262 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



At Ilsington the intermixed lands lay on the edge of a common 

 waste called Haytor Down. Equally unusual in situation, though 

 in a dilTerent way, is the " Great Field " at Braunton. This 

 Slater has described.' but a fuller account is available. ^ Braunton 

 is a village in northwestern Devon, near Barnstaple, lying a 

 little inland from the estuary of the river Taw. Bordering the 

 river and the sea are marsh lands known as Braunton Burrows. 

 Between the marshes and the village lies the " Great Field." 

 '* Its surface." runs the local account, " is a dead flat rising but 

 little above the level of the marshes, and the soil is doubtless by 

 origin a natural reclamation from the bed of the estuary. The 

 whole field is under arable cultivation in small unenclosed plots." 

 The Braunton rate book of 1889 states that its area was then 

 354I acres, occupied by 56 proprietors and lying in 491 strips. 

 The strips, each containing from one-half an acre to two acres, 

 were gathered into sixteen shots,^ and those of each proprietor 

 were non-contiguous. All holdings were '* unqualified freehold, 

 subject to no seigniorial rights or claims." The lord of the manor 

 had in 1875 owned a considerable portion of the Great Field 

 in seventy-three plots containing each about an acre, but he 

 afterward sold them. Slater says that there are no common 

 rights over the field. 



The pecuharities manifested in this description give a pos- 

 sible clue to the origin of the Great Field. Its position on the 

 map and its low-lying character suggest that it is land at some 

 time reclaimed from the marshes; the two other manors in 

 Braunton not adjacent to the marshes have no open field. Fur- 

 ther, the tenure by which the field is held points in the same 

 direction : only newly-reclaimed lands would be likely to be free- 

 hold, subject to no seigniorial-rights. Probably in lieu of such 

 rights the lord of the manor had received some fraction of the 

 parcels. The extensive scattering of the strips may have been 

 due to the gradual reclamation of the area, each furlong having 

 been subdivided by lord and freeholders as it was improved. 



1 English Peasantry, p. 250. 



2 Dev'on. Assoc., etc., Trans., xxi. 201 (1889). 



' Lime tree, Harditch, Renpit, Long Hedge Lands, Broadpath, Lane end, Cutta- 

 burrow, Higher Thorn, etc. 



