242 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



land. Whether, then, the size of township lields or the method 

 of their tillage be considered, Cumberland appears more Celtic 

 than any other county of England thus far examined. To the 

 south, however, lies a stretch of territory in which- the Celtic 

 population long withstood the Anglo-Saxons, and in which, 

 therefore, phenomena not unlike some of those already described 

 in this chapter may be apparent. 



Lancashire 



Since Lancashire was once joined with Cumberland in the old 

 Celtic kingdom of Strathclyde, we shall expect to find in the 

 two counties similar agrarian conditions. There should be 

 discernible in Lancashire, as in Cumberland, few surviving open 

 common fields in the eighteenth century, but at an earlier time 

 a certain number of small ones in which the parcels of the tenants 

 had no systematic midland arrangement. 



Slater found in Lancashire no common fields enclosed by act 

 of parliament, although there are numerous acts affecting com- 

 monable waste. ^ The report submitted by John Holt to the 

 Board of Agriculture in 1794 estimated that nearly one-half of the 

 area of the county was waste — 508,000 acres out of 1,129,600. 

 " There are," he says, " but few open or common fields at this 

 time remaining; the inconvenience attending which, while they 

 were in that state, has caused great exertions to accomplish a 

 division, in order that every individual might cultivate his own 

 lands according to his own method; and that the lots of a few 

 acres, in many places divided into small portions, and again 

 separated at different distances, might be brought together into 

 one point. . . . The inclosures or fields are in general very 

 small, so much so as to cause great loss of ground from their 

 number and the space occupied by hedges, banks and ditches. " ^ 

 All this bespeaks piecemeal enclosure of common fields, perhaps 

 long continued. 



1 English Peasantry, p. 255. 



* General View of the Agriculture of the County of Lancashire (London, 1794), 

 pp. 49. 52. 



