Selborne Common - History and Management

History and Management

From the prehistoric or Romano-British period there is evidence of a field system, which may have been re-used during the Middle Ages. The Common has not been ploughed since then.

Earthworks on the western boundary have tentatively been dated to the mid thirteenth century, when Newton Park was emparked. An earth bank, running across the Common, has been dated to around 1750 and was probably used to protect coppice woodland from grazing animals.

During the eighteenth century, the lord of the manor felled beeches on the Common. Local people exercised their common rights to graze cattle and sheep and to collect firewood, activities which continued into the 1950s.

In mediaeval times the nearby Selborne Priory was lord of the manor of Selborne; the manor subsequently passed to Magdalen College, Oxford, which donated it to the National Trust in 1932. Cattle have recently been reintroduced in an attempt to reconstruct the ancient, flower-rich, wood-pasture habitat which commoning produced and which has almost disappeared from England.

A dew pond, Wood Pond, is situated near the western boundary.

Read more about this topic:  Selborne Common

Famous quotes containing the words history and, history and/or management:

    There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.
    Umberto Eco (b. 1932)

    I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.
    Frances Burney (1752–1840)

    The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)