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A question about medieval society
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<blockquote data-quote="Nyaricus" data-source="post: 2884263" data-attributes="member: 35678"><p>A European Manor has a manor house and a small village surrounding it, with a church, blacksmith, and mill at least. Each villagers house had a small plot of land to grow typical european foods (cabbages were one, I think) and there were great fields in the surrounding area which were all divided up very specifally. This was called the open-field system, and was divided us thusly:</p><p></p><p>Spring Planting</p><p>Fall Planting</p><p>Fallow Land</p><p></p><p>Spring Planting was for oats or barley, and that which could be harvested that year, Fall Planting was for crops which were harvested in the summer and planted in the fall - mainly, wheat or rye. Fallow Land was that land which was left undisturbed for the year, so as to recupriate from the never-ending agricultural cycle on these manors. These would be switched around at regular intervals (around every 3 years for normal land, but poor land might be switched every year). The fields were subdivided into long, narrow strips of land seperated by thin ridges of grass, created by plows. This was thus because moving around abig heavy plow was difficult, and so you wanted to go for as long and as straight as the land would allow, so one wouldn't have to continually turn around a team of 4-8 oxen and the heavy plowhead. These were fixed by generations of plowing. Each peasent owned a number of these strips.</p><p></p><p>There was also two subsets of the land, called the "Lords Demesne" (what you are talking about)and "Glebe Land", which were signifigant parts of the land. Basically, the Lords Demesne was for the lord of the land and his house, and the glebe land was for the parish priest and any of his acolytes. Basically, it was more than enough to allow a lord to live comfortably - and the Lord Demesne could either be an actual segment of field of large size, or interspersed in the other parts of the field.</p><p></p><p>I do not know the offical designation of how many inhabitants constituites a village, but according to Houghton Mifflin dictionary, a village is a "a small group fo dwellings in a rural area, usually ranking in size betweena hamlet and a town. A Hamlet is a small village and a town is a more centralized village - so more commodities, a Town Centre, Town Hall, etc. Around 1-200 inhabitants might do it, although the DMG has that thing for how amny people make up a vilage.</p><p></p><p>Anyways, this is all very steriotypical of a Western European Manor, England included. Hope that helped <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>EDIT: added a pic from a textbook of mine of a 'typical manor' - from <em>A survey fo Western Civilization</em>. And yeah, crappy quality, I took it with my webcam <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Any clarifications can be had, if needed.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Nyaricus, post: 2884263, member: 35678"] A European Manor has a manor house and a small village surrounding it, with a church, blacksmith, and mill at least. Each villagers house had a small plot of land to grow typical european foods (cabbages were one, I think) and there were great fields in the surrounding area which were all divided up very specifally. This was called the open-field system, and was divided us thusly: Spring Planting Fall Planting Fallow Land Spring Planting was for oats or barley, and that which could be harvested that year, Fall Planting was for crops which were harvested in the summer and planted in the fall - mainly, wheat or rye. Fallow Land was that land which was left undisturbed for the year, so as to recupriate from the never-ending agricultural cycle on these manors. These would be switched around at regular intervals (around every 3 years for normal land, but poor land might be switched every year). The fields were subdivided into long, narrow strips of land seperated by thin ridges of grass, created by plows. This was thus because moving around abig heavy plow was difficult, and so you wanted to go for as long and as straight as the land would allow, so one wouldn't have to continually turn around a team of 4-8 oxen and the heavy plowhead. These were fixed by generations of plowing. Each peasent owned a number of these strips. There was also two subsets of the land, called the "Lords Demesne" (what you are talking about)and "Glebe Land", which were signifigant parts of the land. Basically, the Lords Demesne was for the lord of the land and his house, and the glebe land was for the parish priest and any of his acolytes. Basically, it was more than enough to allow a lord to live comfortably - and the Lord Demesne could either be an actual segment of field of large size, or interspersed in the other parts of the field. I do not know the offical designation of how many inhabitants constituites a village, but according to Houghton Mifflin dictionary, a village is a "a small group fo dwellings in a rural area, usually ranking in size betweena hamlet and a town. A Hamlet is a small village and a town is a more centralized village - so more commodities, a Town Centre, Town Hall, etc. Around 1-200 inhabitants might do it, although the DMG has that thing for how amny people make up a vilage. Anyways, this is all very steriotypical of a Western European Manor, England included. Hope that helped :) EDIT: added a pic from a textbook of mine of a 'typical manor' - from [i]A survey fo Western Civilization[/i]. And yeah, crappy quality, I took it with my webcam :p Any clarifications can be had, if needed. [/QUOTE]
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