LITTLE GADDESDEN. 283 



churches, houses, &c, in this district are built. This 

 kind of stone is here called Freestone, and shall be 

 described immediately below ! 



Akrarnas belagenhet, &c. 



The fields between Little Gaddesden and Dagnal lay 

 for the most part on long sloping sides of the chalk hill. 

 A great part of them were laid out in broad-lands, especi- 

 ally those on which barley was now sown. These broad- 

 lands, breda aker-stycken, lay almost entirely flat, so 

 that they were not higher in the middle. Between each 

 broad-land there always went a water-furrow drawn 

 from the highest part of the field down to the dale. 

 Down at the bottom, where the water-furrows and 

 broad-lands ended, was a water-furrow drawn across 

 the others, but commonly this defect was remarked, 

 that this [T. I. p. 280] furrow had laid an earth- 

 bank at the end of every water-furrow running down 

 to it, without the owner having taken the trouble to 

 shovel up the mould out of the water-furrows running 

 down the field so as to leave the water free escape into 

 the cross-furrow. Mr. Ellis's fields were in this respect 

 nothing better than the others. It seems also difficult 

 to avoid the result that the water, if a wet summer 

 should happen, would here come to be dammed up and 

 injure the plants. 



Halm-tak. Straw thatch. 



On most of the houses, where we went to-day, in 

 Dagnal as elsewhere, the roofs were mostly of thatch, 

 voro taken merendels af halm, built in the usual 

 manner, previously described, very steep, and 1 foot in 

 thickness. Sometimes also the highest part of the gable- 

 wall, getting on for half of the gable from the top, 

 upifran, was clad with straw, or made like a thatch 



