Land tenures, enclosures and field-patterns in Co. Derry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

In Co. Derry, on lands planted by London companies in the seventeenth century, elements of two distinct field and settlement- patterns are still visible in the rural landscape. The small strip-fields, scattered holdings and house-clusters (clachans) are relics of an open-field system, while compact farms and dispersed settlement characterise the areas where tenants held their land in severalty. A study of this landscape from documentary sources reveals the complex processes which influenced its development. These range from the socio-economic systems of the ethnic groups involved, to die varied management policies pursued by the different companies or their middlemen lessees. But open-fields and enclosures were not mutually exclusive elements in the landscape pattern. In the townland of Moyagall on the Vintner's Proportion in the early eighteenth century, partnership groups were obliged to enclose their lease holdings and divide the premises by ditches into large 'parks'. Thus, while open-field farming (rundale) was practised here, it took place within a coarse network of enclosure. Lease holdings proliferated towards the end of the century and the enclosure net tightened. With little reorganisation of land here after the Famine, the pattern of small fields and fragmented farms became fossilised in the landscape. Just as the clachans have survived as relict settlement forms, however, die long, straight, leasehold boundaries have come down from the eighteenth century to form the structural framework within which the fields have taken shape.