The open-field system was the prevalent
agricultural system
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
in much of Europe during the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
and lasted into the 20th century in Russia,
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, and
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
. Each
manor or village had two or three large fields, usually several hundred acres each, which were divided into many narrow strips of land. The strips or
selion
A selion is a medieval open strip of land or a small Field (agriculture), field used for growing crops, usually owned by or rented to peasants. A selion of land was typically one furlong (660 ft) long and one chain (unit), chain (66 ft) ...
s were cultivated by
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...
s, often called tenants or
serfs. The holdings of a manor also included woodland and pasture areas for common usage and fields belonging to the lord of the manor and the religious authorities, usually
Roman Catholics
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
in medieval Western Europe. The farmers customarily lived in separate houses in a nucleated village with a much larger manor house and church nearby. The open-field system necessitated co-operation among the residents of the manor.
The
Lord of the Manor
Lord of the Manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seig ...
, his officials, and a
manorial court administered the manor and exercised jurisdiction over the peasantry. The Lord levied rents and required the peasantry to work on his personal lands, called a
demesne
A demesne ( ) or domain was all the land retained and managed by a lord of the manor under the feudal system for his own use, occupation, or support. This distinguished it from land sub-enfeoffed by him to others as sub-tenants. The concept or ...
.
In medieval times, little land was owned outright. Instead, generally the lord had rights given to him by the king, and the tenant rented land from the lord. Lords demanded rents and
labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
from the tenants, but the tenants had firm user rights to cropland and
common land
Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect Wood fuel, wood, or to cut turf for fuel.
A person ...
and those rights were passed down from generation to generation. A medieval lord could not evict a tenant nor hire labour to replace him without legal cause. Most tenants likewise were not free without penalty to depart the manor for other locations or occupations. The rise of capitalism and the
concept of land as a commodity to be bought and sold led to the gradual demise of the open-field system. The open-field system was gradually replaced over several centuries by private ownership of land, especially after the 15th century in the process known as
enclosure
Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or " common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...
in England. France, Germany, and other northern European countries had systems similar to England, although open fields generally endured longer on the continent. Some elements of the open-field system were practised by early settlers in the
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
region of the United States.
Description
![Medieval Ridge and Furrow above Wood Stanway - geograph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Medieval_Ridge_and_Furrow_above_Wood_Stanway_-_geograph.org.uk_-_640050.jpg)
The most visible characteristic of the open-field system was that the arable land belonging to a manor was divided into many long narrow
furlong
A furlong is a measure of distance in imperial units and United States customary units equal to one eighth of a mile, equivalent to 660 feet, 220 yards, 40 rods, 10 chains or approximately 201 metres. It is now mostly confined to use in hor ...
s for cultivation. The fields of cultivated land were unfenced, hence the name ''open''-field system. Each tenant of the manor cultivated several strips of land scattered around the manor.
The village of
Elton, Cambridgeshire
Elton is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. Elton lies approximately south-west of Peterborough. Elton is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a ...
is representative of a medieval open-field manor in England. The manor, whose Lord was an abbot from a nearby monastery, had 13 "
hides" of arable land of six
virgate
The virgate, yardland, or yard of land ( la, virgāta was an English unit of land. Primarily a measure of tax assessment rather than area, the virgate was usually (but not always) reckoned as hide and notionally (but seldom exactly) equal ...
s each. The acreage of a hide and virgate varied; but at Elton, a hide was and a virgate was . Thus, the total of arable land amounted to . The abbot's demesne land consisted of three hides plus of meadow and of pasture. The remainder of the land was cultivated by 113 tenants who lived in a village on the manor. Counting spouses, children, and other dependents, plus landless people, the total population resident in the manor village was probably 500 to 600.
The abbot also owned two
water mill
A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production o ...
s for grinding grain, a
fulling mill
Fulling, also known as felting, tucking or walking ( Scots: ''waukin'', hence often spelled waulking in Scottish English), is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of woven or knitted cloth (particularly wool) to elimin ...
for finishing cloth, and a
millpond on the manor. The village contained a church, a manor house, a village green, and the sub-manor of
John of Elton
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second E ...
, a rich farmer who cultivated one hide of land and had tenants of his own. The tenants' houses lined a road rather than being grouped in a cluster. Some of the village houses were fairly large, long by wide. Others were only long and wide. All were insubstantial and required frequent reconstruction. Most of the tenants' houses had outbuildings and an animal pen with a larger area, called a
croft
Croft may refer to:
Occupations
* Croft (land), a small area of land, often with a crofter's dwelling
* Crofting, small-scale food production
* Bleachfield, an open space used for the bleaching of fabric, also called a croft
Locations In the Uni ...
, of about one-half acre (0.2 ha), enclosed for a garden and grazing for animals.
