THE CELTIC SYSTEM 1 79 



miles above Chester and adjacent to the EngKsh county. Wrex- 

 ham is the largest town of the district, and its open field, as 

 pictured in John Norden's survey of 1620, ^ has been briefly de- 

 scribed by A. N. Palmer,^ who follows the history of the butts 

 and quillets to the present day. Norden's survey, like several 

 others antedating it, refers to the lordship of Bromfield and 

 Yale, a lordship so extensive as to be subdivided into seventeen 

 manors containing 62 townships or hamlets. Excellent and 

 detailed as is this description, it is not more so than one of 

 some seventy years earlier preserved at the Public Record Office.^ 



For the most part both surveys are concerned with townships 

 and hamlets entirely enclosed. Such, for example, in Norden's 

 survey are Brymbo, Esclusham, Bersham, More ton AngHcorum, 

 all of which are described in full, with specification of closes.^ 

 There are, however, three or four townships which in both sur- 

 veys show certain traces of open field. These traces are very 

 slight at Holt, being confined to three fields, each divided between 

 two freeholders, and to a fourth in which six freeholders have 

 parcels of arable or pasture.^ They are most numerous at Wrex- 

 ham, at Pickhill and Siswick, and at Issacoed, a division in which 

 the principal hamlets were Sutton and Button. The earlier 

 survey is henceforth quoted. 



At Wrexham we find, what is very rare elsewhere, the term 

 " common field." John Hower had, besides a messuage, garden, 

 and pasture close of an acre, " ii acras terre arabiHs iacentes in 

 communi campo dicte ville." David Middle ton, along with four 

 tenements and eighteen acres of pasture in seven closes, had an- 

 other tenement, a close of pasture, and " xii seliones terre iacentes 

 in communibus campis villarum vaure Wryxham et Waghame 

 continentes [with the close] viii acras terre arabilis et pasture." ^ 



1 The survey is printed from Harleian MS. 3696, in Archaeologia Cambrensis, 

 Supplement of Original Documents (1877), vol. i, pp. cxi sq. . 



^ The Town, Fields, and Folk of Wrexham in the Time of James the First, Wrex- 

 ham, etc., [1884]. 



' Land Rev., M. B. 249, the entire 210 folios. The survey as a whole is not 

 dated, but the most recent leases and copyholds are c. 39 Henry VIII. 



* Archaeologia Cambrensis, Supplement, etc., vol. i, pp. ccii sq. 



5 Land Rev., M. B. 249, ff. 8-22. 



« Ibid., f. 68. 



