THE OPEN FIELD SYSTEM

The history of the English open-field system (in its dramatic and revolutionary demise through parliamentary enclosure) has generated a great deal of rural mythology throughout the modern age. The reality was this was a system of common regulation and centralised organisation and enforcement.

It relied on its operation by maintaining symbiotic relationships between neighbours; relationships usually managed and regulated by a manorial court. Like any relationships between neighbours ancient or modern, disputes inevitably erupted. Medieval court records of quarrels between neighbours inconvenienced by sharing the same patch of earth are common. Open Field farming was therefore something much more alive, much more in contention than the maps here suggest.

A better sense of what this landscape looked like in practice can once again be found in the modern aerial photography that recorded (and in some areas records still) the rhythm and alignment of ridge and furrow ploughing, much of it demonstrating the characteristic long s-shaped tracks of individual strips.

The townships of Aston, Cote, Shifford and Chimney were not included in the 1821 enclosures, and retained their open fields and commons until the middle 19th century.