ANGLO-SAXON VILLAGE COMMUNITY n 



social scale. Thus the men of a village community 

 might live overshadowed by a small thegn or squire 

 controlling perhaps 500 acres of land, to whom they 

 rendered some slight services. The thegn might in 

 his turn be the vassal of a great eorl or bishop holding 

 half a county from the king. In some places the people 

 still held from the king himself. In others the com- 

 munity was completely independent, for undoubtedly 

 there were a large number of free villages and prob- 

 ably here and there unattached landholders dependent 

 on no man. Such conditions of complete independence 

 would, however, tend to disappear, as the estate-holders 

 brought more and more of the people under their 

 supervision. 



The village community thus formed the bottom layer 

 of society. This community made its home in a tract 

 of land with roughly defined boundaries. 



As a rule this tract had its centre in a 

 clustered village of from ten to thirty 

 families, the typical Anglo-Saxon form ; but the farm- 

 houses and cottages might be spread out in scattered 

 hamlets, a form more characteristic of the Celtic race. 

 Within the tun's boundaries would sometimes be 

 found the hall and home farm of an estate-holder, if 

 there were one in the district ; but the most charac- 

 teristic feature would be the great open arable fields 

 already described, cultivated and fallowed alternately, 

 the crops being wheat and rye, oats, barley and beans, 

 and perhaps peas and tares. There were also ' lot 

 meadows ' divided into plots, and the pasture commons, 

 the woods and the wastes for the use of all. 



In their 'tofts' farmhouses with farmyards and 

 gardens lived the farmers, either * ceorls,' men of 



