THE HIDE AND THE TEAMLAND 35 



a three-field manor, each field lay fallow every third year, 

 and the other fields were sown, the one that had been fallow 

 the preceding year with wheat or winter corn, and the other 

 with barley or oats or spring corn. The flocks and herds 

 of the villagers fed over these fields between one harvest 

 and the next ploughing, and also over the waste of the manor. 

 The two remarkable features of this system, which is even 

 now to be found in certain remote corners of the country, 

 were, that these fields were cut up into broad strips, called 

 furlongs, or shots, which in their turn were subdivided into 

 smaller strips, which were called acres, but were usually the 

 area that could be ploughed by one team in a day ; and that the 

 strips in the occupation of any tenant were scattered all over 

 the field, so that he often had a long journey to make from 

 one strip to another. One passage in Domesday Book refers 

 to this system : at Garsington (Oxon) " there was one hide 

 of inland, . . . which lies among the King's land in parcels 

 (particulatim)" 1 and Mr. Seebohm has shown that this system 

 existed in England from the earliest times. He also tells 

 that on the division of the open fields there were often odd 

 corners which could not be ploughed, and were known as 

 " no man's land." Domesday Book records that King William 

 had 12^ acres of no man's land in Middlesex. 2 Professor 

 Maitland has shown from existing maps, some of them three 

 centuries old, that these so-called acres were often less than 

 a statute acre, and in many cases were often only two or three 

 roods in extent. Mr. Seebohm also shows that in the thirteenth 

 century an areal hide was divisible into 4 virgates, or yard- 

 lands, and that the tenant of a virgate was expected to provide 

 a couple of oxen for the manorial team for use on the demesne 

 farm ; and further, that it was part of the duty of the tenants 

 to assist in ploughing their lord's demesne. 



It is possible that traces of this agricultural co-opera- 

 tion can be found in Domesday Book, for the Middlesex 

 1 D. B., 156 b 2. 2 id., 127 a i. 



