THE CELTIC SYSTEM 173 



considerable tracts of open field land are still remaining, which 

 is chiefly owing to the possessions of the church being inter- 

 mixed with private property; and the want of a general law to 

 enable the bishop and clergy to divide, exchange and enclose 

 their lands." ^ The situation and the explanation of it are re- 

 iterated, finally, by the reporter from Glamorgan. " The land 

 in tillage, or appropriated to grazing," he wrote, " is generally 

 inclosed; open or common fields are rarely met with in South 

 Wales. It is a mode of occupation practiced there in some few 

 instances where ecclesiastical and private property are blended." ^ 

 Such is the sum of the Welsh evidence contained in the reports 

 of 1794 relative to common arable fields. Three occurrences of 

 such fields are noted, one in the extreme northeast, the others in 

 the south and west on or near the coast. For the phenomenon in 

 south Wales we are told that ecclesiastical properties were answer- 

 able; but there is nothing to indicate that such was the case in 

 FHntshire, while on the coastal stretch of Cardiganshire the inter- 

 mixed properties were chiefly small holdings, apparently not 

 ecclesiastical. If, as seems probable, these ecclesiastical prop- 

 erties were glebe lands, their scattered parcels suggest that at some 

 earlier time all holdings may have been similarly constituted and 

 that the glebe parcels were the last to be exchanged. About the 

 nature of the open fields we learn httle. The Cardigan stretch 

 was " very productive barley-land," while the district between 

 FHnt and St. Asaph was more hilly but not ifl adapted to agri- 

 culture. In contrast with this small amount of common field, 

 the central and northwestern parts of Wales are said to have 

 been entirely enclosed, so far as improved lands were concerned.^ 

 To discover whether the eighteenth-century patches were due to 

 exceptional causes operative only on the borders of the princi- 

 paHty, or whether they were survivals of what had once been a 



1 C. Hassal, Pembroke, p. 20. 



^ J. Fox, Glamorgan, p. 41. 



* Of Carnarvonshire, in the northwest, the reporter writes (p. 15), " A great 

 part is still uninclosed " ; but he does not state whether the unenclosed lands were 

 arable or waste. Probably he refers to waste lands, since he continues: " The old 

 fences appear to have been finished in a very imperfect manner. They consist 

 chiefly of dry stone walls and earthen banks." 



