Open Field Farming In Medieval England

This book presents a detailed account of the co-operative practice of agriculture in medieval England, shedding much light on how medieval villagers governed their own affairs. During this period co-operation was essential in ploughing, sowing and reaping, with communal control of the pasturing of the fallow and stubble. These practices were set out in customary by-laws which were agreed to by common consent and villages themselves were greatly involved with their enactment and enforcement. In the course of time, many of the by-laws were put into writing. Professor Ault has travelled extensively throughout England collecting and researching these agrarian ordinances and translating them into modern English. Since it was first published in 1972 this analysis has provided new insight into the organizational structure and governance of medieval villages in England and is essential reading for all those interested in the history of the Middle Ages.

Originally published in 1981, The Origins of Open Field Agriculture looks at the problems connected with open field agriculture – the origins of strip cultivation, the three-field system, the adaptation of ‘Celtic’ fields, and the development of ploughing techniques. The book looks at the challenges to traditional ideas on the origins of settlement and their associated economy, and casts new light on understandings of village development. The book suggests that conventional views of the nucleated village, in the midst of open field strips as a product of the Anglo-Saxon migration, is no longer tenable. The book brings together the work of distinguished archaeologists, historians, and historical geographers and opens up a new perspective on the early development of medieval agriculture.

This book presents a detailed account of the co-operative practice of agriculture in medieval England, shedding much light on how medieval villagers governed their own affairs. During this period co-operation was essential in ploughing, sowing and reaping, with communal control of the pasturing of the fallow and stubble. These practices were set out in customary by-laws which were agreed to by common consent and villages themselves were greatly involved with their enactment and enforcement. In the course of time, many of the by-laws were put into writing. Professor Ault has travelled extensively throughout England collecting and researching these agrarian ordinances and translating them into modern English. Since it was first published in 1972 this analysis has provided new insight into the organizational structure and governance of medieval villages in England and is essential reading for all those interested in the history of the Middle Ages.

In the middle ages and the early modern period open fields could be found in many if not most countries of Europe. They took a wide variety of forms, but can in essence be defined as areas of cultivated land in which the intermingled plots of different cultivators, without upstanding physical boundaries, were subject to some degree of communal management, in terms of cropping and grazing. Sometimes such fields occupied a high proportion of the land in a district, but often they formed a relatively minor element in landscapes which also contained enclosed fields, woodland or expanses of pasture. In some areas, open-field agriculture had already been abandoned before the end of the middle ages, but in others it continued to flourish into the nineteenth or even twentieth centuries. Although open fields have long been studied, by geographers, historians and archaeologists, much about their origins, development and rationale remains contentious. Why, across wide areas of Europe, did such fields sometimes become central to the experience of so many of our ancestors, shaping not only farming practices but also the basic structures of their everyday lives? And why, in contrast, did they fail to develop, or have a less significant role, elsewhere? Over recent decades open fields have been investigated in new, interdisciplinary ways, and as a Europe-wide phenomenon. In this book, more than ever before, their development and operation are explained in terms of economic, social, agrarian and environmental developments which were shared, to varying degrees, by all parts of the Continent. It contains ten new studies from a wide range of regions, together with important comparative research from south America and Japan. This collection of essays represents a milestone in the study of open-field agriculture, and is a major contribution to the study of the rationale of field systems more generally.

In the Middle Ages agriculture underwent many changes. The nobles and the clergy were considered the most important members of the feudal society. However, they were never the majority: in the Middle Ages, almost all people were peasants. Not all farmers had the same category and social status. Many of them were free men. Among these, some were small landowners who lived on their own land, while others, the settlers, leased the feudal lord a small plot of land.