Open Fields and Partible Inheritance on a Kent Manor

ince H. L. Gray's account in I 9 I 5 of English field systems, further studies have extended the limits within which the midland common field husbandry is known to have been practised.1 Ambiguity about the Kentish field system has remained, there being too few exhaustive studies of individual townships. M. D. Nightingale collected considerable evidence of the former existence of an open-field system of some sort in Kent and concluded that the Kentish-field system was homologous with the midland system, a view repeated by C. S. and C. S. Orwin in a revision of their book, The Open Fields, and lately by H. P. R. Finberg in a survey of recent progress in English agrarian history.2 Yet Nightingale's conclusion was based upon two assumptions: that Kentish open fields were common fields, i.e. a product of co-operative ploughing and subject to common grazing, and that partible inheritance had ceased to be the popular custom in Kent by the end of the eleventh century.3 Both assumptions require testing within individual townships before his conclusion becomes generally accepted. A useful township for study is Gillingham: from his study of a mid-fifteenth century survey of the manor, Gray concluded that the iuga or yokes in Gillingham were 'clearly rectangular' and he described the field system as 'one of non-contiguous, yet not widely scattered, parcels'. He then described these features observed at Gillingham as typical of the Kentish system as a whole.4 Considerable additional material relating to the manor has come to light since i 9I and it has therefore seemed worth while to inquire more closely into its field system

Biology · Genealogy · Geography · Inheritance (genetic algorithm) · Genetics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Medieval Literature and History

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