Template:Wp-Deddington-History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

In 1591 a survey of Deddington reported that "the soyle... is verye firtile yeldinge greate store of corne and pasture". After the Black Death the town seems to have grown wealthy. The more successful peasant farmers increased their lands and in 1445 formed a Guild of the Holy Trinity. The guild had a Warden or Master, and owned a hall and property somewhere in the town. In 1523–24 Deddington residents paid £62 8s 10d in tax on personal estate (land, goods or wages). This was far more than Banbury (£38 15s), Adderbury (£25 1s) or Bloxham (£23 19s 10d).

From the Saxon era onwards most of the land was farmed under an open-field system. The earliest and simplest such system had two arable common fields and left one fallow each year. This seems to have been Deddington's system until at least the 14th century, from which time there are several references to North and South fields. But there are also occasional Medieval references to East and West fields, and no plan of the fields is known to survive. In the 13th and 14th centuries Clifton and Hempton each had a two-field system separate from Deddington's. One of the Hundred Rolls from 1279–80 records that Ilbury did too.

By the 16th century Deddington's land management was evolving. A record from 1574 states that for at least the last 50 years a field called the Crofts was part of the common field system for three years out of four, but it and "the feyldes thereunto adiogning" were "hened" (i.e. withdrawn) from St Matthias' Day (24 February) to midsummer every fourth year. Clearly this group of fields at least was now part of a four-field system of crop rotation. This was certainly the case by 1808, when Deddington practiced a four-year rotation of fallow, wheat, barley, and peas or beans.

In 1807 a land surveyor reported to the Dean and Canons of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle that in Deddington parish he found "all the Grass Lands in the open Fields in a much worse state than most of the Commonable Land in the County, and some of the Arable Land in a wretched state of cultivation". He recommended that the land could be greatly improved, but only if it were first inclosed. But the fields of Hempton were intermixed with those of the neighbouring parish of Great Barford (now Barford St. Michael), so the two parishes would have to be inclosed at the same time. Accordingly, in 1808 Parliament passed a private member's bill that was the Inclosure Act for Deddington and Great Barford.