IT is a Thursday in November and at 10.30am the Laxton farmers are drinking coffee in the Dovecote Inn.
It's Jury Day, the age old annual inspection of the open fields, which can be documented back to the 17th century and must have been happening long before that.
Laxton, just a few miles from Newark, is the last village in England where the open fields are farmed in common, the system overseen by a manorial court. It is Nottinghamshire's most famous village.
The farmers are subdued – there was a big funeral in the village the day before, and Colin Cree of Step Farm, who has been on the jury for more than 40 years, is in hospital.
Vaughan Godson, who was born and brought up in Laxton and has farmed in the village all his life, is the field foreman for Top (or West) Field.
This year, it is the field being inspected.
Although there are three fields, only one is inspected each year.
It is the field that has been in fallow grass and will now be in winter wheat.
Vaughan calls order and, after some discussion, Ivan Rayner and Richard Grundy agree to set off separately to inspect the field dykes and hedges.
The rest of the jury men (there are always 12 plus the foreman) make their way out to the yard and clamber aboard a horse box secured to a tractor driven by Stuart Rose of Bottom Farm.
He has, as ever, fitted it out with straw bales for the jurors to sit on.
Already in the box are the wooden stakes that will shortly be used in Top Field.
Robert Haigh has chopped them into shape, although he admits he actually made them a year ago when, in his enthusiasm, he made too many.
Once in Top Field, everyone clambers out, carrying a stake or two, and the odd sledgehammer to drive them into the ground.
Vaughan Godson, in charge of the jury men, checks to make sure no one has "ploughed too far", in other words ploughed into one of the green roadways which have to be kept free for farm traffic.
Vaughan decides where the stakes should be hammered in.
This is Steve Noble's job, by default, but he offers Hannah Skingley from Carter Jonas, the land agents, the chance to try her skills.
Someone asks whether she is the first woman to bang in the stakes in a Laxton open field.
It takes a couple of hours to walk the field, check (by eye, no one uses a tape measure) the roadways, hammer in the stakes and look for other offences, of which the most common is "not shovelled in", a phrase regularly used and never defined.
Eventually everything is done, and Stuart Rose drives the jurymen back to the Dovecote for a welcome beer followed by the traditional jury lunch of soup, roast beef and several veg, and Christmas pud or apple strudel.
Not a plate has anything left on it: the Laxton farmers have excellent appetites.
As the pudding plates are collected, Robert Haigh calls order.
He is the bailiff of the manor, and it is his job now to fill in the presentment paper.
This is the written list of offences which will go forward for adjudication by the manorial bench, known as the Court Leet.
All the jurymen must agree by signing the paper.
Now the fun begins.
The discussions are usually in a good spirit, but the farmers do not like to be found guilty of an offence and fined.
Worse still, on this occasion, Vaughan Godson is himself fined for ploughing too far – the field foreman caught offending in his own field!
This was a good year, with only three or four fines, plus one or two warnings for more minor offences.
All of these will be ratified by the Court Leet.
Discussion turns to the Common Agricultural Policy, rents, repairs they want the landlord (the Crown Estate Commissioners) to make, and so forth.
The landlord serves coffee, and one or two of the men leave.
By 3pm the job is done.
Jury Day has been taking place for hundreds of years.
Some of the present farmers have been members for 50 or more years, among them Ken Shepherd and Bill Haigh.
But, both in walking the fields and listening to the post-lunch discussions, one can almost hear the voices of 100, 200 or even 500 years past, going through some of the same debates.
In the 17th century they used stones rather than stakes to mark out the roadways, but you were still fined for encroaching as they are today.
And the same debates must have taken place in the village pub.
Just for a few moments on a sunny but windy Thursday, the outsider can touch a little bit of history.
No comments:
Post a Comment