Lynches, or linces.

A less universal but equally peculiar feature of the open field system in hilly districts is the 'lynch,' and it may often be observed remaining when every other trace of an open field has been removed by enclosure. Its right of survival lies in its indestructibility. When a hill-side formed part of the open field the strips almost always were made to run, not up and down the hill, but horizontally along it; and in ploughing, the custom for ages was always to turn the sod of the furrow downhill, the plough consequently always returning one way idle. If the whole hill-side were ploughed in one field, this would result in a gradual travelling of the soil from the top to the bottom of the field, and it might not be noticed. But as in the open field system the hill-side was ploughed in strips with unploughed balks between them, no sod could pass in the ploughing from one strip to the next; but the process of moving the sod downwards would go on age after age just the same within each individual strip. In other words, every year's ploughing took a sod from the higher edge of the strip and put it on the lower edge; and the result was that the strips became in time long level terraces one above the other, and the balks between them [p006] grew into steep rough banks of long grass covered often with natural self-sown brambles and bushes. These banks between the plough-made terraces are generally called lynches, or linces; and the word is often applied to the terraced strips themselves, which go by the name of 'the linces.' [5]

Butts.

Where the strips abruptly meet others, or abut upon a boundary at right angles, they are sometimes called butts.

Gored acres. No man's land.

Two other small details marking the open field system require only to be simply mentioned. Corners of the fields which, from their shape, could not be cut up into the usual acre or half-acre strips, were sometimes divided into tapering strips pointed at one end, and called 'gores,' or 'gored acres.' In other cases little odds and ends of unused land remained, which from time immemorial were called 'no man's land,' or 'any one's land,' or 'Jack's land,' as the case might be.

Hitchin, Purwell Field.
Proprietors Names With Their Numbers.

See [Larger].
Go to: [List of Illustrations]

Thus there are plenty of outward marks and traits by which the open common field may be recognised wherever it occurs,—the acre or half-acre [p007] strips or seliones, the gored shape of some of them, the balks and sometimes lynches between them, the shots or furlongs (quarentenæ) in which they lie in groups, the headlands which give access to the strips when they lie off the field-ways, the butts, and lastly the odds and ends of 'no man's land.'