THE SELF-SUPPORTING VILLAGES 29 



corn that they raised was fetching 3s. or 6s. the quarter in a distant 

 market made little difference to the inhabitants of villages. They 

 grew it for their own consumption. Owing to difficulties of com- 

 munication, every village raised its own bread-supply. Hence a 

 great extent of land, which from a farming point of view formed an 

 excessive proportion of the total area, was tilled for corn, however 

 unsuited it might be for arable cultivation. As facilities of transport 

 increased, this necessity became less and less paramount. Land 

 best adapted to pasture no longer required to be ploughed, but 

 might be put to the use for which it was naturally fitted. Improve- 

 ments in means of communication were thus among the changes 

 which helped to extinguish village farms. But for the time, and 

 so long as the open-field system prevailed, farming continued to be 

 in the main a self-sufficing industry. Except for the payment of 

 rent, little coin was needed or used in rural districts. Parishes 

 till the middle of the eighteenth century remained what they were 

 in the thirteenth century isolated and self-supporting. The 

 inhabitants had little need of communication even with their 

 neighbours, still less with the outside world. The fields and the 

 live-stock provided their necessary food and clothing. Whatever 

 wood was required for building, fencing, and fuel was supplied from 

 the wastes. Each village had its mill, and nearly every house had 

 its oven and brewing kettle. Women spun and wove wool into 

 coarse cloth, and hemp or nettles into linen ; men tanned their own 

 leather. The rough tools required for cultivation of the soil, and 

 the rude household utensils needed for the comforts of daily life, 

 were made at home. In the long winter evenings, farmers, their 

 sons, and their servants carved the wooden spoons, the platters, 

 and the beechen bowls. They fitted and riveted the bottoms to 

 the horn mugs, or closed, in coarse fashion, the leaks in the leathern 

 jugs. They plaited the osiers and reeds into baskets and into 

 " weeles " for catching fish ; they fixed handles to the scythes, 

 rakes, and other tools ; cut the flails from holly or thorn, and 

 fastened them with thongs to the staves ; shaped the teeth for 

 rakes and harrows from ash or willow, and hardened them in the 

 fire ; cut out the wooden shovels for casting the corn in the granary ; 

 fashioned ox-yokes and bows, forks, racks, and rack-staves ; 

 twisted willows into scythe-cradles, or into traces and other harness 

 gear. Travelling carpenters, smiths, and tinkers visited detached 

 farmhouses and smaller villages, at rare intervals, to perform 



