EARLY IRREGULAR FIELDS IN THE MIDLANDS 105 



Although instances of irregularities like these may be found 

 in the valley of the Trent and its neighborhood, they are less 

 numerous than similar phenomena in the southwest. The north- 

 ern midlands were more like the southeastern in retaining until the 

 end of the sixteenth century an unvarying three-field character. 

 Farther to the north, however, several interesting irregular fields 

 deserve notice. They were situated to the south and west of 

 Durham, in the territory which has provisionally been designated 

 as the northern outpost of the three-field system. 



It will be remembered that this designation was hazarded in 

 connection with the survey of Ingleton. The symmetrical three- 

 field aspect of that township we may see repeated in the descrip- 

 tions of thirteen of its neighbors.^ All are taken from a series of 

 Jacobean surveys relative to the extensive manors of Raby, 

 Barnard Castle, and Brancepeth, the members of which are 

 situated for the most part where the moors slope eastward toward 

 the valleys of the Tees and Wear. Those townships lying in the 

 plain of the Tees were the ones in which the three-field system 

 was most intact. Others that lie more on the uplands inclined 

 to enclosure and pasturage. This is particularly true of the 

 members of Brancepeth,^ to the west of Durham, where the 

 neighborhood of the Wolds may have been responsible for irregu- 

 larities in field arrangements; for it is not improbable that some 

 arable here was a relatively recent improvement from the waste, 

 akin in this respect to that of forest townships. Yet certain mem- 

 bers of the manor cannot be thus classified: WiUington, Stockley, 

 Eldon, and East Brandon are near enough to the river Wear to 

 have had a long field history. Conditions at East Brandon, as 

 pictured in the Appendix, illustrate the irregularities of these 

 river townships and show what might have been seen in Jacobean 

 days just outside the gates of Durham. 



Closes in the township were few, scarcely more than the acre or 

 two attached to the homesteads. Nor was the intermixed arable 

 in the common fields very great in amount. Several tenants had 



' Cf. Appendix II, pp. 462-463. 



^ Crook and Billy Row, Thornley, WiUington, Stockley, Helme Park, Cornsey, 

 Eldon, East Brandon. 



