE PREVALENCE OF THE SYSTEM THROUGH GREAT BRITAIN.

But before the attempt is made to trace back the system, it may be well to ask what evidence there is as to its wide prevalence in England, and with what reason the particular example of the Hitchin township may be taken as generally typical.

«Enclosure of open fields.»

In the first place, an examination into the details of an Enclosure Act will make clear the point that the system as above described is the system which it was the object of the Enclosure Acts to remove. They were generally drawn in the same form, commencing with the recital that the open and common fields lie dispersed in small pieces intermixed with each other and inconveniently situated, that divers persons own parts of them, and are entitled to rights of common on them, so that in their present state they are incapable of improvement, and that it is [p014] desired that they may be divided and enclosed, a specific share being set out and allowed to each owner. For this purpose Enclosure Commissioners are appointed, and under their award the balks are ploughed up, the fields divided into blocks for the several owners, hedges planted, and the whole face of the country changed.

«Number of Acts.»

The common fields of twenty-two parishes within ten miles of Hitchin were enclosed in this way between 1766 and 1832. All the Acts were of the same character.[9] And as, taking the whole of England, with, roughly speaking, its 10,000 parishes, nearly 4,000 Enclosure Acts were passed between 1760 [p015] and 1844,[10] it will at once be understood how generally prevalent was this form of the open field system so late as the days of the grandfathers of this generation.

«Wide extent of open field system.»

The old 'Statistical Account of Scotland,' obtained eighty years ago by inquiry in every parish, shows that at its date, under the name of 'run-rig,' a simpler form of the open field system still lingered on here and there more or less all over Scotland. Traces of it still exist in the Highlands, and there are well-known remains of its strips and balks also in Wales. The run-rig system is still prevalent in some parts of Ireland. But at present we confine our attention to the form which the system assumed in England, and for this purpose the Hitchin example may fairly be taken as typical.

«Uneconomical;»

Now, judged from a modern point of view, it will readily be understood that the open field system, and especially its peculiarity of straggling or scattered ownership, regarded from a modern agricultural point of view, was absurdly uneconomical. The waste of time in getting about from one part of a farm to another; the uselessness of one owner attempting to clean his own land when it could be sown with thistles from the seed blown from the neighbouring strips of a less careful and thrifty owner; the quarrelling about headlands and rights of way, or [p016] paths made without right; the constant encroachments of unscrupulous or overbearing holders upon the balks--all this made the system so inconvenient, that Arthur Young, coming across it in France, could hardly keep his temper as he described with what perverse ingenuity it seemed to be contrived as though purposely to make agriculture as awkward and uneconomical as possible.

«but must have had meaning once.»

But these now inconvenient traits of the open field system must once have had a meaning, a use, and even a convenience which were the cause of their original arrangement. Like the apparently meaningless sentinel described by Prince Bismarck uselessly pacing up and down the middle of a lawn in the garden of the Russian palace, there must have been an originally sufficient reason to account for the beginning of what is now useless and absurd. And just as in that case, search in the military archives disclosed that once upon a time, in the days of Catherine the Great, a solitary snowdrop had appeared on the lawn, to guard which a sentinel was posted by an order which had never been revoked; so a similar search will doubtless disclose an ancient original reason for even the (at first sight) most unreasonable features of the open field system.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The lesser manors included in it are clearly only _sub_-manors, and for the present purpose do not destroy its original unity.

[2] _Statutes_, _Record Com._ Ed. i. p. 206.

[3] _Balc_ is a Welsh word; and when the plough is accidentally turned aside, and leaves a sod of grass unturned between the furrows, the plough is said by the Welsh ploughman speaking Welsh, to '_balc_' (balco).

[4] See the map of a portion of the Purwell field.

[5] Striking examples of these lynches may be seen from the railroad at Luton in Bedfordshire, and between Cambridge and Hitchin, as well as in various other parts of England. They may be seen often on the steep sides of the Sussex Downs and the Chiltern Hills. Great numbers of them are to be noticed from the French line between Calais and Paris. In some cases on the steep chalk downs, terraces for ploughing have evidently been artificially cut; but even in these cases there must always have been a gradual natural growth of the lynches by annual accretion from the ploughing. In old times, in order to secure the turning of the sod downhill, the plough, after cutting a furrow, returned as stated one way idle; but in more recent times a plough called a 'turn-wrist plough' came into use, which by reversing its share could be used both ways, to the great saving of time.

[6] The number of parcels held by each owner was as follows:--

Owner Parcels

No. 1 38 2 35 3 28 4 25 5 3 6 8 7 4 8 28 9 6 10 1 11 10 12 2 13 5 14 5 15 8 16 7 17 2 18 1 19 12 20 1 21 3 22 1 23 4 24 0 25 0 26 1 27 1 28 0 29 1 30 3 31 2 32 1 33 3 34 6 35 4 36 1 37 2 38 2 39 1 40 1 41 6 42 3 43 2 44 1 45 1 46 2 47 7 48 1 ────── Total 289

[7] _Hyginus de Condicionibus Agrorum._ _Die Schriften der Römischen Feldmesser_ (Lachmann, &c.), i. p. 114. 'Nam invenimus sæpe in publicis instrumentis significanter inscripta territoria, ita ut _ex colliculo qui appellatur ille ad flumen illud, et super flumen illud ad rivum illum aut viam illam, et per viam illam ad infima montis illius, qui locus appellatur ille, et inde per jugum montis illius in summum, et super summum montis per divergia aquæ ad locum, qui appellatur ille, et inde deorsum versus ad locum illum, et inde ad compitum illius, et inde per monumentum illius, ad locum unde primum cœpit scriptura esse_.' See as an early example, 'Sententia Minuciorum,' _Corpus Inscript. Lat._ i. 199.

[8] The lammas meadows are divided into strips like the arable land for the purpose of the hay crop.

[9] These Enclosure Acts were as follows:--

Date of Names of Parishes Enclosure whose open fields Acts were thereby enclosed

1766 Hexton [Herts]. 1795 Henlow [Beds]. 1796 Norton [Herts]. 1797 Campton-cum-ShefFord [Beds]. 1797 King's Walden [Herts]. 1797 Weston [Herts]. 1802 Hinxworth [Herts]. 1802 Shitlington [Beds]. Holwell [Beds]. 1804 Arlsey [Beds]. 1807 Offley [Herts]. 1808 Luton [Beds]. 1809 Barton-in-the-Clay [Beds]. Codicote [Herts]. 1810 Welwyn [Herts]. Knebworth [Herts]. 1811 Pirton [Herts]. 1811 Great Wymondley [Herts]. Little Wymondley [Herts]. Ippollitts [Herts]. 1827 Langford [Beds]. 1832 Clifton [Beds].

[10] Porter's _Progress of the Nation_, p. 146:--

1760–69 385 1770–79 660 1780–89 246 1790–99 469 1800–9 847 1810–19 853 1820–29 205 1830–39 136 1840–44 66 ───── 3,867

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