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
Other Norfolk acts mention doles, ings, carrs, and buscallys. Buscallys
we may take to mean woods in which rights of common for fuel were
practised. Dr. Murray’s Dictionary gives us bushaile or buscayle, from
Old French _boschaille_, Low Latin _boscalia_, shrubberies, thickets,
etc. “Dole,” is connected etymologically both with “deal” and with the
word “run-dale,” concerning which see below. The word is frequently
found elsewhere, as in the “dolemeads” at Bristol and Bath, and usually
means meadows, the ownership of which is intermixed in small parcels,
which are commonable after hay harvest, but sometimes the word is
used of arable land (see below). The Act for Earsham, Ditchingham and
Hedenham (Norfolk, 1812, c. 17) has the sentence, “The said dole meadow
lands lie intermixed and dispersed.” The “ings” and “carrs” are best
understood by the help of the old Ordnance Survey map for Norfolk. The
carrs are the lowest, swampiest part of the common pastures which reach
down to the rivers; the ings, while also low-lying, are separated from
the rivers by the carrs, and intervene between the carrs and the tilled
lands.
There remain the expressions whole-year lands, half-year or shack
lands, and brecks, to interpret.
Half-year lands obviously means lands commonable for half the year,
_i.e._, after the crop has been carried. They are also “shack” lands,
or lands on which right of “shackage” exists. “Shack” is connected with
“shake,” and right of shackage appears to be the right to carry off the
gleanings after the crop has been carried and the fields are thrown
open. It is, however, to be noticed that half-year or shack lands are
mentioned as something distinct from common fields. The distinction
is said to be that common rights on shack lands can be exercised only
by the owners or occupiers of those lands. Shack lands may be termed
common fields, but the term common field may be reserved for those
fields over which cottagers or toft holders or others also possess
rights of common.
“Brecks” are asserted by William Marshall (“Rural Economy of Norfolk,”
Vol. I., p. 376) to be “large new-made enclosures,” but as is seen from
the wording of the Acts quoted, they are enclosures still “subject to
certain rights of shackage, sheep-walk, and common.”[31] Lastly, what
are “whole-year lands”?
[31] 1820, c. 29 (Blakeney, Wiverton and Glanford) mentions
“whole-year lands, whole-year brecks, whole-year marshes.” In this
case, apparently, brecks are not commonable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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