The Commons

by Robert

Common land was the land left over when that needed for more intensive purposes had been fenced off. Commons could be grassland, moorland, heath, wood pasture or wetland. Their primary function was summer grazing, but they provided much else besides: wood, gorse or peat for fuel; bracken for animal bedding; wild fruits, herbs and fungi; wildfowl and fish. They belonged to specific communities and only members of the community had the right to use them. If overgrazing threatened to become a problem individual commoners were awarded stints, a stint being the right to graze a certain number of animals on the common.

— Patrick Whitefield, How to Read the Landscape