THE LOWER THAMES BASIN 385 



elsewhere in the county have been facilitated by the existence 

 of fields already irregular ? The reporters do not tell us when 

 the change took place, but it may have been long before they 

 wrote. 



Most instructive in showing the character of Buckinghamshire 

 open fields in this region is a survey of Farnham Royal made in 

 6 James I. Although by far the greater part of the manor was 

 enclosed, some 250 acres of unenclosed field are described.^ While 

 there were four recurring common fields, the system was by no 

 means a four-field one, nor was it even reminiscent of two fields. 

 The acres were unequally apportioned, Hawthorne field receiving 

 most of them and any field being liable to neglect. If in the 

 eighteenth century the fields of all the townships round Eton 

 were Kke those of Farnham two centuries before, transition from 

 a three-course husbandry was invited by the location of the ten- 

 ants' acres. 



Ascending the Thames past Henley, we come into the small 

 plain about Reading, where the valley widens just east of the 

 main ridge of the Chilterns. Regarding sixteenth-century fields 

 here we are instructed by two useful surveys of townships within 

 five miles of Reading — those relating to Sonning, Berkshire, and 

 Caversham, Oxfordshire. 



Since the Sonning survey is arranged according to three ti things, 

 the tenants and fields of which differ, we have in it, so far as 

 tillage is concerned, the record of three independent townships.^ 

 The tithing of Okingham was practically enclosed.^ A yard-land 

 there usually consisted of some twenty enclosed acres, for the 

 most part arable. At times there were from two to four acres 

 in an open field, but such fields are too insignificant to merit at- 

 tention. More open was the tithing of Wynnershe, several 

 of the copyholds of which have been summarized in Appendix 

 VI. Occasionally yard-lands were here enclosed (e. g., those of 

 Agnes Astell and Robert Phillipps), but most of them had con- 

 siderable arable and some meadow in the fields. This arable, 



^ The holdings which contain most of it are transcribed in Appendix VI. 



^ The tenants of the several tithings have rights of pasture in the same commons. 



' Land Rev., M. B. 202, ff. 74-82. 



