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The Open Field in Devonshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

H. P. R. Finberg
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Abstract

It has been generally agreed that Devonshire lies outside the area formerly cultivated under the open-field system. The map which serves as frontispiece to Gray’s monograph on the subject shows the western boundary of the open-field area beginning in west Dorsetshire and passing up northward across Somerset so as to exclude Devon, Cornwall, and west Somerset. Dr and Mrs Orwin, while revising and correcting Gray’s data at several points, are emphatic where the south-western counties are concerned. ‘In Lancashire, Devon, and Cornwall, there is nothing to indicate that the system [of open fields] was ever followed’. Recent text-books naturally follow in the wake of these authorities. Professor Darby, for example, writes that in Cornwall, and by implication in Devon also, the prevailing type of rural economy ‘had no relation to the three-field system’ ; and he illustrates his remarks with a reproduction of Gray’s map.

One well-known fact, which at first sight appears irreconcilable with these pronouncements, was not overlooked by the authors. I refer to the existence at Braunton, in northwest Devon, of an open field of some 350 acres, divided into nearly five hundred arable strips of intermixed ownership. ‘Some persons own very many of the strips scattered all over the field ; that is to say, several strips in almost every division of it. Others have a few only, one here and there. But in all cases the strips of one owner are everywhere separated from each other by interposed strips of other owners . . . The line of demarcation between any two strips is commonly indicated by a narrow unploughed balk . . . The lesser plots appear as a rule to approximate in area to half an acre, more or less, and the others to multiples of this quantity . . . Very few exceed the limit of two acres’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 23 , Issue 92 , December 1949 , pp. 180 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1949

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References

1 Gray, English Field Systems, 1915, frontispiece and p. 63.

2 Orwin, The Open Fields, 1938, p. 61.

3 An Historical Geography of England before A.D. 1800, ed. Darby, 1948, pp. 194, 207.

4 Phear, ‘Notes on Braunton Great Field’ (Transactions of the Devonshire Association, XXI, 1889, p. 202). Venn, The Foundations of Agricultural Economics, 1923, p. 14, gives an excellent though brief account of the Field, illustrated by two photographs in which the grass balks are plainly visible (plate IX).

5 Gray, op. cit., pp. 262, 263.

6 Orwin, op. cit., p. 46.

7 Cal. Close Rolls, 1323-7, p. 333.

8 Part of it is reproduced in The Land of Britain : Report of the Land Utilisation Survey, ed. Stamp, Part 92, Devonshire, p. 501, fig. 21.

9 If so, we should expect to find some tenants holding lands of equal extent in both manors. As a matter of fact, some did. For example, in 1502 John Fortescue of Weare Giffard held 50 a. in Braunton Abbots, valued at 20s, by fealty and a rent of 3s 2d, and 50 a. in Braunton Gorges, also valued at 20s, by fealty and a rent of 2s 4d (Calendar of Inquisitions post mortem, 2nd Ser., 11, p. 390).

10 The custom of the manor here has been too strong even for the Crown, as appeared some ten years ago, when the Air Ministry proposed to turn the Great Field into an aerodrome. The plan had to be dropped ‘because the land is shared by some fifty or sixty owners whose farms are on the hills to the north, and the transactions would have been too complicated, apart from throwing out of gear some fifty established farms, the value of which (at an average rental of £ 1 an acre) depended very largely on the possession of a portion of the field’. ( The Land of Britain, p. 515).

11 Woburn muniments, D Bdle 41, no. 2.

12 I have dealt more fully with the subject of open-field arable and enclosure at Tavistock ina forthcoming work on The Estates of Tavistock Abbey.

13 Woburn muniments, G Bdle 5, no. 3.

14 P.R.O. Inq. post mortem, C134, File 99. Twenty-seven years later the demesne arable at Bovey Tracy was reported to consist of 24 a., worth 10s ; 37 a. in the east of the manor, also 10s ; 70 a. in the north, 40 a. in the west, and 25 a. in the field called Heathfield, all valued at 2d an acre (ibid., Miscellaneous Inquisitions, C145, File 169, no. 4).

15 Harl. MS. 3660, fo. 178.

16 DB IV, p. 197 (Lega) ; Reichel, The Hundreds of Devon, p. 359.

17 Harl.MS. 3660, fo. 176.

18 Ibid., fo. 167.

19 DB IV, p. 368 (Leiga).

20 Harl. MS. 3660, fo. 143.

21 Oliver, Monasticon Dioecesis Exoniensis, 1846, p. 258, no. 52. The fifteenth-century ministers’ accounts of Yarcombe refer to a demesne close named Furlong.

22 B.M. Add. MS. 28649 (Prince’s copy of Sir W. Pole’s extracts from the Newenham cartulary and other documents), ff. 424, 428, 433.

23 P.R.O. Inq. post mortem, C134, File 81 (3).

24 Ibid., C133, File 54 (4); C134, File 66 (21); C135, File 168 (3).

25 Ibid., Ci35, File 169 (4).

26 Ibid., C135, File 155 (12). The sown portion was valued at 1d an acre at Loddiswell and Ideford, 2d at Battishorn ; and the fallow at nil.

27 Historical MSS Commission, 15th Report, Appendix VII, p. 137.

28 Gray, op. cit., p. 259.

29 Ibid., p. 261. Dr W. G. Hoskins, to whom I am indebted for several references, informs me that the ‘two great open common fields’ at Sheepwash, referred to in his article on ‘The Reclamation of the Waste in Devon’ (Economic History Review, XIII, 1943, p. 81), were common pastures.

30 The Land of Britain, p. 501.

31 Transactions of the Devonshire Association, XVIII, 1886, pp. 434, 440.

32 Gray, op. cit., p. 261.

33 Ex inf. Dr W. G. Hoskins.

34 Gover, Mawer, and Stenton, The Place-Names of Devon, 1931-2, p. 690. In the early years of the thirteenth century there is mention of land in Moor-furlong (‘Morvorlange’) at Buckerell (Hist. Mss Comm., Var. Coll., IV, p. 59).

35 Tudor Cornwall, 1941, p. 34.