Sir,—Mr. Crawford, in the last number of the Observer, states that the “great revolution in agriculture,” indicated by the change from “Celtic” to “Saxon” types of fields occurred not during the Roman occupation, but after it. May I point out that in the Romanised parts of Britain, this revolution was from the Celtic to the Roman methods of agriculture, not from the Celtic to Saxon?
Frontinus, a great authority on land surveying, was Propraetor in Britain, a.d. 74–78, and with Agricola, 78–85, first introduced the civilisation of Rome among the natives, and if Mr. Crawford will turn to the writings of Frontinus and other Gromatici Veteres, he will learn how the countryside was to be laid out for cultivation. In short, suitable land in a pagus was accurately surveyed by a trained staff, who marked it out into large rectangular areas, and then where required divided it into square laterculi or centuriæ, and again into strips. The men who were to form the village settlement, together with the natives (contributi), after being arranged in groups of ten (decania), drew lots for their strips of land (heredium) in the centuriæ assigned to them, while provision was made for their cattle (compascua) over the waste and wood beyond the fields.
The small centuriæ of fifty jugera was the same size as that of the virgate with twenty-five Saxon acres, and is known to be equal to 31.155 statute acres. So many botontini, stones, and other marks of the Roman survey have been traced in Middlesex that it has been possible to re-constitute the ancient paganal divisions.
Again, taking the Saxon virgate in Doomsday Middlesex, as the successor of the Roman measure, on this basis, after working out the areas of all the vills in the county, it was found that the Doomsday or Roman total agreed with that of the modern Ordnance Survey. I have dealt with this in detail in “Middlesex in British, Roman, and Saxon Times,” for hitherto little attention has been paid to the rural development of Britain, during three centuries of Roman occupation, when it became “one of the great corn-producing districts of the Empire.”
It was not to the advantage of the Saxon (who took over a century to subjugate Britain) to destroy the long-established agricultural system of the Romano-British, on which the sustenance of both conqueror and conquered depended, and it is interesting to note how much of it is to be found existing down to the time of the enclosure of parishes.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
Montagu Sharpe.
Hanwell, W.
July 25, 1923.
Source info: Found in library.
Sir Montagu Sharpe was the author of Middlesex in British, Roman, and Saxon Times (1919; 2nd edn 1932).