I04 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



Owston, of which a Jacobean survey survives. The holdings 

 were small and are not always rated by bovates. The freehold 

 amounted to 247 acres, of which 102 were enclosed arid 36 com- 

 mon meadow; of the 239 acres of copyhold, 43 were enclosed 

 and 17 common meadow. Thus less than two-thirds of the 

 tenants' lands lay in open field, and if a holding were a little short 

 in the acres of one field it had enclosed land as a resource. 

 Glancing now at the distribution of the open-field arable of the 

 tenements, we see pretty clearly that the system was, or not long 

 since had been, one of four fields. The larger customary hold- 

 ings (all of which are shown in the Appendix) were unanimous 

 in dividing their areas among four fields, although the division 

 was not sharp-cut, like that at Marston Sicca or Welford. 

 Despite this laxity and the relatively extensive enclosures, the 

 survey is our best illustration of four-field arrangements in 

 the north. 



Farther up the Trent near Nottingham are Lenton and Rad- 

 ford, both of which formed the home manor of Lenton priory. 

 Their fields are described together in a Jacobean survey, the 

 acres of the bovates being frequently distributed among all six of 

 them. Three of the fields were smaller than the others, and some 

 one of them was often not represented in a holding. We might 

 conclude that the arrangement inclined to three main fields with 

 three supplementary ones; yet, if such were the case, groupings 

 to prove it are not easily made. The three fields in each of 

 which the small holding of Andrew Webster had one-half acre 

 are said to be the fields of Lenton. If the other three were the 

 fields of Radford and the two groups were tilled together, the 

 combination should be Beck field and More field. Red field and 

 Church field. Sand field and Alwell field; but neither this nor 

 any other arrangement always works out happily. In each hold- 

 ing there was considerable common meadow, a fact which may 

 account for discrepancies. Only by assuming that parcels of 

 arable in the fields had been converted into meadow,^ can we 

 group the six fields by twos so as to make the former existence of 

 a three-field system credible. 



1 For contemporary instances of this process, see p. 35, above, and p. 106, below. 



