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Burgage is a medieval land term used in
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and
Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...
, well established by the 13th century. A burgage was a town ("
borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...
" or "
burgh A burgh is an autonomous municipal corporation in Scotland and Northern England, usually a city, town, or toun in Scots. This type of administrative division existed from the 12th century, when King David I created the first royal burghs. Bur ...
") rental property (to use modern terms), owned by a king or lord. The property ("burgage tenement") usually, and distinctly, consisted of a house on a long and narrow plot of land (), with a narrow street frontage. Rental payment ("tenure") was usually in the form of money, but each "burgage tenure" arrangement was unique and could include services. As populations grew "burgage plots" could be split into smaller additional units. (Amalgamation was not so common until the second half of the 19th century.) Burgage tenures were usually money-based, in contrast to rural tenures, which were usually services-based. In Saxon times the rent was called a ''landgable'' or ''hawgable''.


History

Burgage was the basis of the right to vote in many boroughs sending
members Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...
to the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
before 1832. In these boroughs the right to vote was attached to the occupation of particular burgage tenements. These burgages could be freely bought and sold, and the owner of the tenement was entitled to convey the right to vote for the duration of the election to another person, their 'nominee', who could then vote. The vote of each person entitled to the franchise was a matter of public record. Therefore the owner could monitor their nominees' votes. By purchasing the majority of the burgages one rich person could acquire the right to elect a Member of Parliament. Such burgage boroughs were called
pocket borough A rotten or pocket borough, also known as a nomination borough or proprietorial borough, was a parliamentary borough or constituency in England, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom before the Reform Act 1832, which had a very small electorate ...
s. Most of the burgage boroughs had become pocket boroughs in this way by the time of the
Great Reform Act 1832 The Representation of the People Act 1832 (also known as the 1832 Reform Act, Great Reform Act or First Reform Act) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom (indexed as 2 & 3 Will. IV c. 45) that introduced major changes to the electo ...
. The practice was abolished by the 1832 Act, which applied a uniform voting right to all boroughs. In medieval England and Scotland and some parts of the
Welsh Marches The Welsh Marches ( cy, Y Mers) is an imprecisely defined area along the border between England and Wales in the United Kingdom. The precise meaning of the term has varied at different periods. The English term Welsh March (in Medieval Latin ...
burgage plots or burgage tenements were inclosed fields extending the confines of a town, established by the lord of the manor, as divisions of the 'open' manorial fields. The burgesses (equivalents of "burghers") to whom these tracts were allotted, as tenants of the enclosed lands, paid a cash rent instead of, as previously, feudal service. In 1207, for instance, Maurice Paynell, the Lord of the Manor of Leeds, granted a charter to "his burgesses of Leeds" to build a 'new town', and so created the first borough of Leeds, Briggate, a street running north from the River Aire. These burgesses had to be freemen: those who were entitled to practise a trade within the town and to participate in electing members of the town's ruling council. In the very earliest chartered foundations, predating the
Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conq ...
, the burgage plots were simply the ploughland strips of pre-existing agrarian settlements. In towns like
Burford Burford () is a town on the River Windrush, in the Cotswold hills, in the West Oxfordshire district of Oxfordshire, England. It is often referred to as the 'gateway' to the Cotswolds. Burford is located west of Oxford and southeast of Che ...
in Oxfordshire and
Chipping Campden Chipping Campden is a market town in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, England. It is notable for its terraced High Street, dating from the 14th century to the 17th century. ("Chipping" is from Old English ''cēping'', 'market', 'market- ...
in Gloucestershire,
Bromyard Bromyard is a town in Herefordshire, England, in the valley of the River Frome. It lies near the county border with Worcestershire on the A44 between Leominster and Worcester. Bromyard has a number of traditional half-timbered buildings, in ...
in Herefordshire, and
Cricklade Cricklade is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in north Wiltshire, England, midway between Swindon and Cirencester. It is the first downstream town on the Thames. The parish population at the 2011 census was 4,227. History Cricklade ...
in Wiltshire, the property on the road frontage extends in a very long garden plot behind the dwelling even today, as English property boundaries have remained very stable. In South Zeal, in Devon, burgage plots were known as "borough acres". The basic unit of measurement was the
perch Perch is a common name for fish of the genus ''Perca'', freshwater gamefish belonging to the family Percidae. The perch, of which three species occur in different geographical areas, lend their name to a large order of vertebrates: the Per ...
which was and the plots can be identified today because they are in multiples of perches: at Cricklade most were 2 by 12 perches (10.1 by 60.4 m), while at Charmouth in Dorset, a charter of the year 1320 provided plots 4 perches wide and 20 perches long (about 20 by 100 m), giving a typical plot size of half an acre (0.2 hectare), held at an annual rent of 6 d. Burgage grants were also common in Ireland; for example, when the town of
Wexford Wexford () is the county town of County Wexford, Ireland. Wexford lies on the south side of Wexford Harbour, the estuary of the River Slaney near the southeastern corner of the island of Ireland. The town is linked to Dublin by the M11/N11 ...
received its royal charter in 1418, English settlers were encouraged into the town and were given burgage plots at a rent of one
shilling The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence ...
per year. The term was translated into Irish as , and the element " Borris" survives in many Irish place names.


See also

*
History of English land law The history of English land law can be traced back to Roman times. Throughout the Early Middle Ages, where England came under rule of post-Roman chieftains and Saxon monarchs, land was the dominant source of personal wealth. English land law tr ...
*
Land tenure In common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "tenir" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land owned by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement between both individual ...
*
Grid plan In urban planning, the grid plan, grid street plan, or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid. Two inherent characteristics of the grid plan, frequent intersections and orthogon ...


References


Medieval English Towns - Glossary
*The Local Historian's Encyclopedia by John Richardson -


Further reading

*{{Cite book , publisher = Adamant Media Corporation , isbn = 1-4021-4052-5 , last = Hemmeon , first = Morley de Wolf , title = Burgage Tenure in Mediaeval England , date = 2004-07-09 * T.R. Slater, The Analysis of Burgage Patterns in Medieval Towns, Area, Vol. 13, no. 3, 1981


External links


Wiltshire County Council: Burgage plotsDiscovering Leeds: Briggate
History of agriculture in the United Kingdom Feudalism in the British Isles Real estate in the United Kingdom Local government in England Land tenure