SOME DEFECTS OF OPEN-FIELD FARMS 155 



balks and footpaths. All the occupiers were bound by rigid cus- 

 tomary rules, compelled to treat all kinds of soil alike, obliged to 

 keep exact time with one another in sowing and reaping their crops. 

 Freeholders on open-field farms were only half -owners. No winter 

 crops could be grown so long as the arable fields were subjected to 

 common rights of pasture from August to February. It meant 

 financial ruin, if any member of the community grew turnips, clover, 

 or artificial grasses for the benefit of his neighbours. The strips of 

 land occupied by each partner were too narrow to admit of cross- 

 ploughing or cross-harrowing, and on heavy land this was a serious 

 drawback. Drainage was practically impossible, for, if one man 

 drained or water-furrowed his land, or scoured his courses, his 

 neighbour might block his outfalls. It was to carry off the water 

 that the arable land was heaped up into high ridges between two 

 furrows. But the remedy was almost as bad as the disease. The 

 richness of the soil was washed off the summit of the ridge into 

 the trenches, which often, as Kent l records, contained water three 

 yards wide, dammed back at either end by the high-ridged head- 

 lands. The cultivated fields were generally foul, if not from the 

 fault of the occupier, from the slovenliness of his neighbours ; the 

 turf -balks harboured twitch ; the triennial fallows left their heritage 

 of crops of docks and thistles. The unsheltered, hedgeless open- 

 fields were often hurtful to live-stock, though the absence of hedges 

 was not without its advantages to the corn. The farm-buildings 

 were gathered together in the village, often a mile or more from 

 the land. As each man's strips lay scattered over each of the open- 

 fields, he wasted his day in visiting the different parcels of his 

 holding, and his expenses of manuring, reaping, carting, and horse- 

 keeping were enormously increased by the remoteness of the different 

 parts of his occupation. Vexatious rights interfered with proper 

 cultivation. One man might have the right to turn his plough on 

 another's strip, and the victim must either wait his neighbour's 

 pleasure or risk the damage to his sown crops. " Travellers," as 

 Joseph Lee 2 remarked in 1656, " know no highwaies in the common 

 fields " ; each avoided his predecessor's ruts, and cattle trespassed 

 as they passed. For twenty yards on either side of the track the 

 growing corn was often spoiled. The sheep were driven to the 

 commons by day, and in the summer folded at night on the fallows. 



1 Hints to Gentlemen of Landed Property, by Nathaniel Kent, 1775. 

 8 Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure, p. 24. 



