Open-field system

The rise of capitalism and the concept of land as a commodity to be bought and sold led to the gradual demise of the open-field system.

France, Germany, and other northern European countries had systems similar to England, although open fields generally endured longer on the continent.

Some elements of the open-field system were practised by early settlers in the New England region of the United States.

[4][5] The most visible characteristic of the open-field system was that the arable land belonging to a manor was divided into many long narrow furlongs for cultivation.

Counting spouses, children, and other dependents, plus landless people, the total population resident in the manor village was probably 500 to 600.

[11] Barley was used in making beer – consumed in large quantities – and mixed with other grains to produce bread that was a dietary staple for the poorer farmers.

At Elton in Cambridgeshire in 1286, perhaps typical of that time in England, the tenants harvested about twice as much barley as wheat with lesser amounts of oats, peas, beans, rye, flax, apples, and vegetables.

[13] Much of the land in the open-field system during medieval times had been cultivated for hundreds of years earlier on Roman estates or by farmers belonging to one of the ethnic groups of Europe.

Germanic and Anglo-Saxon invaders and settlers possibly brought the open-field system to France and England after the 5th century AD.

[14] The open-field system appears to have developed to maturity between AD 850 and 1150 in England, although documentation is scarce prior to the Domesday Book of 1086.

In England, the south-east, notably parts of Essex and Kent, retained a pre-Roman system of farming in small, square, enclosed fields.

The population in Europe grew in the early centuries of the open-field system, doubling in Britain between 1086 and 1300, which required increased agricultural production and more intensive cultivation of farmland.

[15] The open-field system was generally not practised in marginal agricultural areas or in hilly and mountainous regions.

[18] As a consequence the surviving population had access to larger tracts of empty farmland and wages increased due to a shortage of labour.

An economic recession and low grain prices in fifteenth century England gave a competitive advantage to the production of wool, meat, and milk.

The author of the term "tragedy of the commons", Garrett Hardin, pointed out that the pastures of England were "protected from ruin by limiting each tenant to a fixed number of animals".

[23][24] The fact that the open-field system endured for roughly a thousand years over a large part of Europe and provided a livelihood to a growing population indicates that there might not have been a better way of organizing agriculture during that time period.

[25][26] However, some argue that the pastures of England were actually highly managed; they were considered to be privately owned by the village as a whole, which led to a communal sense of responsibility to maintaining the land.

Karl Marx was extremely opposed to the enclosure of the open field system, calling it a "robbery of the common lands".

[28] The "brave new world" of a harsher, more competitive and capitalistic society from the 16th century onward destroyed the securities and certainties of land tenure in the open-field system.

It was finally laid to rest in England about 1850 after more than 5,000 Acts of Parliament and just as many voluntary agreements[30] over several centuries had transformed the "scattered plots in the open fields" into unambiguous private and enclosed properties free of village and communal control and use.

[33] In Russia, the open-field system, called "cherespolositsa" ("alternating ribbons (of land)") and administered by the obshchina / mir (the general village community), remained as the main system of peasant land ownership in Russia until the Stolypin reform process that started in 1905, but generally continued for many years, finally ending only with the Soviet policy of collectivisation in the 1930s.

It is thought that its anomalous survival is due to the inability of two early 19th-century landowners to agree on how the land was to be enclosed, thus resulting in the perpetuation of the existing system.

It is still farmed with due regard to its ancient origins and is conserved by those who recognise its importance although the number of owners has fallen dramatically throughout the years and this has resulted in the amalgamation of some of the strips.

Vestiges of an open-field system also persist in the Isle of Axholme, North Lincolnshire, around the villages of Haxey, Epworth and Belton, where long strips, of an average size of half an acre, curve to follow the gently sloping ground and are used for growing vegetables or cereal crops.