10. The Saxon Countryside

The story so far has been of plague, famine and anarchy. Scroll forward to around 600 AD, and things had improved. Two powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Wessex and Mercia, had emerged from the fractured mess of southern Britain. Later, they were joined by Danes who arrived as raiders but settled in places. Their respective fortunes and territories waxed and waned. If you are interested, you can see the progress in this neat little video.  Link: Engelond

Saxon Subbuteo Team

As things settled down a bit, people took advantage of the empty spaces. As the population expanded again, the landscape became one of dispersed farms and hamlets. More fertile land was occupied, woodland clearance restarted, and more difficult land on the higher ground and in the clay vales was brought into use. These people knew what they were doing, rotating the use of their fields and applying natural fertilisers, mostly dung and sometimes chalk or limestone, where the soils were acidic.   

The images we get of Medieval times usually focus on Kings, Queens, wars and castles. But towns were small, the Norman aristocracy was a small and irritatingly powerful minority, and most people lived in the countryside. Here, I focus on the lives and livelihoods of the ordinary Saxons: Edward, Edmund, and Edgar. We can call him Ed. Or Edith, if you prefer. The work would have been shared even if the experience differed. The rural landscape bequeathed by their efforts has been supplanted in most areas, but traces remain. 

In the early Saxon period, land ownership was often divided into smallholdings known as hides, with the legal or effective ownership resting with a community, family, individual or landlord with hereditary rights. In short, it was messy. The detailed arrangements varied across regions, but a common factor was an obligation to pay a tithe or render service to a ruler if called upon. That might be produce, goods, military, or some other service, such as building those ramparts. 

Early Medieval Village

All this time, the landscape itself was changing. This was most pronounced in cleared, lowland areas where arable farming predominated. As the population increased, the haphazard pattern of self-sufficient Saxon agriculture slowly evolved into a more collective arrangement underpinned by law and customary practice and aimed at making the best use of land and water resources. It was based on hamlets and villages surrounded by large, open fields.

Three Field System

Around each settlement, there might typically be two or later three of these fields together with some communally enjoyed grazing and woodland. Every year, two of the three fields would typically be used for a crop of spring or winter wheat or Barley. You might also see oats, and in a few places the beautiful blue Linseed flowers, which were used to make Linen. Each household in the village would be allocated several of the strips on a rotational basis, giving every household a fair share of the better land. Presumably, this would be agreed over a warm pint in Ye Olde Saucy Sow.

This is known as 'Champion' countryside, probably derived from mangling the pronunciation of the 'campagne', the French word for countryside. It required cooperation. The expense of a team of oxen to draw the ploughs would need to be shared, and everyone was involved in the sowing and harvesting. Each household would keep the produce from their own strips and also some livestock on the 'common' and fallow land. Water, a problem in some areas, could be used more efficiently. Odds on, most of them would have had a vegetable garden as well. Baldrick needed his turnips. 

Early Medieval Open Fields

For smallholders, co-operation always made sense. It still does. My grandfather had a small Irish hill farm and shared an old tractor and the job of harvesting with neighbours. His crop would mostly be used to feed his small herd of cows. He wasn't exactly an agreeable bloke, so it is a tribute to the early communities that, despite the scope for arguments among neighbours, they made it work. Some now look back on this as a collectivist nirvana, fine-tuned to nature. This requires the rosiest of rosy spectacles. Life on Grandad's smallholding was socially claustrophobic, uncomfortable and unforgiving. 

The system was practical rather than compulsory, but because it pre-dates written records, it isn't clear how and when it emerged. I see how it would give most people a fair share of the best land, but I wonder how they ensured an equally fair share of the work! Now, the only place where it is still (proudly!) practised is Laxton in Nottinghamshire. Google it or visit; they have a tiny explanatory museum next to the pub.  And if you want to see how they manage it, check this link: Laxton Manorial System

Laxton in 1635

Laxton Open Fields Today

Generally, while life in southeast was disrupted by garrulous politics and fighting, the pattern of farming didn't change very much, the population grew and England became moderately prosperous which enticed invaders. At its simplest, the better-drained land was used for crops, the valley meadows were enjoyed by the cows, pigs snuffled in the woods, sheep grazed the downland and woodland was tended to provide fuel and building materials.

Nasty Normans

As any skoolboy kno, in 1066 A.D., Duke Bill & His Nasty Normans turned up at Hastings. In the two centuries that followed, it seems that God loved the Normans even if the English didn't. This is known as the 'Medieval Warm Period'. Climate change might have accelerated recently, but it is nothing new. Then, the sun was more inclined to shine, the country continued to prosper for a while, and the population grew further, perhaps to 5 million. 

To an even greater extent, the good land was intensively exploited, and marginal and waste land brought into use, even though swathes still survived as Commons and Greens.  

Domesday Data Collection

As I understand it, the arrival of the Normans didn’t itself change the layout of the countryside or the day-to-day management of farming so much as who profited from it. The old system of ‘free’ farmers holding land in their own right but with obligations to the King or his vassals was replaced by the feudal system of holding land under a Lord of the Manor or other landowner, to whom there was a more structured and specific obligation to pay a rent in kind or a service. 

Under the Norman yoke

This efficient way of gouging the peasantry had actually started earlier. In effect, rather than owning your plot and being periodically press-ganged into nipping off to fight a war, you held your land at the Lord’s pleasure and with the obligation to do some of his farming for him, thus freeing up a bit more time for him to buff up his religious credentials by going on crusade, to invade France or party. This Feudalism and its relationship with the Normans was like the relationship between the British and slavery. We certainly didn’t invent it, but organised it more thoroughly. 

Revolting Peasants

This wasn't by any means a universal pattern. If you looked at any particular area with the magnifying glass, the actual arrangement would likely be much more complex. Many small parcels of land held would be privately and splattered with discreet arrangements for institutions such as the monasteries and Abbeys, the King's own land and the Lord's demesne. (pronounced like 'domain').

All good things come to an end. During the 1300s, the climate became colder and wetter as England slowly headed towards a 'Little Ice Age'. There were others later, and you might have seen pictures of the frozen Thames. The icing on the cake was the Black Death, which arrived in 1348 and did what bubonic plagues usually do, returning intermittently until it culminated in the Great Plague of 1665. 

A deterioration in farming practices compounded the problem.  As the population grew, the more fertile land was overused to the point of exhaustion, and more was devoted to crops than livestock, reducing natural fertilisation. As failing harvests led to the deadliest famine in European history, the population was 'rightsized'.

Where was the King while all this was going on? Apart from a tea break in the worst of the plague years, he was wasting treasure and able bodies fighting the Hundred Years' War with the French. Agincourt might have inspired Shakespeare's ripping yarn about Henry V, but it provided no benefit to the poor, hungry sods turning sods in the rain-lashed fields.

Making the best of it

Overall, the weather gods, the rats and their passengers, starvation and greedy monarchs possibly halved the population. This had three lasting effects on the countryside: the slow demise of the Open Fields System, the desertion of many settlements and a massive increase in sheep farming. Those will be the themes of the following post. 

Next Post : Privatising the Land