142 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



Where nineteenth-century open fields thus constituted so small 

 a fraction of the total improved land of a township we should 

 like to know about their appearance. Such information might 

 assist in detemiining whether they had originally been limited 

 in extent, or whether they had in course of time decreased in 

 area and, if so, in what manner. The aspect of the fields may, 

 in short, explain why they were so diminutive when enclosed. In 

 this way it may become clear why Herefordshire had only one- 

 fifteenth as much open field for the parliamentary encloser as 

 had Oxfordshire. 



The enclosure plans of Oxfordshire townships usually reveal 

 the open fields as large compact blocks of arable lying near the 

 village and often surrounding it. The plan of Chalgrove, which 

 has been reproduced, is in no way exceptional. Often, as there, 

 two or three enclosed farms lay in remote parts of the township. 

 Sometimes enclosures had severed the open fields into two or 

 three parts, but the parts at least remained large compact blocks. 

 This state of things is precisely what is seldom to be found in the 

 Herefordshire plans. The three-field townships which were once 

 existent in the county, and which must have had fields that were 

 more or less compact, had clearly survived in not more than 

 four or five places.^ 



One of these sur\'ivals was at Sutton, where 700 acres were 

 allotted by the Harden award of 1819. The three fields, bear- 

 ing the becomingly simple names of Upper, Middle, and Lower, 

 would have graced any Oxfordshire township. They lay just 

 to the east of the village, were nearly equal in size, and, except 

 for a strip of old enclosure between two of them and a patch of 

 the same in the third, formed a compact arable area. This 

 plan is one of the few bits of evidence looking toward the long- 

 continued existence of a three-field system in the county. 



still remains in this state," i. e., common field. The vagueness and the incidental 

 character of the remark render it unworthy of much attention, especially since the 

 report in general is unsatisfactory. - 



' Yet the rotation in 1794 was a three-course one, according to the reporter to 

 the Board of Agriculture: " In all the common fields and in that district called 

 Wheatland the rotation is (i) fallow, (2) wheat, (3) beans " (Clark, General View, 

 etc., p. 18). 



