FARMING IN OLDEN TIMES. 5 



crops, such as barley, oats, beans or peas ; (3) fallow. 

 The arable fields were fenced against stock from seed- 

 time to harvest, and the strips were cultivated for the 

 separate use of individuals, subject to the compulsory 

 cropping. A large tenant, apparently, might have his 

 own plough, with a team of eight or ten oxen, the 

 majority (each owning, perhaps, not more than one or two 

 oxen) would combine for the joint use of a plough. On 

 Lammas Day the fences were removed, and the live- 

 stock wandered over all the arable land under the charge 

 of the common herdsman, shepherd or swineherd. The 

 best meadowland was annually allotted in doles and put 

 up for hay. These doles were fenced off, to be mown for 

 the separate use of individuals from Candlemas or St. 

 Gregory's Day to midsummer, after which they were 

 common pasturage. On the waste of the manor the stock 

 of the community grazed in common at all times, every 

 occupier of land in the open field having his right of 

 pasturage. The waste also provided fern and heather 

 for litter, bedding or thatch, wood for hurdles, turves 

 for fuel, etc. 



On the outskirts of the arable fields nearest the village 

 lay one or more " hams," or stinted pastures, in which a 

 fixed number of stock might graze. Brandersham, 

 Smithsham, Wontnersham, Herdsham, Tinker's field, 

 Sexton's mead, suggest that special allotments were 

 sometimes made to those who practised trades of such 

 general importance to the village community as the 

 stock-brander, the blacksmith, the mole-catcher, the cow- 

 herd, the tinker and the sexton, while Parson's close and 

 Parson's acre denote a similar recognition of ecclesias- 

 tical claims. 1 



This brief account of the typical manor may be con- 

 cluded with a sketch of one of the many which were in 

 the hands of the Church. The village, which at the time 

 of Domesday nestled round the new minster just com- 

 1 " English Farming, Past and Present," p. 26. 



