The manor

In the year 1500, nine out of ten English men, women, and children lived in the countryside. They worked on the land. Their homes were in villages or small hamlets. They ate mainly what they grew themselves.

In many places there were still villages with three (or four) open fields, divided into strips. Most of the villagers had one or two strips in each field, and paid rent for them to the lord of the manor. Each year, the peasants grew crops (such as wheat, barley, or beans) in two (or three) of the fields. All the peasants worked together to plough, sow the seed, and reap the harvest. Each man kept the crops which grew on his strips.

As well as the open fields, each manor had some common land. The villagers could keep animals there - sheep, cattle, or pigs. Even the poorest peasants could use the common. Most of the animals had to be killed in the autumn, because there was no food for them in the winter. The meat was salted to preserve it, and kept until it was eaten or sold.

You could find villages with open fields all over the Midlands of England. In much of the north and the south-east, the land was divided into smaller fields without strips, and there was no common. These were called enclosed villages.

Walter Robson: Crown, Parliament and People; Oxford University Press, 1992/2002, page 4