A fascinating map, Chris. Especially those furlongs with the very irregular rounded shapes. At first glance I took them to be ancient enclosures, probably cleared from woodland or other waste and never part of the open field system, but on closer inspection it turns that they too were divided up into strips. Does this reflect very broken, hilly terrain? From the different shapes of the furlongs it looks as though the southern part of the township was flatter than the northern part. Your comment about the lengths of the strips is spot on. My original posting was a bit too categoric on that point, and I should have said that while in the classic Midland open field the width of a strip was usually a pole (alias rood or perch) and the length a furlong, the length could also vary considerably, typically on account of terrain features. I'm not sure that Chilson had lots of fields, though (in the sense of open-field Fields) - most of the groups of strips outlined in black on the map are named 'something furlong', so they would probably have been grouped together into two or three (or possibly four) Fields. Maps like this often indicate how the furlongs were grouped into Fields, but as far as I can see this one has left the Field names off, presumably because with every strip marked and its owner named there wasn't any room left. Interesting too to see that Chilson seems to have had nearly no pasture or meadow or woodland, either common or private. Or does this map not depict the whole of the parish/manor, just the arable parts? Maybe they had pasture and wood rights in Wychwood. Reagrds, Matt -----Original Message----- From: Chris Bartlett [mailto:woodcom@ihug.co.nz] Sent: 9 Aug 2004 09:37 To: OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com Subject: RE: [OEL] Common vs Open Hello All I have found the above topic very interesting especially as I have had more than one family farming in open fields one of them at Laxton Notts. If anyone wishes to have a look I have uploaded a 1735 map of Chilson Manor showing the open field system and the names of the farmers who farmed within the manor. As many of the notations were upside down I have also included an enlarged portion below the main map. Both are on the following webpage. http://www.angelfire.com/bc3/woodcom/page21.html refresh with F5 if the maps don't download completely. They are about 350 kb each. A close look at this map shows it is quite a bit different to Laxton which if I remember correctly only had four main fields. Chilson has many more fields of all shapes and sizes and the strips would not have followed any rules regarding lengths there. Also of interest is that quite a few farmers had several strips in the same field but they are not often adjacent to each other regards Chris Bartlett ==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== Going away for a while? Don't forget to UNSUBSCRIBE! OLD-ENGLISH-L-request@rootsweb.com