Locational decision-making on a Scottish estate prior to enclosure

Journal of Historical Geography 5, 1 (1979) 33-43

Locational decision-making on a Scottish estate prior to enclosure G. Whittington and D. U. Brett

Before the main burst of agricultural improvements, taking place in Scotland in the latter part of the eighteenth century, farming was carried out from fermtouns; these were groupings of farmsteadings and their fields. This paper seeks to determine the factors underlying the decisions that were taken in the location of the farmsteads and the different elements into which the agricultural land was divided. Isolated forexamination are the distance-decay function and natural environmental factors, basically those of soil conditions. The importance of natural soil drainage conditions appears to

decide the location of both intensively and extensively cultivated land while in many cases the farmsteadings also lie closest to the permanent arable land. Definite statements about the decision-making process cannot, however, be made due to our present rudimentary understanding of the stability of settlement sites and the true origins of the infield-outfield system.

Prior to the main period of enclosure and the full flowering of the Improving Movement, the agricultural landscape of Scotland was characterized by numerous small nuclei of farmsteadings, the fermtouns, surrounded by land farmed to varying degrees of intensity. It is possible to view this landscape, just as with the modern one, as basically consisting of two major components, the central farm buildings and the land exploited from that centre. These two components lie in intimate relationship one with the other, it being possible to regard one component as the input centre and the other as the output zone. Each of these components, and in the case of the farm-land component it is necessary to recognize that it consists of several sub-divisions, has a precise location. These locations must be the result of a conscious decision-making process. The purpose of this paper is to see if any light can be shed upon the way in which the location decision was taken. An example of a fermtoun is given in Fig. 1. The fermtoun of Meickle Tullo contains four tenant farmers, each of whom has a small house, some with an attached kailyard. Lying in irregular shapes and uneven sizes around the fermtoun is the cultivated land. The infield, which was kept in constant cultivation and received all the manure available on the farm, amounts to 12.80 acres. Lying in most instances beyond the infield is the outfield, land that was cultivated on a rotation system and which only received such manure as occurred from the folding of cattle on this land at night during the summer months; the outfield comprises 8.97 acres. The remainder of the farm was mainly divided between pasture (23.77 acres) and moorland (7260 acres). The pasture was nothing more than natural grassland which would have been carefully protected from the cattle in order to provide a meagre fodder crop. The moorland served two purposes. It was the grazing land for the cattle during the summer months and also at other times when the weather allowed cattle to be out of the byre. It was also 0305-7488/79/010033

+ 11 $02.00/O

@ 1979 Academic Press Inc. (London)

Ltd.

34

G. WHITTINGTON

m

m

AND D. U. BRETT

Infield

0

pasture

O”l‘ldd

B

Maorlsh

E3 pasture

Q

Moorland

FarmZtead

an* kl”Wd

Figure I. The farm of Meickle Tulle on the Edzell estate of the Earl of Panmure

as surveyed in 1766 (based on RHP 1665/g in the Scottish Record Office).

the land on which the cottars who provided labour for the tenant farmers lived. A variety of cottars existed[ll and it is notable on this farm that there are “cotts” and a “cottown”. The former would have been occupied by cottars who were involved in providing farm labour but who also had some land on the moorland edge which they cultivated on the usual infield-outfield system. There is no indication, however, that the inhabitants of the cottown were involved in any agricultural land of which they had exclusive usage. They were more probably craftsmen of one sort or another who also sold their labour to the tenant farmers. The Nether Farms in the parish of Edzell belonged in 1766 to William, Earl of Panmure and were surveyed in that year by William Panton. The survey was detailed and in addition to the overall location map (Fig. 2) each of the farms was mapped at a scale of approximately twenty inches to the mile. The area of infield, outfield, pasture, moorland and waste (including moss) was given for each [l] I. H. Adams, 1976) 172

Agrarian

landscape

terms:

a glossary

for historical

geographers

(London

A SCOTTISH ESTATE PRIOR TO ENCLOSURE

0 0

35

?I

SC01 Chdl”S

300

m

Figure 2. The Nether Farms in the parish of Edzell belonging to the Earl of Panmure in 1766 (based on RHP 1665/16 in the Scottish Record Office).

