SMALL HOLDINGS OR LARGE FARMS ? 135 



back into an old manor, with its unfenced 

 common fields divided into strips, but the 

 community of interests, which welded together 

 the tillers of the soil in the days before the con- 

 quest, is lacking in this year of grace, 1921. 



The selions, or strips of land, are still owned 

 individually, and these vary from a quarter of 

 an acre to two acres each. The small holders 

 cultivate one or more of these selions, and some 

 of them manage as many as twenty acres in 

 widely separated strips. It is, of course, a very 

 uneconomic way of working land, and as far as 

 I could make out on the occasion of my visit, 

 despite the success of several small holders, and 

 the advantages derived from rich alluvial 

 deposits, the Isle of Axholme was a paradise 

 for the money-lender, the lawyer, and the 

 auctioneer. 



The descent from these Arcadias of small 

 owners to the Sweet Auburns of Shipham in 

 Somersetshire is steep. I do not wish to de- 

 scribe Shipham as typical, but only to show 

 how easily under a competitive form of society 

 a congerie of peasant proprietors can sink into 

 a rural slum. 



Many years ago a lead mine was worked 

 here by squatters who built their cottages on 

 what appears to be no-man's-land. It would 

 be difficult to find a fairer spot in England than 

 this, where between the escarpments of the 

 Mendip Hills can be seen the Bristol Channel 



