CELTIC SYSTEM IN ENGLAND 23 I 



Within the infields, according to the map, were six hamlets — 

 Hayton, Fenton, Edmond Castle, How, Faugh, Headsnook. 

 Hayton and Fenton gave their names to quarters which con- 

 tained respectively 440 and 528 acres, the one being occupied 

 by forty-five " toftsmen," the other by forty-three. A quarter 

 probably embraced the lands of more than one hamlet; for, even 

 if it is not clear that Edmond Castle was included in Hayton 

 quarter, there can at least be no doubt that How fell within 

 Fenton quarter. The improved land of either How or Fenton 

 must therefore have comprised about 200 or 300 acres, an area 

 somewhat larger than that of the Holme Cultram hamlet-fields.^ 



The size of other Cumberland townships may be discovered in 

 a survey of 1608 which relates to the " Castle Soake and De- 

 maines of Carhsle." ^ Enough of the place-names can be identi- 

 fied on the modern map to make it clear that locations are by 

 hamlets. The " Standwicks freehold," to which are assigned 

 fourteen free tenants and 153 acres, was no other than the 

 township of Stanwix, a hamlet just across the river from the 

 Castle. The fields of Currock, Blackwell, Upperby, and " St. 

 Nicholas Hill " are grouped together. In them sixteen free 

 tenants had 192 acres and nine customary tenants 99 acres, 

 about one-fourth of the total area being meadow and pasture. 

 Other hamlets were Almery Holme with twenty-one tenants in 

 possession of 51 acres, and Wery Holme with thirty-one tenants 

 possessed of 130 acres. The fields of no hamlet in the survey 

 contained so many as 300 acres, and usually a far smaller number. 

 This illustration, together with the two preceding ones, may 

 suffice to determine our conception of Cumberland settlement. 

 We must think of the county as peopled by groups of from five 

 to thirty tenants dwelling in hamlets round which the arable 

 fields were seldom 300 acres in extent, and often not above 50 or 

 100 acres. 



From this first characteristic of Cumberland fields we pass to 

 a second — the distinction occasionally noted between infield 



^ Cumb. and Westm. Antiq. and Archaeol. Soc, Trans., new series, 1907, vii. 

 42 sq. 



" Land Rev., M. B. 212, ff. 129-158. 



