76 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



field, now replaced by Norma nby field and Skelton field. We may 

 even conjecture how the shifting of areas had been achieved. 

 West field had been reduced in extent by the enclosure of a part 

 of it and by the setting ofi" of a part for Normanby field; the 

 former East field had in turn been so enlarged by additions from 

 the common that each of the new divisions became approximately 

 equal in area to the shrunken West field. 



Much the same transformation can be traced in a plan of Pad- 

 bury, Buckinghamshire, made in 1591. Here the old fields still 

 retained their original names, East and West; but to the north 

 of East field, between it and the woodland, had appeared a new 

 common arable area called Hedge field. There is no reason to 

 think that the old fields had been reduced in size. Improve- 

 ment of the waste rather than subtraction from them seems to 

 have been the creative factor in the change, for the names of the 

 new furlongs, which are recorded, often suggest portions of a 

 common.^ 



Although these illustrations do not take us out of the realm 

 of conjecture, several others serve to do so by making it entirely 

 clear that townships once having two fields came to have three. 

 Sometimes the interval between the dates of the documents which 

 picture the two stages of agricultural development is a long one. 

 At Twyford, Leicestershire, a grant to the abbey of Burton 

 Lazars, copied into a fifteenth-century cartulary, relates to two 

 selions in the West field and one rood in the East field. The en- 

 closure award of 1796, however, describes the fields of Twyford 

 as three, Nether, Spinney, and Mill.^ Similarly the enclosure 

 award for Piddington, Oxfordshire, dated 1758, has reference to 

 three fields, the Wheat field, the Bean field, and the Fallow field; ^ 

 but a charter of 6-7 Henry I conveys to St. Mary of Missenden 

 inter alia the tithes from two acres of demesne meadow there, viz., 

 from two acres in Westmead when the West field was sown 

 and from two in Langdale when the East field was sown.* At 



* Cf. on the accompanying map the furlongs called Pitthill, Swatthill, Shermore, 

 Cockmore hill, and Foxholes. 



* Cf. below, Appendix II, pp. 471, 473. 



^ The award is at the Shire Hall, Oxford. 



* Appendix II, p. 488. 



