384 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



but these names must have been merely topographical, since, 

 apart from the divergence in the size of the fields, a township in 

 this fertile region could hardly at any time have been tilled under 

 a two-course rotation. Indeed, we know that in the near-by 

 township of Sutton, held by the canons of St. Paul's, the three- 

 course rotation usual on the demesnes of their manors was early 

 employed.' It is probable that the Sutton demesne was unen- 

 closed,- although the names of the divisions in which it lay, as 

 well as the area assigned to each, preclude the midland system of 

 two or three large fields.'' Thus the earlier Middlesex evidence is 

 in conflict with that of the Jacobean survey of Feltham, the three 

 seventeenth-century fields of which township must have been 

 exceptional. 



If it be true that the midland field system did appear in the 

 Middlesex plain, there is no doubt that the manifestations of it 

 there were isolated from the midland area by the interposition 

 of a different system, one which followed the Chilterns to the 

 Thames and crossed it east of Reading. For the evidence from 

 this Chiltern region regarding irregular fields is full and con- 

 vincing. If we follow the river up from Windsor into the mid- 

 land plain, we shall in so doing have an opportunity to observe 

 Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire townships on the one hand 

 and those of Berkshire on the other. 



The Buckinghamshire reporters to the Board of Agriculture 

 stated that the occupiers of the common fields of Horton (500 

 acres), Wraysbury (200 acres), Dachet (750 acres), Upton (1500 

 acres), Eton (300 acres), and Dorney (600 acres), all townships 

 lying near Eton, " have exploded entirely the old usage of two 

 crops and a fallow and have a crop every year." * May not this 

 deviation in 1794 from the three-course rotation which prevailed 



' A lease of 1283 specifies that 44 acres were sown with com and 18 with rye or 

 mixtilion, 60 with oats and 12 with barley, while 64 lay fallow (MSS. of the Dean 

 and Chapter of St. Paul's, Lib. I, f. 24). 



* A measurement of 1 299 attributes its acres to various quarentenes (ibid., f. ssb). 

 ' There were in all 90 acres in Suthfeld, 47 in Breche, 9 in Hamstal, 36 in Est- 



feld, 9 in Northfeld, 66 in Westfeld, 22 in Eldefeld (ibid., f. 35). 



* W. James and J. Malcolm, General View of the Agriculture of the County of 

 Buckingham (London, 1794), p. 27. 



