In a corner of the parish is Laxton Heath, a common covered with coarse grass where the sheep are grazed according to a ‘stint’ recently determined upon, for when it was unstinted the common was overstocked.  The commonable meadows which the parish once had were enclosed at a date beyond anyone’s recollection, though the neighbouring parish of Eakring still has some.  There are other enclosures in the remote parts of the parish which apparently represent the old woodland.  The inconvenience of the common-field system was extreme.  South Luffenham in Rutland, not enclosed till 1879, consisted of 1,074 acres divided among twenty-two owners into 1,238 pieces.  In some places furrows served to divide the lands instead of turf balks, which were of course always being altered.  Another difficulty arose from there being no check to high winds, which would sometimes sweep the whole of the crops belonging to different farmers in an inextricable heap against the nearest obstruction.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, p. 18; Medley, Constitutional History, p. 15.

[2] Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. 257.

[3] Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 341 et seq.

[4] Stubbs, Constitutional History, Sec.36.

[5] Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, p. 282, says, ‘As a rule it was not subject to redivision.’

[6] Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i. 42.

[7] Maitland, op. cit. p. 368.

[8] Anonymous Treatise on Husbandry, Royal Historical Society, pp. xli. and 68.  About 1230, Smyth, in his Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 113, says, ’At this time lay all lands in common fields, in one acre or ridge, one man’s intermixt with another.’

[9] See below.

[10] Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i. 74.  Maitland thinks the two-field system was as common as the three-field, both in early and mediaeval times. Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 366.

[11] Nasse, Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages, p. 5.  To-day harvest generally commences about August 1, so that this, like the growth of grapes in mediaeval times, seems to show our climate has grown colder.

[12] Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, p. 264.

[13] Maitland, op. cit. p. 17.

[14] Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, p. 265.

[15] Maitland, op. cit. pp. 318 et seq.

[16] Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, p. 345.

[17] Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, p. 339.

[18] Maitland, Domesday Book, p. 110

[19] Vinogradoff, op. cit. p. 395.

[20] Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, pp. 225 et seq.