File:Wessex (1906) (14592395638).jpg

Identifier: wessex00hollrich (find matches)
Title: Wessex
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Holland, Clive, 1866- Tyndale, Walter, 1855-1943
Subjects: Dorset (England) -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : Adam & Charles Black
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ay central authority, often ignorantof the local needs which had to be met. In the first two or three centuries which ensued afterthe Norman Conquest the position of villeins andcottiers changed very materially ; the former graduallybecame free tenants who had their own land and paidrent to the lord of the manor, whilst the lattergradually became enfranchised from the labour ofservitude, and worked for wages like the agriculturallabourer. In some of the account-books which havebeen left behind by long-dead ancestors of the Wessexfolk of the present time, we find that land about themiddle of the thirteenth century and for a long periodafterwards was valued at sixpence per acre—rich land,turned in many places for the first time in its history byplough and spade, and from which crops possibly neveragain equalled were obtained. In those days the landwas ploughed three times a year, and the labourer wentforth in the pure air of early dawn and returned home i6 CORFE FROM THE CASTLE SLOPES
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c c c c c > Wessex in Norman Times before sunset after a long days toil. The ploughingseasons were autumn, April, and midsummer ; and inthe Wessex meads and upon the hillsides teams of oxendrove straight, clean cuts into the soil, from which ingood years an abundant harvest was extracted. Womenhelped in the harvesting, and even with the ploughing,and an old chronicler describes the scene of a farmerswife stalking short-coated and with bare feet alongsidethe ox team, goad in hand. Although pigs and poultrywere much in evidence upon the Wessex farms ofmediaeval times, the chief source of the farmers wealthwas sheep, which roamed the hills and vales almost atliberty, called homeward only occasionally, or whenrequired for shearing, that their rich fleeces might besent to Ghent and Bruges for weaving into the famousmakes of Flemish cloth. Year by year the prosperity of the village life in ruralEngland increased, and in times of peace nothing wasfeared save two calamities—a bad harvest

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