farm and the location of the farmsteadings is clearly indicated. It would appear therefore that these early maps provide a possible means by which a certain decisionmaking process concerning the layout of the early Scottish farm might be revealed. Mention was made earlier of the fact that the agricultural landscape can be considered to consist of two fundamental but inter-related parts-the farmsteading and the farm-land. How was the decision taken to locate the dwelling and stock quarters where they were located and why were certain pieces of land chosen for the various agricultural activities discussed above? Apart from the factor of chance which must always be considered to have existed, it appears logical to advance two hypotheses as to the way in which such decisions were taken. The first of these suggests that the location of the farmsteading (as part of a fermtoun) was decided upon first and that the location of the infleld (intensively used land) and outfield (extensively used land) was fixed by a practical recognition of the distance-decay function postulated for agricultural communities by von Thiinen[ll [l] J. H. von Thiinen, Der Isolierte Staat in Beriehung auf Landwirtschaft (Hamburg 1875)

und Nationaliikonomie

36

G. WHITTINGTON AND D. U. BRETT

and elaborated upon since by other workers. ~1 The infield being constantly cultivated would demand the greater input of work due to the concentrated manuring, sowing and harvesting activities. The outfield being cultivated only in small amounts at any one time would need less frequent visits. Thus it was logical to have the most time-consuming land close to the farmsteading as appears to have been the case around the fermtoun of Meickle Tullo (Fig. 1). But it is also possible to consider the location of the land-use zones and the farmsteading to have been dictated by environmental factors, prime among these being soil condition. At the time when this estate was surveyed and for the period up to that time one of the main problems facing the farmer was the drainage of his land, especially the arable. Drainage could be achieved in two ways: first by the exaggerated development of ridge and furrow whereby the crowns of the ridges were frequently as much as two metres above the adjacent furrow; second by choosing for arable exploitation the soils which were naturally freely draining. Thus an alternative hypothesis as to this decision-making process is that where a variety of soils existed on a farm it was the position of the freely draining soils which determined the location of infield and of less well-drained soils the other land-use zones. Furthermore, it is realistic to assume that farmsteading location was not permanently fixed by its earliest location but that it could adjust to land use in such a way as to minimize the distance of the most intensively farmed areas. Thus the two factors which form the basis of the hypotheses would not operate entirely independently and the most interesting and problematic aspect of the investigation is the consideration of their combined effect. Although this must be borne in mind throughout, it is more convenient to look first at the operation of the factors as though they were independent. The distance-decay hypothesis

To test the distance-decay hypothesis the distance to the infields and outfields on each farm was measured as a straight line from the fermtoun to the centre of each discrete field unit. The straight line distance had to be used in preference to a more realistic measure because, although the maps are detailed, neither the actual route taken to the fields by the farmers nor the distribution of each farmer’s rigs within the fields is shown. Those peripheral patches of cultivation which are unmistakenly connected to cottar dwellings (as in Fig. 1) have been omitted from the analysis as being agricultural developments which postdate the formation of the basic farm unit with its fields and fermtoun. Table 1 shows the average distance from each fermtoun to its infield and outfield. Models produced to show the layout of a pre-enclosure farmC21show the outfield as lying beyond the infield. The analysis of the Edzell estate shows that this generalization can be upheld, but only at a very low level. In seven cases (Braehead, Burnroot, Mains of Edzell, Mill of Inverskandy, Nether Dalfoupar, Sandyhillock, Sheerstripes) the outfield is approximately twice [l] M. D. I. Chisholm, Rural settlement and land use: an essay in location (London 1962); 3. Rutherford, M. I. Logan and G. 3. Missen, New viewpoints in economic geography (Sydney 1966); W. C. Found, A theoretical approach to land-use patterns (London 1971) [2] G. Whittington, Field systems of Scotland, in A. R. H. Baker and R. A. Butlin (Ed& Studies of field systems in the British Isles (Cambridge 1973); J. Wilson, Farming in Aberdeenshire ancient and modern Transactions of the Highland Agricultural Society of Scotland 5th Series 14, (1902)

