FIELD SYSTEMS AND THE STRUCTURE OF LANDHOLDINGS

Much work remains to be done on the pre-industrial field systems of England, although historians are aware that broad regional differences existed in both field arrangements and agrarian techniques. Research on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has already shown that the field systems of Breckland contributed to its regional distinctiveness. No work on the medieval period has been previously undertaken, but such a study would be valuable nonetheless. First, it would provide an opportunity to plot the evolution of a regional field system from the thirteenth century right through to Parliamentary enclosure in the nineteenth century, and to examine the forces instigating such changes; and secondly, it would offer an interesting example of how medieval farmers adapted their limited range of agrarian techniques to the specific demands of poor soils.

An analysis of the Breckland system is best understood in the context of East Anglian agrarian techniques in general, which bore little resemblance to the classic three-field system prevalent in the Midlands. The organisation of small pieces of village arable land into three regular fields, and the imposition of a strict three-course rotation of winter-sown crops, spring-sown and then fallow, was characteristic only of the western extreme of East Anglia. Over most of Norfolk, Essex and Suffolk arable land was rarely segregated into a set field pattern, and any divisions of that land were complex and varied.