The Open Field in Devonshire

Abstract

It has been generally agreed that Devonshire lies outside the area formerly cultivated under the open-field system. The map which serves as frontispiece to Gray’s monograph on the subject shows the western boundary of the open-field area beginning in west Dorsetshire and passing up northward across Somerset so as to exclude Devon, Cornwall, and west Somerset. Dr and Mrs Orwin, while revising and correcting Gray’s data at several points, are emphatic where the south-western counties are concerned. ‘In Lancashire, Devon, and Cornwall, there is nothing to indicate that the system [of open fields] was ever followed’. Recent text-books naturally follow in the wake of these authorities. Professor Darby, for example, writes that in Cornwall, and by implication in Devon also, the prevailing type of rural economy ‘had no relation to the three-field system’ ; and he illustrates his remarks with a reproduction of Gray’s map.One well-known fact, which at first sight appears irreconcilable with these pronouncements, was not overlooked by the authors. I refer to the existence at Braunton, in northwest Devon, of an open field of some 350 acres, divided into nearly five hundred arable strips of intermixed ownership. ‘Some persons own very many of the strips scattered all over the field ; that is to say, several strips in almost every division of it. Others have a few only, one here and there. But in all cases the strips of one owner are everywhere separated from each other by interposed strips of other owners . . . The line of demarcation between any two strips is commonly indicated by a narrow unploughed balk . . . The lesser plots appear as a rule to approximate in area to half an acre, more or less, and the others to multiples of this quantity . . . Very few exceed the limit of two acres’.