CELTIC SYSTEM IN ENGLAND 



267 



Conclusion 



A SUMMARY of the results of the preceding examination of field 

 arrangements in the counties of the Celtic border is now possible. 

 It will be remembered that Scottish, Irish, and Welsh fields, 

 differing as they might in some respects, yet had in common 

 that which makes it possible to speak of a Celtic field system. 

 Although this system was, without doubt, originally one of open 

 fields, the absence of enclosure did not constitute its distinctive 

 characteristic. Non-Celtic fields were often open, and Celtic 

 fields, even after enclosure, sometimes bore traces of their origin. 

 More noteworthy than the absence of enclosure was the size of 

 the Celtic township or townland, the continued subdivision of 

 it among co-heirs or co-tenants, the distribution throughout it 

 of the parcels of the tenants' holdings, and the method by which 

 it was tilled. In the counties considered in this chapter certain 

 of these characteristics appear more clearly than others. 



The small township with its hamlet settlement we have seen, 

 behind various disguises, revealed in Cumberland documents. 

 Since other enumerations manifest a tendency to be similarly 

 obscure, it is difiicult to determine from them alone the region 

 characterized by this form of occupation. In the long seventeenth- 

 century survey of the Lancashire manor of Rochdale, for instance, 

 the hamlets themselves were so complex as to contain within 

 their somewhat spacious boundaries several nuclei of settlement.^ 



^ Henry Fishwick, Survey of the Manor of Rochdale (Chetham Soc, 19 13). 

 One division of the manor, known as Spotland, contained six hamlets and 

 " Spotlande towne," the areas being specified as follows (pp. 163 sq.) : — 



The units of settlement named on the modern map as lying within the above 

 areas number some fifty. 



