CELTIC SYSTEM IN ENGLAND 227 



Such are some of the reasons for looking upon the county as 

 a region which in regard to its settlement and field system was 

 transitional between the Celtic and midland areas. Originally 

 perhaps, except for the size of its townships, it inclined to be 

 Celtic, but as cultivation of the soil became more intensive the 

 three-field system practiced toward the south may have been 

 in a measure adopted. Scarcely, however, had this taken place 

 when the process of enclosure began, and with more rapidity than 

 in the midlands the history of open fields in Northumberland 

 came to an end. 



Cumberland 



In the period of parhamentary enclosure few open arable fields, 

 it seems, remained in Cumberland. Slater cites only five acts 

 which mention them, and of these but two specify the acreage.^ 

 The reporters to the Board of Agriculture in 1794 subdivided the 

 county into 350,000 acres of lakes and mountains, 150,000 of 

 improvable common, and 470,000 of old enclosures, making no 

 rubric for open arable fields.^ These last had, however, been 

 existent a half-century earlier. Eden, writing in 1794-96, de- 

 clared that in each of six parishes tracts of cultivated common 

 field ranging in area from 100 to 3000 acres had been enclosed 

 within the preceding fifty years.^ In the case of four parishes 

 he added brief descriptions. At Croglin, he wrote, " a great 

 part of the arable land still remains in narrow crooked dales, or 

 ranes "; at Cumrew " the grass ridges in the fields are from 20 

 to 40 feet wide, and some of them 1000 feet in length " ; the 

 greater part of Castle Carrock " remains in dales, or doles . . . 

 which are slips of cultivated land belonging to different pro- 

 prietors, separated from each other by ridges of grass land " ; 

 the cultivated land of Warwick " formerly, although divided, 

 lay in long slips, or narrow dales, separated from each other by 

 ranes, or narrow ridges of land, which are left unplowed." ^ 



^ Twenty acres at Torpenton and 240 at Greystock {English Peasantry, p. 256). 



2 J. Bailey and G. CuUey, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Cum- 

 berland (London, 1794), p. 9. 



^ Sir F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor (3 vols., London, 1797), ii. 45-93. The 

 parishes were Ainstable, 400 acres; Castle Carrock, 100; Croglin, 100; Gilcrux, 

 400; Warwick, c. iioo; Wetheral, 3000. * Ibid., 65, 67, 68, 92. 