A SCOTTISH ESTATE PRIOR TO ENCLOSURE

37

TABLE1 Average distance from each farm to its outfield and infield components

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Farm

To Infield (m)

To Outfield (m)

Bonhard Bonsagart and Little Tulle Braehead Bumroot Cowiehill Dallbogg Denhead Dooryhill Ho11 Mains of Edzell Margie and Blairhead Meickle Tullo Mill of Dallbogg Mill of Inverskandy Nether Dalfoupar Sandyhillock Sheerstripes Strowan Upper Dalfoupar Westside Wood

275 226 57 201 198 195 258 241 278 386 230 129 431 326 161 133 128 575 257 322 201

306 238 121 557 173 219 173 121 499 773 388 171 785 629 354 258 258 462 342 250 250

as far away as the infield, but as a counter to that, on five farms (Cowiehill, Denhead, Dooryhill, Strowan and Westside) the outfield is nearer than the infield, while on three more (Bonhard, Bonsagart and Little Tullo and Dallbogg) there is virtually no difference between the two distances. In short, this analysis does not provide conclusive evidence that the distancedecay function was the major element in the locational decision, and therefore lends but weak support to the hypothesis that the farmsteadings’ sites were the prime factor in this decision. The soil condition hypothesis

The alternative hypothesis suggests that it was soil type, especially drainage quality, which led to the land-use pattern and that the location of the farmsteading was irrelevant. In order to examine this the soil mapul was enlarged to the scale of each of the individual farm maps of the Edzell estate. It was then possible to transfer the soil boundaries on to the estate maps and measure the area of infield, outfield, pasture and moorland which lay on each soil type on each of these farms. There were several reasons for choosing the Edzell estate for this whole examination: earliness of the survey, reliability of the surveyor, area1 coverage of the survey and its overall detailed nature. Prime among the reasons, however, was the wide range of soil types to be found in this area of Angus. It was felt that the hypothesis could only be tested where a wide variety of soils in texture and drainage was present; emphasis is placed on the drainage factor which was, as argued above, the most important agricultural determinant in the pre-improving period. The [l] Sheet 57, Forfar, Soil Survey of Scotland (Macaulay Institute of Soil Research, Aberdeen 1961)

38

G. WHITTINGTON

AND D. U. BRETT

soils of the area include freely drained and imperfectly drained iron podsols, non-calcareous gleys, freely drained and imperfectly drained brown forest soils, peaty podsols with pan development, iron podsols freely drained below a pan and alluvium. This second hypothesis will find support if it can be shown that there is a correlation between infield and freely drained soils and between outfield and moorland and the less well-drained soils. In the pre-improving period, the amount of pasture on a farm was a matter of natural environmental conditions and did not enter into a planning of the use of the land. Pasture occurred irrespective of soil type along stream lines and in low-lying areas, indeed wherever drainage conditions favoured grass growth but hindered arable agriculture. As a result, some farms, Margie and Blairhead for example, had large areas of pasture whereas others had little or none at all (Table 2). Under such circumstances it was thought that soil/land-use correlations would be weakened by the inclusion of pasture in the analysis. In view of this it was omitted. Four of the farms (Braehead, Dooryhill, Ho11and Slateford), although operating the usual infield-outfield system, exhibited no soil variation and therefore could not be included in the analysis. To the remaining eighteen were applied two statistical tests-principal components analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis, the latter using both Ward’s method of sum-of-squares and the single link method. The results obtained revealed little or no correlation between the elements as hypothesized. Thus it might appear that the second hypothesis cannot be supported. TABLE 2

The amoun? in acres of each farm’s land devoted to the four principal land uses. The figures in brackets indicate the percentage of the total land on each farm devoted to each of the principal land uses; the percentages do not always add up to one hundred because the total land on the farm in some instances contains waste and moss. In the case of the farm Slateford, the surveyor did not

diferentiate the cultivated land into infield and outfield

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Farm

Infield

Bonhard Bonsagart and Tulle Braehead Bumroot Cowiehill Dallbogg Denhead Dooryhill Ho11 Mains of Edzell Margie and Blairhead Meickle Tullo Mill of Dallbogg Mill of Inverskandy Nether Dalfoupar Sandyhillock Sheerstripes Slateford Strowan Upper Dalfoupar Westside Wood

