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WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE. 
“MULTORUM MANIBUS GRANDE LEVATUR ONUS.’—Onid. 
JUNBH, 1900. 
Aotes on Common Hands in and around 
Durrington. 
By Rev. C. 8. RuppLe. 
T is not only true that one half of the people in a country 
qk do not know how the other half live, but that one generation 
does not know how the generation before it lived. The people 
have all passed away who remembered how all the cows of the 
village, when they were let out after the morning milking, found 
their way to the neighbourhood of the village pound, that in one 
common herd they might be driven by the common cowherd of the 
place to feed on the cow-down; and that by the same man were 
they driven back in the evening to the same spot and then left to 
distribute themselves to their several owners. 
But this was, people said, when the land was held in trinity and 
not, as now, in severalty. What they meant perhaps this paper 
may explain. The greater part of the land in cultivation, even at 
the beginning of this century—at least in South Wilts and in some 
parts of Hampshire—lay in common fields. The common fields 
were divided and sub-divided to a great extent. very occupier, 
but not always in proportion to his occupation, had a right to feed 
so many sheep or horned cattle in the common flock or the common 
herd. Shepherds, cowherds, hayward, were a common charge. 
OL. XXXI.—NO. XCIII. B 
