A distribution of farmland associated with feudalism in Europe. Each manor had two or three large open fields and each farmer was awarded a number of strips within each field, so that no one had all the good or all the poor land. ‘From late in the seventeenth century both the open fields and land held in common…began to be enclosed and to be allocated in compact parcels to each of those who had possessed grazing or other rights in it’ (Pounds (2005) J. Hist. Geog. 31, 3).