at the upper end and ceorls (churls) at the lower. A man could only be a thane if he owned at least five hides of land – a hide being roughly fifty hectares – and a ceorls was literally ‘a non-servile peasant farmer,’ who farmed land under obligation to a succession of landlords, who changed according to the outcome of various territorial squabbles.
INNOVATIONS IN AGRICULTURE WERE NON-EXISTENT AND IT WOULD BE SOME TIME BEFORE THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM WAS ADOPTED … A CHANGE THAT WOULD DEVELOP OVER THE NEXT TWO CENTURIES AND AGAIN ALTER THE FACE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE FOR GENERATIONS TO COME.
The standard cereal crops were grown but the area under arable production had fallen considerably, with much of the land previously under cultivation reverting to rough pasture, scrub and woodland. Ceorls resumed the Iron Age practice of a simple two-field rotation, typically farming one or two hides of land in small irregular-shaped fields with rough hedging or earth banks. Innovations in agriculture were non-existent and it would be some time before the open-field system was adopted, where ceorls worked co-operatively, sharing the expense of a team of oxen to plough the large common fields in narrow strips that were shared out alternately so that each farmer had an equal share of good and bad land – a change that would develop over the next two centuries and again alter the face of the countryside for generations to come.
Livestock would have generally been farmed in small numbers sufficient only for the farmsteads’ needs and dependent on how much could be grown to feed them through the winter. Cattle were kept primarily for milk, or as beasts of burden, and eventually for their meat and hides. Sheep were kept for milk and wool. All settlements had a few self-sufficient goats producing milk, even from the poorest diet, and large herds of pigs browsing in the adjacent woods.
When they weren’t fighting, hunting was an important part of the lives of Anglo-Saxon thanes, with horses and hounds regarded as valuable status symbols, often being buried with their owners, such as the one at Lakenheath, in Suffolk. Later much of this land was consolidated into the large estates of wealthy nobles and the Church. Ceorls might work the land in return for service or produce, or they might work the lord’s land a given number of days per year. As time went on, more and more of these large estates were established as integrated commercial enterprises, complete with sophisticated water mills to grind grain, such as the ones at Corbridge in Northumberland, Tamworth in Staffordshire, or Old Windsor in Berkshire.
By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period an increasing number of lords had led to a division of the landscape into smaller blocks, more akin to today’s parishes, often with a single large manor and its associated church. Trade with Europe and Scandinavia in hides, wool and slaves was picking up and craftsmen were beginning to form themselves into guilds, such as the Fellmongers, Horsemongers, Flshmongers, Shieldwrights, Shoewrights, Turners and Salterers. A new socioeconomic order was becoming established which was centred on the church and monasteries, the climate entered a warm cycle and Britain started to become prosperous again. This prosperity is reflected by the periodic discovery of rich hoards of Anglo-Saxon treasure, such as the priceless discoveries at Sutton Hoo or the 1,500 pieces of gold objects found by a metal detector in a Staffordshire field in 2009. Nor is there any shortage of archaeological sites: Spong Hill at North Elmham in Norfolk, the largest Anglo-Saxon cemetery, with associated field boundaries, enclosures and sunken huts; or West Stow, where an entire village has been excavated. There is also an extensive site at Cheddar, in Somerset, where King Edmond had his palace and settlements in the Yorkshire Wolds, such as Wharram Percy and Cottam; sites at Loughborough, Barrow and Rothley in Leicestershire; Yardley and Kings Norton near Birmingham and Langford in Oxfordshire, which formed part of a large comital estate, probably including Broadwell and Great Faringdon.
ADVANCES IN FARMING
The Normans arrived in an aggressive blizzard of super-efficiency. Within a matter of years, rebellion was quashed and the old Anglo-Saxon aristocracy eliminated. The estates of the 4,000 or so principal Anglo-Saxon landowners were confiscated and divided among just 170 Norman knights. By 1096, all Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics had been replaced by Normans and the extensive church lands were in Duke William’s hands. Fifty per cent of Britain was now owned, subject to their obligation to the King, by the 170 ‘tenants in chief, whilst William and the Church owned the rest. Because he was able to grant his followers vast tracts of land at little cost to himself, William’s prestige increased tremendously. His awards also had a basis in consolidating his own control; with each gift of land and titles the newly created feudal lord would have to build a fortified manor or castle and subdue the local Anglo-Saxons. The social structure of the country was organised round the system of feudalism, which was built upon a relationship of obligation and mutual service between vassals and lords, with everyone owing fealty to the King. In practice the country was not governed by the King but by individual lords, or barons, who administered their own estates, dispensed their own justice, minted their own money, levied taxes and tolls, and demanded military service from vassals who held land as a grant from a lord. As the country settled down after the Conquest, small farmsteads started to nucleate, hamlets formed and the familiar landscape of villages, manor houses and churches took shape.
A typical Norman estate consisted of a manor house, one or more villages and up to several thousand acres of land divided into meadow, pasture, forest and cultivated fields. Fields were further divided into strips: a third for the lord of the manor, less for the church, and the remainder for the peasants and serfs who worked the land. This land was shared out so that each person had equal portions of good and poor. At least half the working week was spent on the land belonging to the lord and the church. Time might also be spent doing maintenance and on special projects such as clearing land, cutting firewood, and building roads and bridges. The rest of the time the villagers were free to work their own land.
The open-field system developed by the Saxons was widely adopted by 1100 AD; land was divided into strips and allocated amongst the community on a changing basis. This gave rise to a ridge and furrow effect across the field where the soil in the strip was continually ploughed back into the centre of itself and away from adjoining strips. Ridge and furrow often survives on higher ground where the arable land was subsequently turned over to sheep walks in the fifteenth century and has never been ploughed out since by modern ploughing methods, today surviving as pasture and grazing for sheep where the effect is clearly visible, especially in certain lighting conditions. A defining feature of medieval ridge and furrow is the curved ends making the overall shape of an elongated reverse-S. This arose because of the tendency of the team of oxen ploughing with the primitive single furrow ploughs to pull to the left, in preparation for making the turn.
This shape survives in some places as curved field boundaries, even where the ridge and furrow pattern itself has long since been ploughed flat. Some of the best-preserved ridge and furrow survives in the Midlands up on high ground in the counties of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire. There are very good examples at East Leake in Nottinghamshire, Grendon in Northamptonshire and the Vale of Evesham in Warwickshire. There are many others in different parts of the country, such as Ledgers Park, near Chelsham, in Surrey; Thrislington, in Durham; Willen, near Milton Keynes; Allestree Park, in Derby; Willington Worthenbury, near Bangor Is-y-coed, North Wales; and a particularly well-preserved example at the Braid Hills golf course in Edinburgh. It has been estimated that three and a half million hectares were under cultivation, and as the more productive three-field rotation of cultivation used by the Romans became universally adopted, arable production increased by 50 per cent, helped by the continuing warm climatic cycle.
Horses started to be used for the first time to replace the slower oxen for ploughing, which helped to increase the speed of cultivation. Large numbers of cattle were kept on the un-ploughable valley slopes and, as ever, goats, fowl and pigs for personal consumption. Rabbits were farmed
