Project Purley

The Local History Society for Purley on Thames

T1701 26/2/2019

Fields of Purley

Background

Until fairly recently Purley was mostly fields with four small settlements. The fields served four principal functions:-

Arable - for growing crops
Meadow - for making hay
Pasture - for rearing livestock
Glebe - to support the rector

In mediaeaval times the arable land was held in common with each villager allocated a number of strips and told what to grow after a village meeting each year. But after the enclosures our two such fields, The East Field and the Common Field came under the ownnership of wealthy landlords and people who had held common rights were disposessed and had little choice but to work as farm labourers.

All the land was subject to the tithe acts and some of the fields in Purley, particularly meadowland paid its tithes to Whitchurch and Sulham parishes. This required that one tenth of the value of the fruits of the land had to be passed to the church.

All the fields had names, some of which reflected their specific use such as Goosecroft which was an enclosed area for exercising geese. The names and acreage of the fields was recorded in such documents as the Glebe Terriers, Enclosure awards or Tithe returns.

Difficulties

The difficulty in dealing with fields is that they can change substantially over the years and we only have maps for relatively recent times. In the middle ages all we have to go on generally are names which appear in several documents.

The boundaries of fields have changed quite substantially over the years for four principal reasons:-

Changing requirements of agriculture
the coming of the railways
attrition due to road widening
changes in land ownership

A field needs three key items of information in order to define it accurately:-

A detailed description of its boundaries
A name or a label
The date at which the information applies

In addition there is a lot more information which can be collected, for instance:-

Who owns it
What is it used for
With which fields at other dates can it be precisely identified (This can get quite complicated when one considers mergers and subdivisions)
What other parcels of land adjoin it

Articles

The subject is covered in a variety of articles:-

Place Names of Purley
booklet produced by Project Purley

Field names in Purley and surrounding parishes part 1
Field names in Purley and surrounding parishes part 2
Field names in Purley and surrounding parishes part 3
Field names in Purley and surrounding parishes part 4
Field names in Purley and surrounding parishes part 5
These form a dissertation by Cliff Debney for his certificate in local history at Oxford University. However regrettably they have not yet been digitised and not available on line

Soil types

Back to top »