CHAPTER VIII 



The East Anglian System 



Eighteenth-century survivals of open field in East Anglia offer 

 suggestions about the character of the field system that once 

 prevailed there, and this information is considerably ampHfied 

 by sixteenth-century surveys. With the key thus secured earlier 

 and less detailed data can be interpreted. 



Enclosure awards from Norfolk drawn up after 1750 show little 

 surviving open arable field, and those from Suffolk almost none. 

 The plan and appendix prepared by Slater to illustrate parlia- 

 mentary enclosures in the northern county convey a wrong im- 

 pression.^ Relying as he did upon the acts which authorized the 

 awards, he failed to perceive a peculiarity of Norfolk procedure. 

 For it came to be customary in the county, even when there was 

 but little open arable field within a township, to ask for a nominal 

 re-allotment of the entire township in order to obviate any per- 

 sisting common rights and to establish authoritative titles to 

 ownership. This procedure comes to light through a comparison 

 of certain enclosure awards with nearly contemporary maps 

 and surveys of the same townships made by W. J. Dugmore 

 in 1778.2 Relative to Weasenham All Saints, Weasenham St. 

 Peter, and WelHngham, the enclosure award of 1809 declares that 

 " all lands and grounds in the said several parishes ... do con- 

 tain by measure 4406 acres," and this amount is forthwith allotted. 

 One might conclude that all or much of the area in question was 

 open field, were it not that the earlier Dugmore map reveals at 

 Weasenham only 421 acres of open arable field (in 337 parcels) 

 and at WelUngham only about 50 acres. The Sparham and Bil- 



^ English Peasantry, pp. 197, 215, 290. He remarks that after 1793 the acts 

 fail to make mention of areas. 



2 The Dugmore maps, which were drawn for Thomas W. Coke, Esq., are among 

 the Holkham MSS., and the awards referred to are either in the same collection or 

 at the Shire Hall in Norwich. 



30s 