42.01 (16) 88.37 (35) 30.21 (23) 15.10 (11) 2.62 (59) 1.29 (29) 15.49 (18) 35.10 (40) 12.99 (10) 28.37 (22) 25.37 (28) 32.73 (37) 12.99 (16) 5.01 (6) 8.37 (53) 2.00 (13) 9.67 (9) 18.68 (18) 50.01 (8) 155.93 (17) 26.10 (8) 40.62 (12) 12.80 (11) 8.97 (7) 34.29 (19) 38.75 (22) 41.18 (20) 7156 (36) 19.00 (24) 39.00 (50) 15.62 (25) 15.99 (26) 12.50 (17) o-51 (1) 42.62 (13) 20.57 (19) 42.00 (40) JO.11 (14) 37.68 (51) 32.95 (16) 55-98 (28) 32.98 (11) 41.49 (14)

Outfield

Moorland

Total

4.62 (2) 26.20 (20)

119*00 (47) 5940 (45)

17.87 (20) 41+Kl(32) 30.30 (34) 1299 (16)

15.43 (17) 45.01 (35)

255.05 131.53 444 88.54 128.00 89.04 82.01 15.65 104.71 638.35 326.35 120.66 176.89 200.43 77.53 62.08 70.03 332.62 105.31 73.99 200-36 292.53

Pasture

10.30 (10) 30.48 (5) 116.68 (51) 23.77 (20) 52.50 (30) 24.74 (12) 6.01 (8) 11.01 (18) 28.01 (40) 15.; 8.00 12.01 6.00

(15) (11) (6) (2)

50.50 (61) 5.01 (32) 65.61 (63) 400+)0 (63) 90.00 (28) 7360 (61) 50.01 (28) 60-99 (30) 13.26 (18) 18.93 (30) 27.05 (39) 29003 (87) 27.30 (26) 18.12 (24) 100.99 (50) 211.01 (72)

39

A SCOTTISH ESTATE PRIOR TO ENCLOSURE

However, close scrutiny of the data reveals that it is unsuitable for testing the soilland-use relationship over the group of farms as a whole, desirable as that may be. The number of variables involved from farm to farm causes generalization to mask relationships. Added to that there is a wide variation in the amounts of different soils on each farm. A further very important factor is the lack of consistency in the area1 ratios between infield and outfield and moorland on each farm (Table 2). For all these variables to be considered statistically a huge, unwieldy matrix would be necessary. The alternative approach is to study the relationship at the level of the individual farm. This involved ignoring a number of variables : the pattern of farm boundaries, the sizes of farms and the varying proportions of different land uses on each farm. However, as the total population involved here is small, each farm may be treated separately, thus avoiding problems of generalization from a sample. An approach along these simpler lines yields far more decisive results than did the attempts at an overall analysis. Table 3 shows for the 18 farms with variation in soils, the distribution in percentages of the acreage between the three land uses and three classes of soils, A being freely drained, B imperfectly drained and C with impeded drainage or waterlogging. Following the hypothesis that the preferred use of the best soils is infield, that once the infield has been selected the best of the remainnig soil is allocated to outfield, and that the remainder is left as moorland, the relationship shown in Fig. 3(a) might be predicted. In practice, if only as a result of the concessions needed to ensure reasonably compact land-use parcels, the probabilistic relationship shown in Fig. 3(b) is more likely. This model shows a decline in the proportion of infleld and an increase in the proportion of moorland as movement is made from the best to the worst quality land on a farm. The proportion of outfield will be at a maximum somewhere between these two extremes. Although this model is too abstract to produce any numerical predictions of the different land uses to be located on the soils of different qualities, from it can be derived a number of hypotheses regarding the shape of the matrix of land uses and soil classes. These hypotheses, illustrated in Fig. 3(c) for farms with three soil classes, are as follows: (i) A greater proportion of the infield than of the outfield, and of the outfield than of the moorland, will be located on the best soil. (ii) As we proceed from the best to the poorest soil, a progressively smaller proportion of each class will be occupied by infield. (iii) A greater proportion of the moorland than of the outfield, and of the outfield than of the infield, will be located on the poorest soil. (iv) On proceeding from the best to the poorest soil, a progressively larger proportion of each class will be occupied by moorland. (For farms with three soil classes, these hypotheses are independent; where only two soil classes exist (iii) is the converse of(i).) The hypotheses are carefully worded to allow for the variation between farms in the quantity of the various land uses and of soil of different classes. In terms of the matrix shown in Fig. 3(c), it is not hypothesized, for example, that la > Oa > Ma; instead hypothesis (i) may be stated as la/l> Oa/O > Ma/M.rll The importance of such a reservation is well illustrated by the figures for the farm of Bonsagart [l] The other hypotheses may be stated: (ii) L-z/A > Ib/B> It/C; (iii) MC/M> OcJO> k/I;

