370 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



the valley of the lower Thames. In consequence there was in 

 Hertfordshire a fringe of townships, of which Hitchin was one, 

 as tj'picaily three-field or six-field as anything to the north. 



In this region it was that the reporter to the Board of Agricul- 

 ture in 1794 noted the persistence of open fields. " The land [of 

 the county] " he says, " is generally inclosed, though there are 

 many small common fields . . . which are cultivated nearly in 

 the same way as inclosed lands; the larger common fields lie 

 toward Cambridgeshire." Almost all of Ashwell he found un- 

 enclosed.' This township, along with Hinxworth and one or two 

 other places, is a projection of Hertfordshire between Bedfordshire 

 and Cambridgeshire, belonging topographically with the latter 

 counties and like Hitchin falling within the midland area.^ Adja- 

 cent to Ashwell is Kelshall, a plan of which, made at the end of 

 the eighteenth century, apparently for purposes of enclosure, 

 shows six large open fields stretching northward from the village 

 to the heath, which lay on the Cambridgeshire border.' Not far 

 away, on the northern slope of the hills, lay the manor of Lan- 

 nock in the parish of Weston. Here, too, an early seventeenth- 

 century description of the demesne divides it among three fields 

 in the midland manner.^ 



1 D. Walker, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Hertfordshire 

 (London, 1794), pp. 48, 52. 



^ A Hinxworth terrier in an early seventeenth-century hand, describing the 

 lands " which Bray holds to Calldecott farme," enumerates them as follows (Add. 

 MS. 33575,5.46-48): — 



In the Windmill Field or Clay field 3I acres in 6 parcels 



In Waller field 11 " " 22 " 



In Bennill field i " " 1 " 



In Saltmore field 12I " " ig " 



In Blackland field 26} " "52 * 



This enumeration does not indicate clearly the character of the field system. The 

 township may originally have had two fields, one of which is here represented by 

 Blackland field; or the terrier may be incomplete, since it begins very abruptly; 

 or, once more, the farm which Bray held may have had enclosed lands which per- 

 mitted the irregular distribution of parcels throughout the fields. 



' Add. MS. 37055. The fields were Baldock Way, Crouch Hill, Stump Cross, 

 Sibbem Hill, East Little, and Beacon. 



^ After specifying the scitus manerii of 17 acres and a woodland of 35 acres, the 

 account continues relative to the arable: " Que quidem terra arabilis dividitur in 

 tribus Seysonibus [the culture being designated]. ... In illo campo quod iacet iiucta 