The tenants on the manor did not have equal holdings of land. About one-half of adults living on a manor had no land at all and had to work for larger landholders for their livelihood. A survey of 104 13th-century manors in England found that, among the landholding tenants, 45 percent had less than . To survive, they also had to work for larger landowners. 22 percent of tenants had a virgate of land (which varied in size between and and 31 percent had one-half virgate. To rely on the land for a livelihood a tenant family needed at least .
The land of a typical manor in England and other countries was subdivided into two or three large fields. Non-arable land was allocated to common pasture land or ''waste'', where the villagers would graze their livestock throughout the year, woodland for pigs and timber, and also some private fenced land (paddocks, orchards and gardens), called ''closes''. The ploughed fields and the meadows were used for livestock grazing when
fallow
Fallow is a farming technique in which arable land is left without sowing for one or more vegetative cycles. The goal of fallowing is to allow the land to recover and store organic matter while retaining moisture and disrupting pest life cycl ...
ed or after the grain was harvested.
One of the two or three fields was fallowed each year to recover soil fertility. The fields were divided into parcels called furlongs. The furlong was further subdivided into long, thin strips of land called selions or ridges. Selions were distributed among the farmers of the village, the manor, and the church. A family might possess about 70 selions totalling about scattered around the fields. The scattered nature of family holdings ensured that families each received a ration of both good and poor land and minimised risk. If some selions were unproductive, others might be productive. Ploughing techniques created a landscape of ridge and furrow, with furrows between ridges dividing holdings and aiding drainage.
The right of pasture on fallowed fields, land unsuitable for cultivation, and harvested fields was held in common with rules to prevent
overgrazing
Overgrazing occurs when plants are exposed to intensive grazing for extended periods of time, or without sufficient recovery periods. It can be caused by either livestock in poorly managed agricultural applications, game reserves, or nature res ...
enforced by the community.
Crops and production
![Medievalplowingwoodcut](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Medievalplowingwoodcut.jpg)
The typical planting scheme in a three-field system was that
barley
Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley pr ...
,
oats
The oat (''Avena sativa''), sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name (usually in the plural, unlike other cereals and pseudocereals). While oats are suitable for human co ...
, or
legume
A legume () is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or the fruit or seed of such a plant. When used as a dry grain, the seed is also called a pulse. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for human consumption, for livestock f ...
s would be planted in one field in spring, wheat or
rye in the second field in the fall and the third field would be left fallow. The following year, the planting in the fields would be rotated. Pasturage was held in common. The tenants pastured their livestock on the fallow field and on the planted fields after harvest. An elaborate set of laws and controls, partly set by the Lord of the Manor and partly by the tenants themselves regulated planting, harvest, and pasturing.
Wheat and barley were the most important crops with roughly equal amounts planted on the average in England. Annual wheat production at
Battle Abbey
Battle Abbey is a partially ruined Benedictine abbey in Battle, East Sussex, England. The abbey was built on the site of the Battle of Hastings and dedicated to St Martin of Tours. It is a Scheduled Monument.
The Grade I listed site is now ...
in Sussex in the late 14th century ranged from 2.26 to 5.22 seeds harvested for every seed planted, averaging 4.34 seeds harvested for every seed planted. Barley production averaged 4.01 and oats 2.87 seeds harvested for seeds planted. This translates into yields of 7 to 17
bushel
A bushel (abbreviation: bsh. or bu.) is an imperial and US customary unit of volume based upon an earlier measure of dry capacity. The old bushel is equal to 2 kennings (obsolete), 4 pecks, or 8 dry gallons, and was used mostly for agric ...
s per acre harvested. Battle Abbey may have been atypical, with better management and soils than typical of demesnes in open-field areas. Barley was used in making beer – consumed in large quantities – and mixed with other grains to produce bread that was a dietary staple for the poorer farmers. Wheat was often sold as a
cash crop. Richer people ate bread made of wheat. At
Elton Elton may refer to:
Places
England
* Elton, Cambridgeshire (formerly Huntingdonshire), a village
** Elton Hall, a baronial hall
* Elton, Cheshire, a village and civil parish
* Elton, County Durham, a village and civil parish
* Elton, Derbyshire ...
in Cambridgeshire in 1286, perhaps typical of that time in England, the tenants harvested about twice as much barley as wheat with lesser amounts of oats, peas, beans, rye, flax, apples, and vegetables.
The land-holding tenants also had livestock, including sheep, pigs, cattle, horses,
oxen, and poultry. Pork was the principal meat eaten; sheep were primarily raised for their wool, a cash crop. Only a few rich landholders had enough horses and oxen to make up a ploughing-team of six to eight oxen or horses, so sharing among neighbours was essential.