(iv) MC/C> Mb/M>

Ma/M

40

G. WHI’ITINGTON

AND D. U. BRETT

TABLE 3 The relationship that exists between soil classes and land uses on each of the eighteen farms for

which there is variation in soil types and detail of land use 3(a): Farm 1, Bonhard Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

Class A 3 4 -

Class B 7 31 55

3(j): Farm 13, Mill of Dallbogg Class C -

3(b): Farm 2, Bonsagart and Little Tulle Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

Class A 23 8 5

Class B 1 1 8

3(c): Farm 4, Burnroot Class A Class B 21 2 6 48 23

Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

Class A 15 10 -

Class B 12 62

3(e): Farm 6, Dallbogg Class A Class B 39 z 27 Class A 8 3 --

Class B 4 62

Class B 19 15 18

Class C 2 17 20

Class C 4 4 46 Class C -

3(l): Farm 15, Nether Dalfoupar Soil : Class A Class B Class C Infield 17 9 Outfield 36 19 Moorland 19 -

Class C 1 -

3(m): Farm 16, Soil : Class A Infield 30 Outfield 16 Moorland -

Class C 4 28

3(n): Farm 17, Sheerstripes Soil : Class A Class B Class C Infield 17 2 Outfield 1 Moorland 42 38 -

3(f): Farm 7, Denhead Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

Class A 7 2

3(k): Farm 14, Mill of Inverskandy Soil : Class A Class B Class C Infield 19 4 Outfield 36 6 Moorland 11 24 -

3(d): Farm 5, Cowiehill Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

Class C 10 12

Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

Sandyhillock Class B Class C 1 15 38 -

3(p): Farm 19, Strowan Class B Class A 8 14 14 33 31

Class C -

3(g): Farm 10, Mains of Edzell Class C Soil : Class A Class B Infield 2 5 1 Outfield 1 19 5 Moorland 1 2 64

3(q): Farm 20, Upper Dalfoupar Class B Class C Soil : Class A Infield 16 Outfield 7 55 Moorland 25 -

3(h) : Farm 11, Margie and Blairhead Soil : Class A Class B Class C Infield 3 10 Outfield 12 7 Moorland 2 66 -

Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

3(i): Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

Soil : Infield Outfield Moorland

Farm 12, Meickle Tullo Class A Class C Class B 2 1 11 6 3 57 20

(3r): Farm 21, Westside Class B Class C Class A 17 9 3 17 32 22 3(s): Farm 22, Wood Class B Class A 1 8 6 1 59

Class C 2 4 19

41

A SCOTTISH ESTATE PRIOR TO ENCLOSURE (a)

(cl

(b) ,lOO%

-‘oo%

’ ’

I /

I IO -

I Infield

/

I Outfield

I Best Sod

,

*

I

s

.

