‘A very fair field indeed…’: An Archaeology of the Common Lands of English Towns

Commons are often seen as existing in a specifically rural milieu but historically towns and cities in England, and elsewhere, were provided with common pasture lands. These were used primarily for grazing the draft animals of those townspeople engaged in trade, but they also provided pasture for farm animals in an economy where the rural and the urban were inextricably mixed and where, in many cases, towns had grown out of or been developed upon existing villages. Many towns and cities retain at least some of their commons: examples include historic cities such as Lincoln and York; great industrial cities such as Newcastle-upon-Tyne; small towns such as Hungerford and Stockbridge; places which have almost lost their urban status, such as Minchinhampton and Corfe; and conversely, places which gained urban status at a late stage, such as Brighton or Plumstead. The common lands attached to these places can therefore move from a rural to an urban milieu or vice versa.