In message <BAY14-DAV17dWfFMVpH00012150@hotmail.com>, David Pott <davpott@hotmail.com> writes >Hello Audrey > >> However, I would like to know if there is evidence of the meadows being >> enclosed in some way to stop cattle from getting on to the part of land >that >> was growing winter fodder > >There were very few if any herds of cattle, nor with the exception of sheep, >any livestock farming as such until after the enclosures. This is patently wrong, if you study inventories taken in summer, which give detailed lists of all possessions including livestock. Farmers could own numerous animals, (not in the American sense of huge wandering herds, but sizeable numbers), and they certainly owned horses, oxen and cows, as well as expendable bullocks. It is true that, while stores were a permanent feature, many of them were killed and salted down for winter, because of lack of enough fodder, which was one of the reasons for applying for enclosures. > What few animals >that were kept would have been grazed on their owners land But the whole point of this enquriy is that it refers to areas with the openfield system, when the various famers did not normally HAVE grazing land which was enclosed but instead the right to graze on common pasture. The questions concerned how the little devils were kept off the arable and the hay fields. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society