I

/ Moorland 1

I

I

Worst SOlI -

Figure 3. The expected relationship the three soil classes.

worst 5011--+

between the three different land uses and

and Little Tullo. On this farm 90% of the acreage is either on class A or on class C soil, leaving little land of intermediate quality. Furthermore, only 12% of the farm’s acreage is devoted to outfield. Here five times as much infield is located on the class C as on the class B soil and more infield than outfield is located on the class C soil. However, the conclusion to be drawn from Table 3(b) is that on this farm the infield shuns class C soil, and this impression is borne out if the crude figures are converted to percentages. The uneven distribution between farms of the various soil qualities is also the reason why no specific hypothesis regarding the distribution of outfield is included. There is a temptation to expect that the outfield would be preferentially located on class B soils. This, however, is not a logical deduction from the postulate that outfield will, as it were, have second choice of the available land. In a case like Bonsagart and Little Tullo there may be a substantial amount of class A land available and this will be preferred to class B land. On a farm with very little class A soil, the outfield might be pushed out to the class C soil. The one hypothesis which would be appropriate is that the proportion of infield and outfield together will decline with soil quality: (la + &)/A > (Ib + Ob)/B > (Ic + Oc)/C but this is no more than the converse of hypothesis (iv) and is therefore superfluous. To apply these hypotheses directly to the data in Table 3 would be to risk substantial distortions by some very small values, with a correspondingly high margin for error. To counteract this, situations where a soil class (A, B or C) or a land use (I, 0 or A4) accounted for less than 5% of the area of the farm in question were eliminated. Thus Upper Dalfoupar is for practical purposes added to the list of one-soil farms, Sheerstripes was treated as having its land use differentiated simply into moorland and arable, and class B soil was added to class C soil on one farm (Cowiehill) and class A soil on four (Dallbogg, Mains of Edzell, Meickle Tullo and Wood). Of the 17 farms for which calculations were made, all the expected relationships were found on 9 (Bonhard, Bonsagart and Little Tulle, Burnroot, Cowiehill, Dallbogg, Mains of Edzell, Nether Dalfoupar, Sandyhillock and Strowan), including 8 of the 13 two-soil farms, and at least two of the four hypotheses were confirmed on six others. Only Meickle Tullo and Denhead failed to conform, and only on these two farms is hypothesis (ii), that the proportion of infield will increase with improvement of soil quality, not vindicated. In the case of Denhead, the moorland is concentrated on the imperfectly drained soil; in that of Meickle Tullo, where the insignificant amount of freely drained soil is under infield, the relationships are otherwise the exact reverse of those expected. All the hypotheses

42

G. WHITTINGTON

AND D. U. BRETT

are true over half the farms; the least strongly supported is (iii), that the poorest soil will bear greater proportions of the less intensive land uses, which applies on 9 of the 17 farms. Thus it can be said that general, but not complete support is given to the expectations regarding the overall pattern of relationships between drainage and land use. The two hypotheses To summarize, it would appear that on a majority of farms the distribution of soils of varying drainage qualities provides a good explanation of the different land uses, but furthermore it has been shown that on over half the farms the infield is markedly nearer the farmsteading than the outfield. Only one farm, Denhead, lends support to neither hypothesis. Of course, as pointed out earlier, the two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Given the desirability of minimizing effort and of making the most intensive use of the best soils available, it would obviously be in the farmer’s interest to have the infield nearest the farmsteading and on the best quality soil. On five farms (Burnroot, Sandyhillock, Mains of Edzell, Wood and Mill of Dallbogg) these conditions are both met. There are only four farms (Margie and Blairhead, Meickle Tullo, Mill of Inverskandy and Nether Dalfoupar) with a greater concentration of outfield than of infield on the best soil; in each case the infield is much nearer the farmsteading. On the remaining seven farms (excluding Sheerstripes which has minimal outfield) the infield is not significantly further from the farmsteading than the outfield, but on three of them (Westside, Cowiehill and Bonhard) the proportion of the infield on the best soil is more than twice that of the outfield, and on a fourth (Dallbogg) all the infield as well as a large proportion of the outfield is on the best soil. Indeed, only in the case of Meickle Tulloperhaps significantly the farm at the highest altitude-do distance-decay considerations appear to have predominated in the entire land use to the exclusion of soil quality. How independent then were the decisions on farmsteading location and land use? Is it just chance that on five of the farms the farmstead was located centrally on the best soil, whereon was situated the infield, or do these represent the ideal towards which all of the farms were moving when the process was interrupted by improvement? To put the question another way, although there is little evidence of land use having followed settlement location irrespective of soil quality, can it be said that the location of the farmsteading followed the infield as its location shifted in response to increasing knowledge of soils? conclusions To be able to answer these questions we need to know much more about the stability of fermtouns. Where they have been excavated[lJ they would appear to have had no longevity but these may have been unrepresentative in that they were late eighteenth century in origin and on marginal land. An exhaustive enquiry by R. A. Gaileyc21into rural settlement in Scotland’s Highland zone led to the conclusion that “nofirm evidence exists at the moment [l] H. Fairhurst, Scottish clachans I Scottish Geographical Mugazine 76 (1960) 67-76; RosaI: a deserted township in Strath Naver, Sutherland Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 101 (1968) 160-99; H. Fairhurst and G. Petrie, Scottish clachans II Scottish Geographical Magazine 80 (1964) 150-63 [2] R. A. Gailey, Settlement changes in the southwest Highlands of Scotland, 1770-1960 (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Glasgow 1961)

