The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common FieldsSlater, Gilbert
History
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
Slater, Gilbert
Agriculture -- England; Inclosures; Peasants -- England; Village communities -- Great Britain
It will also be noticed later on that in parishes where the common
field system has disappeared for generations, there are frequently
still remaining in the midst of enclosed fields strips of land of
different ownership from the rest of the field, but let to the same
farmer, and without any visible demarcation. Such fields in Wales and
the north-west of England are called “quilleted fields.” The tithe
map records, with its dotted lines, the area and position of the
“quillets.” Such fields are included under “common fields” in this
return.
In at least the great majority of cases where the supposed common
fields are small, it is probable that nothing more notable than
quilleted fields existed at the time the tithe map was made; and even
this survival would, in most cases, have disappeared since. Out of the
905 alleged cases of common fields, in 670 cases the areas given are
under 100 acres.
In fine, this return of commons and common fields, which gives such
a fair promise of numerous surviving common fields, in reality gives
little assistance, because there is but the remotest probability in
any particular case that those common fields exist. The probability
is sufficient in some cases to encourage one to make local enquiries,
but these enquiries nearly always end in disappointment. The following
cases in which common arable fields theoretically survive, are chiefly
interesting as illustrating the phenomena of the decay of the common
field system in villages where it has not died a sudden death through
enclosure. I omit the case of Hitchin, made famous by Mr. F. Seebohm.
CLOTHALL (HERTS).
Clothall is a parish lying on the north slope of the chalk hills of
Hertfordshire, just off the Great North Road, which passes through
the adjoining parish of Baldock. Approaching it from the south, one
gradually ascends the long slope from Hertford, and suddenly at the
summit has before one a far-stretching view over the flat country of
Bedfordshire and adjoining counties. The road descends steeply and
passes through the Clothall common fields. At the time of my visit the
harvest (of barley) was being gathered in; the arrangement of the field
was clearly visible. The long, narrow strips of stubble, never quite
straight, and never quite of uniform width, were divided by “balks” of
grass, grown tall and gone to seed. Each balk was reduced to as narrow
dimensions as it could be, without endangering its continued existence,
for the sake of separating one strip from another. A view of this field
is shown in Mr. Seebohm’s “English Village Community.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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