34 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



exact division. Since Alfriston and Hlatchington are at the east- 

 ern end of the Sussex coastal plain, the three-field system reached 

 at least thus far. Just as the manor of Martock in Somerset, 

 however, was a western outpost, so these townships of the manor 

 of Alciston will prove to be points beyond which it is difficult 

 to discover the existence of the three-field system in southeastern 

 England. 



Turning northward, we may add to the description of Hand- 

 borough briefer accounts of two manors which, like it, lay in the 

 southern midlands. At the end of the sixteenth century there 

 were drawn up for All Souls College, Oxford, maps of its estates 

 in various counties. These are now bound together in volumes 

 known as the Typus Collegii.' Among them is a map of Salford, 

 Bedfordshire, accompanied by a schedule which gives names of 

 tenants and areas of the parcels shown on the map. Apart from 

 the glebe and three other small freeholds, the township is assigned 

 to the " tenants of the college grounds." Chief of these was 

 Martha Langford, who had i6o acres of arable and 112 acres of 

 pasture, all enclosed. This was clearly the old demesne. The 

 other tenants represented the old copyholders. In general each 

 had a few acres of enclosed pasture, a few of " pasture and lea 

 ground " not farther described, and a few of " meadow in the 

 fields." But the most of each holding lay in the three open arable 

 fields in many parcels.^ Brooke, Middle, and Wood were the 

 names of the fields, two of them persisting to the time of the en- 

 closure of the township in 1805. At that date Middle field had 

 been subdivided into Lower and Upper fields, although the total 

 open-field area remained almost unchanged. In 1595 the sub- 

 division of the holdings among the three fields was more con- 

 sistently unequal than in any other survey yet examined. In the 

 larger holdings fewer acres were assigned to Middle field than to 

 Brook or to Wood field, apparently because the demesne arable 

 lay largely in this field. Five or six of its furlongs were entirely 



1 I am indebted to the warden, Sir William Anson, and to the Rev. A. H. Johnson 

 for the privilege of examining them. 



2 The number of parcels in each holding is noted in the abstract given in the 

 Appendix. A part of the Salford map is reproduced by Tawney, Agrarian Problem, 

 p. 163. 