History
Much of the land in the open-field system during medieval times had been cultivated for hundreds of years earlier on Roman estates or by farmers belonging to one of the ethnic groups of Europe. There are hints of a proto-open-field system going back to AD 98 among the Germanic tribes. Germanic and Anglo-Saxon invaders and settlers possibly brought the open-field system to France and England after the 5th century AD. The open-field system appears to have developed to maturity between AD 850 and 1150 in England, although documentation is scarce prior to the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
of 1086.
The open-field system was never practiced in all regions and countries in Europe. It was most common in heavily populated and productive agricultural regions. In England, the south-east, notably parts of
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
and
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, retained a pre-
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
system of farming in small, square, enclosed fields. In much of eastern and western England, fields were similarly either never open or were enclosed earlier. The primary area of open fields was in the lowland areas of England in a broad swathe from
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
and
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...
diagonally across England to the south, taking in parts of
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
and
Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, large areas of the
Midlands, and most of south central England. This area was the main grain-growing region (as opposed to
pastoral
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
farming) in medieval times.
The population in Europe grew in the early centuries of the open-field system, doubling in Britain between 1086 and 1300, which required increased agricultural production and more intensive cultivation of farmland. The open-field system was generally not practised in marginal agricultural areas or in hilly and mountainous regions. Open fields were well suited to the dense clay soils common in northwestern Europe. Heavy
plough
A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...
s were needed to cut through the soil and the ox or horse teams which pulled the ploughs were expensive, and thus both animals and ploughs were often shared by necessity among farm families.
![Strip field at Forraby - geograph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Strip_field_at_Forraby_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1324926.jpg)
The
Black Death
The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...
of 1348–1350 killed 30–60% of Europe's population. As a consequence the surviving population had access to larger tracts of empty farmland and wages increased due to a shortage of labour. Richer farmers began to acquire land and remove it from communal usage. An economic recession and low grain prices in fifteenth century England gave a competitive advantage to the production of wool, meat, and milk. The shift away from grain to livestock accelerated enclosure of fields. The steadily increasing number of formerly open fields converted to enclosed (fenced) fields caused social and economic stress among small farmers who lost their access to communal grazing lands. Many tenants were forced off the lands their families may have cultivated for centuries to work for wages in towns and cities. The number of large and middle-sized estates grew in number while small land-holders decreased in number. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, the practice of enclosure (particularly depopulating enclosure) was denounced by the
Church
Church may refer to:
Religion
* Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities
* Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination
* Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship
* C ...
and the government, and legislation was drawn up against it. The dispossession of tenants from their land created an "epidemic of vagrancy" in England in the late 16th and early 17th century. The tide of elite opinion began to turn towards support for enclosure, and the rate of enclosure increased in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Controversies and inefficiencies
The open-field system is considered by many economists to have been inefficient for agricultural production and resistant to technological innovation. "Everyone was forced to conform to village norms of cropping, harvesting, and building." The communal institutions, the manorial court, and the tenants regulated agricultural practices and economic behaviour. The manorial lord exercised control over the tenants by extracting rent for land or labour to cultivate his demesne lands. The scattered holdings of each farmer increased the time needed to travel to and from fields.
The open-field system, especially its characteristic of common grazing lands, has often been used as an example by economists to illustrate "
the tragedy of the commons
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
" and assert that private ownership is a better steward of resources than common or public ownership. "Tragedy of the commons" refers to the alleged destruction of common pastures in England as a result of overgrazing, each tenant maximizing his gain by grazing as many animals as possible and ignoring the long-term impact of overgrazing. The author of the term "tragedy of the commons",
Garrett Hardin
Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) was an American ecologist. He focused his career on the issue of human overpopulation, and is best known for his exposition of the tragedy of the commons in a 1968 paper of the same t ...
, pointed out that the pastures of England were "protected from ruin by limiting each tenant to a fixed number of animals". Thus, Hardin says the commons were "managed...which may be good or bad depending on the quality of the management". The fact that the open-field system endured for roughly a thousand years over a large part of Europe and provided a livelihood to a growing population indicates that there might not have been a better way of organizing agriculture during that time period. However, some argue that the pastures of England were actually highly managed; they were considered to be privately owned by the village as a whole, which led to a communal sense of responsibility to maintaining the land. Managerial practices such as stinting, or limiting the amount of cattle permitted, required weed removal, removal of straw, cutting thistles, ringing swine, and knobbing cow's horns to prevent grubbing were common. The commons were regularly inspected by the villagers and sometimes by a delegation from the manorial court. It is even argued that the commons that Hardin was referring to in The Tragedy of the Commons were actually port enclosure commons, which were not true commons, but rather left over lands that were misused by the poor, displaced, and criminals.
