CHAPTER VIII.
NORFOLK AGRICULTURE.
When we come to Norfolk we find hints at so many special features that Norfolk agriculture demands separate treatment. The preamble of a Norfolk Enclosure Act is remarkably different from those for the rest of the country. A typical one is 1795, c. 67:
“Whereas there are in the parish of Sedgeford in the county of Norfolk divers lands and grounds, called whole-year lands, brecks, common fields, half-year or shack lands, commons and waste grounds.... And whereas there are certain rights of sheep-walk, shackage and common, over the said brecks, half-year or shack land, commons and waste grounds. And great part of the said whole-year lands, as well as the brecks, common fields, and half-year or shack lands, are inconveniently situated,” etc.
Or again 1804, c. 24:
“Whereas there are in the parish of Waborne in the county of Norfolk divers lands and grounds called whole-year lands, common fields, doles, half-year or shack lands, commons and waste grounds.”
“Whereas the said common fields, doles, half-year lands, shack lands, commons and waste grounds, are subject to certain rights of sheep-walk, shackage and common, and great part of the said whole-year lands, common fields, and half-year or shack lands are inconveniently situated for the various owners and proprietors thereof....”
Other Norfolk acts mention doles, ings, carrs, and buscallys. Buscallys we may take to mean woods in which rights of common for fuel were practised. Dr. Murray’s Dictionary gives us bushaile or buscayle, from Old French boschaille, Low Latin boscalia, shrubberies, thickets, etc. “Dole,” is connected etymologically both with “deal” and with the word “run-dale,” concerning which see [below]. The word is frequently found elsewhere, as in the “dolemeads” at Bristol and Bath, and usually means meadows, the ownership of which is intermixed in small parcels, which are commonable after hay harvest, but sometimes the word is used of arable land (see [below]). The Act for Earsham, Ditchingham and Hedenham (Norfolk, 1812, c. 17) has the sentence, “The said dole meadow lands lie intermixed and dispersed.” The “ings” and “carrs” are best understood by the help of the old Ordnance Survey map for Norfolk. The carrs are the lowest, swampiest part of the common pastures which reach down to the rivers; the ings, while also low-lying, are separated from the rivers by the carrs, and intervene between the carrs and the tilled lands.
There remain the expressions whole-year lands, half-year or shack lands, and brecks, to interpret.
Half-year lands obviously means lands commonable for half the year, i.e., after the crop has been carried. They are also “shack” lands, or lands on which right of “shackage” exists. “Shack” is connected with “shake,” and right of shackage appears to be the right to carry off the gleanings after the crop has been carried and the fields are thrown open. It is, however, to be noticed that half-year or shack lands are mentioned as something distinct from common fields. The distinction is said to be that common rights on shack lands can be exercised only by the owners or occupiers of those lands. Shack lands may be termed common fields, but the term common field may be reserved for those fields over which cottagers or toft holders or others also possess rights of common.