A Short History of English Agriculture | Page 3

the arable fields varied, but was
generally an acre, in most places a furlong (furrow long) or 220 yards
in length, and 22 yards broad; or in other words, 40 rods of 5-1/2 yards
in length and 4 in breadth. There was, however, little uniformity in
measurement before the Norman Conquest, the rod by which the
furlongs and acres were measured varying in length from 12 to 24 feet,
so that one acre might be four times as large as another.[7] The acre
was, roughly speaking, the amount that a team could plough in a day,
and seems to have been from early times the unit of measuring the area
of land.[8] Of necessity the real acre and the ideal acre were also
different, for the reason that the former had to contend with the
inequalities of the earth's surface and varied much when no scientific

measurement was possible. As late as 1820 the acre was of many
different sizes in England. In Bedfordshire it was 2 roods, in Dorset
134 perches instead of 160, in Lincolnshire 5 roods, in Staffordshire
2-1/4 acres. To-day the Cheshire acre is 10,240 square yards. As,
however, an acre was and is a day's ploughing for a team, we may
assume that the most usual acre was the same area then as now. There
were also half-acre strips, but whatever the size the strips were divided
one from another by narrow grass paths generally called 'balks', and at
the end of a group of these strips was the 'headland' where the plough
turned, the name being common to-day. Many of these common fields
remained until well on in the nineteenth century; in 1815 half the
county of Huntingdon was in this condition, and a few still exist.[9]
Cultivating the same field year after year naturally exhausted the soil,
so that the two-field system came in, under which one was cultivated
and the other left fallow; and this was followed by the three-field
system, by which two were cropped in any one year and one lay fallow,
the last-named becoming general as it yielded better results, though the
former continued, especially in the North. Under the three-field plan
the husbandman early in the autumn would plough the field that had
been lying fallow during summer, and sow wheat or rye; in the spring
he broke up the stubble of the field on which the last wheat crop had
been grown and sowed barley or oats; in June he ploughed up the
stubble of the last spring crop and fallowed the field.[10] As soon as
the crops began to grow in the arable fields and the grass in the
meadows to spring, they were carefully fenced to prevent trespass of
man and beast; and, as soon as the crops came off, the fields became
common for all the village to turn their stock upon, the arable fields
being usually common from Lammas (August 1) to Candlemas
(February 2) and the meadows from July 6, old Midsummer Day, to
Candlemas[11]; but as in this climate the season both of hay and corn
harvest varies considerably, these dates cannot have been fixed.
The stock, therefore, besides the common pasture, had after harvest the
grazing of the common arable fields and of the meadows. The common
pasture was early 'stinted' or limited, the usual custom being that the
villager could turn out as many stock as he could keep on his holding.
The trouble of pulling up and taking down these fences every year must

have been enormous, and we find legislation on this important matter at
an early date. About 700 the laws of Ine, King of Wessex, provided that
if 'churls have a common meadow or other partible land to fence, and
some have fenced their part and some have not, and cattle stray in and
eat up their common corn or grass; let those go who own the gap and
compensate to the others who have fenced their part the damage which
then may be done, and let them demand such justice on the cattle as
may be right. But if there be a beast which breaks hedges and goes in
everywhere, and he who owns it will not or cannot restrain it, let him
who finds it in his field take it and slay it, and let the owner take its
skin and flesh and forfeit the rest.'
England was not given over to one particular type of settlement,
although villages were more common than hamlets in the greater part
of the country.[12] The vill or village answers to the modern civil
parish, and the term may be applied to both the true or 'nucleated'
village of clustered houses and the village of scattered hamlets, each of
a few houses, existing chiefly on the Celtic fringe. The