The replacement of the open-field system by privately owned property was fiercely resisted by many elements of society. Karl Marx was extremely opposed to the
enclosure
Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or " common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...
of the open field system, calling it a "robbery of the common lands" The "brave new world" of a harsher, more competitive and capitalistic society from the 16th century onward destroyed the securities and certainties of land tenure in the open-field system. The open field system died only slowly. More than half the agricultural land of England was still not enclosed in 1700, after which the government discouraged the continuation of the open-field system. It was finally laid to rest in England about 1850 after more than 5,000 Acts of Parliament and just as many voluntary agreements over several centuries had transformed the "scattered plots in the open fields" into unambiguous private and enclosed properties free of village and communal control and use. Over half of all agricultural land in England was enclosed during the 18th and 19th centuries. Other European countries also began to pass legislation to eliminate the scattering of farm land, the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
and France passing laws making land consolidation compulsory in the 1930s and 1950s respectively.
[McCloskey, p. 11] In Russia, the open-field system, called "cherespolositsa" ("alternating ribbons (of land)") and administered by the ''
obschina / mir'' (the general village community), remained as the main system of peasant land ownership in Russia until the
Stolypin reform
The Stolypin agrarian reforms were a series of changes to Imperial Russia's agricultural sector instituted during the tenure of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. Most, if not all, of these reforms were based on recommendations from a committee known ...
process that started in 1905, but generally continued for many years, finally ending only with the Soviet policy of
collectivisation
Collective farming and communal farming are various types of, "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member- ...
in the 1930s.
Modern usage
One place in England where the open-field system continues to be used is the village of
Laxton, Nottinghamshire. It is thought that its anomalous survival is due to the inability of two early 19th-century landowners to agree on how the land was to be enclosed, thus resulting in the perpetuation of the existing system.
The only other surviving medieval open strip field system in England is in
Braunton
Braunton is a large village, civil parish, ecclesiastical parish and former manor in Devon. The village is situated west of Barnstaple. It is one of the largest villages in Devon with a population at the 2021 census of 10,217 people. There ...
, North Devon. It is still farmed with due regard to its ancient origins and is conserved by those who recognise its importance although the number of owners has fallen dramatically throughout the years and this has resulted in the amalgamation of some of the strips.
There is also a surviving medieval open strip field system in Wales in the township of
Laugharne
Laugharne ( cy, Talacharn) is a town on the south coast of Carmarthenshire, Wales, lying on the estuary of the River Tâf.
The ancient borough of Laugharne Township ( cy, Treflan Lacharn) with its Corporation and Charter is a unique survival ...
, which is also the last town in the UK with an intact medieval charter.
Vestiges of an open-field system also persist in the
Isle of Axholme
The Isle of Axholme is a geographical area in England: a part of North Lincolnshire that adjoins South Yorkshire. It is located between the towns of Scunthorpe and Gainsborough, both of which are in the traditional West Riding of Lindsey, and ...
,
North Lincolnshire
North Lincolnshire is a unitary authority area in Lincolnshire, England, with a population of 167,446 in the 2011 census. The borough includes the towns of Scunthorpe, Brigg, Haxey, Crowle, Epworth, Bottesford, Kirton in Lindsey and Bar ...
, around the villages of
Haxey
Haxey is a town and civil parish on the Isle of Axholme in North Lincolnshire, England. It is directly south of Epworth, south-west of Scunthorpe, north-west of Gainsborough, east of Doncaster and north-west of Lincoln, with a population of ...
,
Epworth and
Belton, where long strips, of an average size of half an acre, curve to follow the gently sloping ground and are used for growing vegetables or cereal crops. The boundaries are mostly unmarked, although where several strips have been amalgamated a deep furrow is sometimes used to divide them. The ancient village game of
Haxey Hood
The Haxey Hood is a traditional event in Haxey, North Lincolnshire, England. It consists of a game in which a large football scrum (the "sway") pushes a leather tube (the "hood") to one of four pubs in the town, where it remains until the follow ...
is played in this open landscape.
Allotment gardens
A similar system to open fields survives in the United Kingdom as
allotment gardens
An allotment (British English), or in North America, a community garden, is a plot of land made available for individual, non-commercial gardening or growing food plants, so forming a kitchen garden away from the residence of the user. Such plot ...
. In many towns and cities there are areas of land of one or two acres (up to about one hectare) interspersed between the buildings. These areas are usually owned by local authorities, or by allotment associations. Small patches of the land are allocated at a low rent to people for growing food.
References
Further reading
*
* (On Britain, primarily England)
* (On the expansion of the open-field system into the New World)
*
External links
*
*
{{Authority control
Agricultural economics
Agricultural soil science
History of agriculture
Medieval society
Land tenure