The open field system

The Open Field System

The Open Field System

owing to the encroachment of neighbouring tribes would stimulate the transition to settled agriculture, especially when it was learnt by experience that the more advanced system of tillage improved the quality of the crops. There are grounds for thinking that the change over had already taken place among the Saxons before their invasion of Britain. The adoption of intensive culture involved new methods of laying out the land. The arable soil of the village was now held in permanent occupation but it needed periods of rest to recuperate its fertility. Accordingly it was cut up into large tracts which were cultivated in turn. This gave rise to the two-field and three- field systems. In the two-field system the whole arable area was arranged in two fields, of which each in turn was tilled one year and lay fallow the next. The field under cultivation was either sown entirely with wheat, or one-half of it was sown in autumn with winter crops (wheat or rye) and the other half in the early part of the year with spring crops (barley or oats). The field that lay fallow was ploughed twice over at the beginning of the summer. In the three-field system the land was divided into three fields, of which two were cultivated every year (one with winter crops and the other with spring crops), while the third lay fallow and was ploughed twice. The merit of the three years’ rotation of crops, which ultimately became widespread, was that it produced more crops for the same amount of ploughing; though it was claimed for the two-course rotation that it yielded crops of better quality.

The system of agriculture which prevailed in England throughout the middle ages and even persisted to the early decades of the nineteenth century was the open field system, which took its name from the fact that at certain periods the arable fields were thrown open to the trespass of man and beast. In a modern farm the land devoted to tillage is enclosed all the year round by permanent or ‘live’ hedges. In open field husbandry the soil under crop was protected against trespassing between seed-time and harvest, while the corn was growing, by temporary enclosures rudely constructed year by year at the sowing of the seed. Once the harvest was reaped and the corn gathered into the barn, the fences were removed and the fields then lay open; the village cattle could therefore stray in and graze upon the stubble. Two forms of open field husbandry must be distinguished —extensive and intensive. Extensive cultivation meant that annually fresh ground was broken up by the plough, and after the raising of the crop it was abandoned for other soil. Under intensive cultivation the same land was retained for arable purposes. The former practice was adapted to a primitive stage where nomadic tribes were able to wander at will over a wide area. In process of time, however, men came inevitably to acquire more fixed habits, and the roving instinct was then superseded by a feeling of attachment to their the homestead. Moreover the growth of population and gradual restriction of territory

(Lipson, 1959, 10-11)

The Open Field System

in the allocation of each man’s property. Intermixed ownership was devised in the interests of the community as a whole: it sacrificed the individual but its original purpose was to promote equity in the allocation of each man’s property. Everyone was given a share alike of soil that was good and bad, and soil that was near and far. The intermixture of strips was due to the presence of a strong element of communalism in the mediaeval village, in which the principle of private ownership was recognized yet free enterprise was obstructed. The communal aspect of rural life was reflected also in the system of co-operative farming in place of separate cultivation. All the leading operations of agriculture seem to have been carried on in common. While individual ploughing and reaping were not unknown, especially on the newer holdings carved from the waste, the more usual practice would be for the tenants in the open fields to associate together in a general partnership, ploughing and reaping every strip as its turn came round. The produce of the strips went to the individual owners, for rural life was only communal in one direction. There was co-operation for purposes of production, but there was no sharing-out of the produce among those who had taken part in the work.

The most striking feature of English agriculture down to the last century was the method by which land was distributed among the village community. (...) the farms of an older England were composed of small strips strewn in every direction over the open fields and lying intermingled among other tenements. The whole arable land of the village was carved into a multitude of strips, which were intended to represent the measure of a day’s ploughing—that is, the customary acre. This practice of splitting up a farm into tiny plots and dispersing them among the numberless plots of other owners gave the open fields a chequered appearance, and turned them into a mosaic of patches and maze of proprietary claims. (...) It is probable that the distribution of land in scattered strips was designed in its origin to secure equality. Arable land is not uniform either in soil or position, and one area differs much from another in fertility and advantage of situation: hence in parcelling out the territory among the members of the village community it was necessary to allot it piecemeal and avoid compact properties. The strip system, though it proved inconvenient, had its roots in the primitive instincts and deep-rooted concepts of mediaeval rural life —the equality of the shareholders in the common fields; and this accounts for the tenacity with which it persisted for many centuries.

(Lipson, 1959, 11-13)

The Open Field System

To complete the picture of English agriculture in the middle ages, other sides of agrarian life must be briefly surveyed. The produce of meadow, waste and wood was no less the ‘a indispensable to the husbandman than the produce of tillage: without them he must be (said an old writer) buyer, a borrower or a beggar.’ Meat was needed for food, wool for clothing, peat and turf for fuel, timber for building and repairing houses and for construction of hedges. Accordingly a mediaeval farm comprised not only a bundle of scattered strips in the arable but also ‘rights of common.’ The meadows, like the ploughed lands, were divided into strips which were annually re-allotted among the tenants in the in the open fields—even to this day lots are drawn for the strips meadows of Yarnton by the Thames near Oxford. In addition villagers had the use of the large stretches of uncultivated land or waste. The waste was not partitioned into strips and there was no individual ownership, yet the principle of equality was at work here as in other directions. The use of the waste was ‘stinted,’ that is, the number of cattle allowed to each holding was fixed as well as their kind; but frequently the privilege was extended to those who were not strip-holders. Another right of common was over woods and forests, which in mediaeval England covered a very extensive area.

The common fields were subject to a uniform course of husbandry: each was ploughed and sown alike whatever the nature of the soil. Agricultural operations were decided by the village community as a whole—the rotation of crops, the regulation of ploughing, sowing and reaping, the allotment of meadows, the treatment of the waste, the rules for fencing and removal of hedges. The open field farmer, tied hand and foot by the compulsory character of mediaeval husbandry, enjoyed little opportunity to try experiments or exercise special skill; he was constrained to work in accordance with time-honoured practices however obsolete—though improvements were by no means unknown.

(Lipson, 1959, 13-14)

(Lipson, 1959, 14-15)