H.L.Gray, writing in 1915, stressed the fact that the Chiltern
Hills lay in a transition area between Midland England, with its
more regular open field arrangements, and the Southeast, with less
regular systems. Basing his conclusions largely on sixteenth and
early seventeenth century surveys, he showed that field systems
within the Hills were different and distinctive from those on either
side. The present study is the first comprehensive account of these
distinctive systems. The medieval field arrangements of four
parishes are examined in detail, and evidence for the whole region
before 1850 is summarised.
The most important features of the Chiltern field systems were:
(1) the high proportion of enclosed arable land, particularly in
the southwest; and (2) the existence of numerous, relatively small,
common fields within the individual township. A three-course
rotation had appeared as early as the twelfth century, and was later
widely followed; but this does not imply the presence of a simple
two- or three-field system. Farm holdings were concentrated in one
part of a township, while the individual common arable holding was
distributed irregularly between only a few of the many common fads.
There was little meadow or grassland pasture, apart from that in parks,
but woods and wastes were important elements, except in the northeast.
The settlement pattern combined elements of both nucleation and
dispersal.
These features had appeared in the area by the mid-thirteenth
century, when large-scale assarting was coming to an end. Their
origins were, as Gray suggested, probably connected with the slow
and piecemeal nature of colonisation in this hilly and heavily
wooded region, and they survived largely unchanged until the mid-sixteenth
century. After c.1550 the common field system began to
disintegrate, with widespread piecemeal enclosure from the common
arable, and almost all traces of the old arrangements bad disappeared
by 1850