The present rural landscape of the Pays de Bray is characterized by hamlets, dispersed farmsteads and hedgebounded pastures, which contrast with the open fields and nucleated villages of much of northern France. An interpretation of the Brayon pattern has been sought in the history of local land-use and ownership conditions. The denuded anticline of Bray long contained a large area of marsh, moor and heath used for extensive grazing. The creation of hamlets and isolated farmsteads on the retreating margins of this uncultivated zone may be dated back to the mid-thirteenth century and continued until the nineteenth century. This process of dispersion resulted from the decisions of lay and ecclesiastical landowners and from the work of their agents. Such actions were complemented by the piecemeal clearance of plots and the construction of shacks by peasant squatters. Ownership disputes between peasant commoners and local seigneurs prevented the implementation of a series of grandiose improvement schemes during the eighteenth century. After the Revolution the situation was changed by expropriation and new legislation concerning the possible division of former commonlands. The uncultivated areas were enclosed and divided into new fields for the former commoners. However, this was not achieved without difficulty in western Bray. Virtually the whole area was under cultivation by the time of the first cadastral survey and many new isolated farmsteads had been established. The process of bocage creation continued during the nineteenth century and intensified during its closing decades as areas of openfield arable on the margins of Bray were divided into hedge-bounded pastures in response to changes brought about by improved transport, increased Parisian demands for dairy products and, above all, by agricultural changes of an international scale. THE RURAL landscape of the Pays de Bray, astride the historic provinces of Normandy and Picardy, provides an important exception to the openfield generalization for northern France postulated in the early writings of M. Bloch and R. Dion, since the Brayon landscape is one of perennial verdure, imparted by its woodlands and permanent pastures enclosed by hedgerows (Figs. i and 2).1 These features combine with a rural settlement pattern of isolated farmsteads and hamlets to create an island of bocage, more characteristic of western than northern France, which contrasts with the 'champion' landscape of the surrounding plateaux and the scarp-foot 'first terrace' of Bray.2 This denuded anticline is composed of a succession of strata, from the middle Cretaceous to the Jurassic, which provides a range of sands and clays to nourish streams which flow both directly to the Channel and to the River Seine. The aqueous nature of Bray, with poor natural drainage, stands in contrast with the streamless plateaux. The popular interpretation of Brayon settlement and land-use patterns has been that they were direct responses to the well-watered environment, with dispersed farms and enclosed fields being explained by the ready availability of water, a long-established tradition of grassland farming and the reputed individualism of the Brayon character. An analysis of historical documentary and cartographic evidence suggests that this explanation is unacceptable since, as Dion stressed in I946, the landuse pattern of the core of Bray has not always been one of permanent grassland; indeed until the early nineteenth century it was 'filled with marshes and swamp, divided by moors and heaths'.3 The present paper attempts to summarize the varying fortunes of such areas beyond the realm of permanent cultivation, which will be referred to collectively as 'wasteland'. This term has been used in preference to 'commonland'. Certainly most uncultivated areas were legally held 'in common', but this was not always the case. Medieval and later improvements will be indicated but particular emphasis will be placed on the post-Revolutionary clearance