Once a year, at about Christmas, the tenants of each manor met, the steward presiding; the elected officials submitted their accounts, and resigned their offices, and their successors were re-elected. The most important of these were two “viewers of the fields and tellers of the cattle,” commonly known simply as the “viewers.” There was also a “hayward,” and two “chimney peepers” (described in the Court-rolls as “inspectors of chimnies”). The inspectors of chimneys do not appear in the rolls of the eighteenth century; instead are the more important officials the “constabul” (sic) and “tythingman,” who ceased to be appointed presumably after the establishment of the county police and the commutation of the tithes.
The duty of the “chimney peepers” was, as their name implies, to see that chimneys were kept properly swept so as not to endanger a neighbour’s thatched roof. The hayward was in charge of the pound; he was entitled to charge 4d. a head for all stray beasts impounded if they belonged to the manor, and 8d. a head for outsiders.
The “viewers” had more varied duties. In the first place they had to appoint one villager as “Lacy’s Bridge man.” “Lacy’s Bridge” is a structure of loose stones at a place where the stream, which for the most part bounds Stratton meadow, crosses it; and the duty of the bridge man is to keep it in sufficient repair to enable sheep to cross. The viewers used to appoint the cottagers in turn, going down one side of the road to the end of the village and up the other side.
Next the viewers provided the manor bull. They bought the bull, they charged a fee for his services, and made all necessary regulations. The breed favoured varied from year to year, and the viewers were never known to please everybody with their choice.
Then the viewers appointed the common shepherd, in whose charge were the sheep of the whole manor almost all through the year. And in general they had to enforce all the decisions of the court with regard to the times when sheep or cows should be allowed in the meadow, when the sheep should come into the “hatching ground,” how and where horses should be tethered, and particularly to see that each tenant sowed his clover properly. And when the hay in the meadow was ripe, they marked out to each tenant the plots which fell to his share that year. It was usual to re-elect one of the viewers, so that though there was an annual election, each viewer held office for two years, being for the first year the junior viewer, for the second the senior.
There is much that is interesting in the management of the sheep flock. From April 6th to September 18th the sheep fed by day on the down, and were folded by night on the fallow field. The fold began at the top of the field, and gradually worked downwards, covering about half-an-acre every night, and so manuring the whole. There being no other water supply on the downs, all the tenants had to take turns to carry up water to fill the water-troughs, and the viewers saw that they did so. On September 18th the sheep came into the “hatching ground,” on which, as we have seen, clover had been sown; and it is noticeable that this crop, sown individually by each copyholder on his own lands, was fed off by the common flock under the supervision of the common shepherd. In winter the sheep belonging to each tenant had to be folded separately; and the doles and new closes were used for wintering the sheep. Some made it a practice to sell off their flock when feed became scanty, and to buy again the next spring; but the traditional custom was to keep the sheep till they were four or five years old, at which age they became fat, perhaps by superior cunning; meanwhile, of course, they had been yielding wool and manure. In later years, though every half living was entitled to forty sheep, by a common agreement the number was limited to twenty-five in spring, and later in the year to thirty-five, when the lambs reached the age at which they were counted as sheep in the calculation of common rights.
Perhaps the most curious feature in the local system of agriculture was the management of the common meadow. Sheep were allowed in it from March 1st to April 6th (it would only bear ten or eleven), then they had to come out and join the common flock, and the grass was let grow to hay. At hay time the viewers went out and by the help of some almost imperceptible ridges in the soil, and certain pegs driven into the river banks, they marked out to each tenant the plots on which he was allowed to cut and gather the hay. There were forty-seven of these little plots; twenty-seven of them were definite parts of particular copyholds, but nineteen were “changeable allotments,” each of which belonged one year to one holding, the next year to another, according to certain rules; while the remaining allotment, a little three-cornered plot in the middle called “100 Acres,” amounting perhaps to five perches in area, was divided among the holders of the adjacent “Long lands.” On July 6th, the hay having been carried, the cows came in, and grazed in the meadow till November 23rd, and then the meadow was watered.
I have before me the [map] of the meadow, now somewhat tattered, being drawn upon a half sheet of thin foolscap, and a little notebook recording particulars of the different plots in the meadow, and in the case of the changeable allotments, who were entitled to them each year from 1882 to about 1905, which the viewers used in partitioning the meadow. The [map] I reproduce. The notebook reads[4]:—