THE EAST ANGLIAN SYSTEM 307 



cumstances an examination of all the available awards and plans, 

 such as has been made for Oxfordshire and Herefordshire and 

 such as here too would be the only safe basis for a generaHzation, 

 promises an unsatisfactory return for a great expenditure of 

 labor. If undertaken, it would, we may safely surmise, show 

 few townships with so much as one-third of their improved area 

 still in open field, and in most townships the fraction would be 

 less than one-tenth.^ WilUam Marshall's description, written 

 in 1787, supports this view. It runs as follows: " Some remnants 

 of common fields still remain; but in general they are not larger 

 than well-sized inclosures. Upon the whole. East Norfolk at 

 large may be said to be a very old-inclosed country. . . . [The] 

 few common fields [left] . . . are in general very small; ten, 

 twenty or thirty acres; cut into patches and shreds of two or 

 three acres, down to half an acre, or, perhaps, a rood each. 

 . . . Towards the north coast some pretty extensive common-fields 

 remain open; and some few in the southern Hundreds." ^ 



If it be true that Norfolk arable fields were very largely en- 

 closed without the aid of parHamentary act, the period at which 

 the process took place most rapidly becomes a matter of interest. 

 The subject cannot here be adequately discussed, but the testi- 

 mony of one or two groups of documents may be noted. 

 Sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century surveys, of which 

 there are several from this county, concur in representing the 



acres." A schedule denominates 1934 acres as " Total com. Allots." and 351 acres 

 as " Total Field Allots." Only from the excellent map do we discover that the 

 1934 acres were the old enclosures, and that the 351 acres were parcels on the 

 outskirts of the township looking very much like waste land. Both these awards 

 are at the Shire Hall, Norwich. 



1 The common field at Fellbrigg before its enclosure in 1771 was, according to 

 the reporter to the Board of Agriculture, unusually extensive. He remarks that the 

 township had remained time out of mind in the following state: 400 acres inclosed, 

 400 common field, 100 woodland, 400 common heath (Nathaniel Kent, General 

 View of the Agriculture of the County of Norfolk, London, 1794, p. 23). Relatively 

 large was the expanse of open arable field at Ormesby, where in 1845 it amounted 

 to 700 acres, in contrast with 1464 acres of old enclosures and 521 acres of roads 

 and commons. At Weasenham and Wellingham about 500 acres were in 1809 un- 

 enclosed in townships comprising an area of 4406 acres. 



2 The Rural Economy of Norfolk, comprising the Management of Landed Estates 

 and the Present Practice of Husbandry in that County (London, 1787), i. 4, 8. 