A SCOTTISH ESTATE PRIOR TO ENCLOSURE

43

as to the form of the actual detailed evolution of Highland rural settlement before about 17OO”[lJbut that “continuity of settlement for many known clachan sites” does occur “back to the fourteenth century”.c21 There is no survey comparable for the agriculturally more important lowland areas. Work by G. W. S. Barrow,t31 in south and central Scotland, does indicate an early origin for nucleated settlement but there is not enough evidence to allow a sound extrapolation of the fourteenth century stability date, presented by Gailey, into the Lowlands. Of considerable obvious importance to this whole study is the origin of intieldoutfield as it was practised and understood in the eighteenth century when the survey of Panmure’s Edzell estate was undertaken. The examination of the individual fermtouns on this estate has established that in many cases the infield is not only on the best soils but also nearer to the fermtoun than is the outfield. In other cases the infield is on the best soils but the outfield is as close to the toun as the infield. In his reassessment of the origins of infield-outfield, R. A. Dodgshonr41 suggested that the term infield only came into existence in the fifteenth century to distinguish it from the area of extensive arable agriculture being developed on the commonty and which in time became known as the outfield. Previous to this time the area of the infield was merely the land, fiscally assessed, which had been granted by charter to the touns. The argumentst51 supporting these suggestions, although only evidenced for the south-east of Scotland, are highly convincing. Thus it might perhaps be suggested that by the fourteenth century, a stable fermtoun, in terms of its site if not its form, located on a fiscally assessed piece of land (later called the infield) and surrounded by a commonty, was the standard settlement unit in Scotland. Due to the pressure of population this began to change during the fifteenth century and the infield-outfield agricultural system came into existence. If this is the case then it might be expected that fermtouns would lie nearest the infield and that it, due to years of accumulated agricultural experience, would be located on the best land. The examination of the Edzell estate does independently provide evidence to support Dogdshon’s arguments. Nevertheless, we are still left with a minority of cases which appear aberrant where infields are on the poorer soil and where the fermtoun is not located nearest the infield. However, until much more research has been undertaken on the evolution of rural settlement and its attendant land use we will be unable to provide convincing explanations of the processes which shaped the pre-enclosure landscape of Scotland.[61 Department of Geography, University of St. Andrews

and

The University College of Buckingham

[I] R. A. Gailey, The evolution of Highland rural settlement Scot& Studies 6 (1962) 155 [2] R. A. Gailey, idem., 171 [3] G. W. S. Barrow, Rural settlement in central and eastern Scotland Scottish Studies 6 (1962) 123-44 [4] R. A. Dodgshon, The nature and development of infield-outfield in Scotfand Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 59 (1973) l-23 [5] As a support to his argument Dogdshon quotes from the article by Barrow: “there is no indication in early documents of infield and outfield cultivation”. It must be pointed out however that the sentence continues: “although the texts are not incompatible with the existence of such a system”. Scottish Studies 6 (1962) 127 [6] The authors gratefully acknowledge the discussions and help with the statistical problems provided by Dr A. Gordon of the Statistics Department and Dr A. Werritty of the Geography Department in the University of St Andrews