3l6 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



by fields or precincts, but the two largest holdings lay in strips 

 in the northern two-thirds of the township, while the small hold- 

 ings were for the most part thrown together in intermixed strips 

 south and southeast of the village. Neither in the township as 

 a whole nor in this southern part of it is there trace of tripartite 

 division. 



Of all sixteenth-century Norfolk records those of Weasenham 

 give the most satisfactory idea of the management of the open 

 field in the northwestern part of the county. Particularly useful 

 are (i) a large map of 1600, in two parts, giving the names of 

 many of the open-field furlongs, with an accompanying field- 

 book recording the areas and locations of the constituent parcels 

 of the tenants' holdings; and (2) the note-book of a Weasenham 

 farmer, George Elmdon, describing the sowing of his lands in 

 1583, 1584, 1588, and 1589. From this group of documents we 

 can discover how the tenants' holdings were distributed among 

 the precincts and how the parcels of Elmdon's holding were 

 grouped for tillage. The map is here outlined, selected holdings 

 from the field-book are summarized, and the information from 

 the note-book is both tabulated and interpreted topographically. 



The map is slightly incomplete in that it does not give the 

 whole of one sheep pasture.^ A later plan shows this pasture or 

 " fold-course," which is in the northwestern part of the township, 

 to have been at least twice as large as the other fold-course, which 

 is represented. Apart from these two fold-courses, some small 

 commons, and a few enclosures, all lands were open arable field. 

 This open field, constituting about two-thirds of the township's 

 area, was cut into two nearly equal parts by the Massingham road, 

 which divided the Northern from the Southern precinct. In the 

 Southern lay the hamlet and parish of Weasenham St. Mary 

 w^ith its church; in the Northern, the hamlet and parish of 

 Weasenham St. Peter, the church here being just south of the 

 road. If we turn to the field-book to discover the relation of 

 the tenants' holdings to the precincts, we find that the larger 

 holdings were nearly always unequally divided between precincts 

 and that the smaller ones frequently lay wholly within one 



1 The outline of the map is on p. 322. 



