8o Plant-life of the Oxford District 



commoner grasses ; but a better plan would be to plough the fallow repeatedly 

 to kill successive crops of germinating weed-seeds. The poverty of the crop in 

 this part of the world, as also the general method of fallowing, is indicated by 

 Walter of Henley for the early thirteenth century. Two bushels of grain were 

 used to sow an acre, and 6 bushels is recorded as a satisfactory crop. This 

 probably indicates that less than 6 bushels, e.g. 4 per acre, as only doubling the 

 seed-output, would be the limit before fallowing. The general average yield per 

 acre for England at this time appears to have been 9-10 bushels. 1 



In Saxon times the arable land of a township was held in common, as 

 unfenced * field', and only enclosed while the crops were standing. After 

 harvest the hurdles were removed, and the field left open for grazing. 

 Cultivation by plough with yoked teams of oxen 2 implied difficulty in turning, 

 and fields were cultivated in ' strips ' of an acre or so. In order that the land 

 of the community might be shared equally, the holders had strips in different 

 parts of the ' field ', in the manner of scattered allotments. The acre> expressing 

 the amount of land ploughed by an ox-team in one day, became the unit of 

 land-area, and might vary in different countries; an English acre is half as 

 much again as the Roman. The standard English acre was established as 

 10 chains long (220 yards = a furlong furrow), and one chain (22 yards = 

 4 ' poles ', 'land-yards', or i6| ft. spears) wide. 



The same method of strip-cultivation was practised in Norman Manors, 3 

 and was only eliminated with the decay of the Feudal system. The aggregation of 

 the holdings of the villeins as small holders into associated lots, and the secondary 

 addition of permanent hedges made the more modern farm. The fallow field was 

 ploughed in April, again at Midsummer in dry weather, with a third ploughing 

 before sowing at Michaelmas, thus attacking the successive crops of winter- 

 weeds, spring-crop, and summer-crop respectively. This method of 3 ploughings 

 held to the sixteenth century (Fitzherbert), and clearly entailed much 

 labour.* 



A simple usage, maintaining a balance of the farm between the needs of 

 man and cattle, suggested wheat as the primary crop of first-rate food-material, 

 sown in the autumn, to be followed in the second year by inferior corn as 

 barley, a grass of shorter season, and hence sown in spring. The barley was 

 followed by a fallow the third year, grazed and ploughed, as the ' three-field ' 

 system ; 5 maintaining one field in each state every year, and a 3-year cycle for all. 



Rotation of Crops. The old fallow was merely a weed-heap, in which 

 indigenous grasses struggled with the alien flora of the wheat-crop. The 

 addition of grass-seeds would clearly hasten the process ; and these when 

 ploughed in at the end of the season, gave the essentials of an elementary 

 'rotation'. Clover (Trifolium repens) was added to the grass-seeds (sixteenth 

 century), following improved methods from Flanders, and in the middle of the 

 same century Red Clover (7! pratense) and Sainfoin became well known, as 

 also the field-cultivation of turnips for feeding sheep, introduced from Holland 

 about i65o. 6 



In order to maintain the balance of corn and cattle-crops it became 

 increasingly general to put turnips and clover between the two standing crops 

 of corn, so that the land was kept fully occupied ; the winter wheat and beans 

 being autumn-sown, and the others admitting a certain amount of cleaning in 

 the spring. 



The great pioneer scientific agriculturalist, Jethro Tull of Berkshire, 7 

 insisted on the importance of cleaning the land by hand-hoeing, and also by 

 the horse-hoe. For the latter he invented the 'drill' (1701), and cultivation in 



Orr (1922), A Short History of British Agriculture, p. 30. 

 Orr, loc. cit, Ploughing with oxen in the Cotswolds, p. 94. 

 Orr, loc. cit., p. 6, Plan of a Manor Farm. 



Plot (1705), p. 245, records three and sometimes four ploughings for wheat. 

 Plot (1705), loc. cit., implies that much land was still ' cast into three fields'. 

 Plot (1705), loc. cit., describes the use of Clover, Rye-Grass, Lucerne, and Sainfoin, but knew 

 nothing of turnips. J. Bobart sold Sainfoin seed at the Botanic Garden, 1690. 

 7 Orr, loc. cit., p. 56. 



