ANGLO-SAXON VILLAGE COMMUNITY 5 



having regard to the ever-changing quality of the soil 

 throughout the fields. In the first year an area of 

 land, part of that which afterwards formed the great 

 common field marked A in the plan, might 

 have been cultivated 50 acres perhaps : next year 

 this land would be left to rest to renew its fer- 

 tility and the ploughman would reclaim a fresh 

 piece of land, part of the area B, to carry the corn 

 crop. In the third year the ploughman would per- 

 haps go back to A and plough up a piece there, 

 and in the fourth year take a fresh piece from B. 

 Then he might get to work again on the plots first 

 ploughed in A and later in B, and so by degrees 

 two great open fields of many strips grouped into 

 shots would come permanently under the plough and 

 be cultivated alternately. Each peasant family would 

 under the custom obtain a number of strips, scattered in 

 various parts of the fields, so that each might have a 

 part of the good land and a share of the bad : and 

 when the peasant family had harvested the crop, the 

 land would fall back again into common use for all to 

 feed their stock. Thus in a few generations, would 

 be created great open arable fields, with scattered 

 strips of the various peasant families. This arrange- 

 ment, a main characteristic of the English village 

 communities, prevailed in many places up to the XlXth 

 century, and can be studied to-day at Laxton in 

 Nottinghamshire, where it is still carried on in a 

 modified form. Whilst the arable land was coming into 

 use in this way, a similar arrangement was growing up 

 for the grass meadows. Here again according to ancient 

 custom, still prevailing at Yarnton in Oxfordshire, the 

 land was divided into strips, and the right to mow and 

 carry the hay was drawn for by the heads of the various 



