The Common Fields of England

The common fields of England makes an original and vital contribution to the understanding of English rural history, investigating the origins, practices, characteristics and historical significance of the common fields system.Eric Kerridge offers a distinctive examination of the rise of common fields, looking at the early agricultural techniques and methods of estate management and showing how these laid the foundations of the later field system. The author highlights the importance of the ridge and furrow method of ploughing and of sheep-and-corn husbandry. The Germanic roots of these developments are also traced. Eric Kerridge shows how the Dark Age innovations were combined in England to produce the first system for permanent cultivation, displacing systems of temporary and shifting cultivation such as slash-and-burn techniques. This advance formed a moving frontier that started in the West and concluded in nineteenth-century Russia.Specific chapters on rotations, sheepfolding, town government and Continental common fields also offer detailed and searching analyses of the direction, of agricultural developments across Europe as a whole.The book will interest economic historians, historical geographers and archaeologists.