Assarting is the act of clearing forested lands for use in agriculture or other purposes. In

English land law English land law is the law of real property in England and Wales. Because of its heavy historical and social significance, land is usually seen as the most important part of English property law. Ownership of land has its roots in the feudal ...

, it was illegal to assart any part of a royal forest without permission. This was the greatest trespass that could be committed in a forest, being more than a waste: while waste of the forest involves felling trees and shrubs, which can regrow, assarting involves completely uprooting all trees—the total extirpation of the forested area. The term ''assart'' was also used for a parcel of land assarted. Assart rents were those paid to the British Crown for the forest lands assarted. The etymology is from the French word ''essarter'' meaning to remove or grub out woodland. In northern England this is referred to as ''ridding''.

Process

In the Middle Ages, the land cleared was usually common land but after assarting, the space became privately used. The process took several forms. Usually it was done by one farmer who hacked out a clearing from the woodland, leaving a hedged field. However, sometimes groups of individuals or even entire villages did the work and the results were divided into strips and shared among tenant farmers. Monastic communities, particularly the

Cistercians The Cistercians, () officially the Order of Cistercians ( la, (Sacer) Ordo Cisterciensis, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint ...

, sometimes assarted, as well as local lords. The cleared land often leaves behind an assart hedge, which often contains a high number of woodland trees such as small leafed lime or wild service and contains trees that rarely colonise planted hedges, such as

hazel The hazel (''Corylus'') is a genus of deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The genus is usually placed in the birch family Betulaceae,Germplasmgobills Information Network''Corylus''Rushforth, K. (1999). ...

. Examples are in Dorset, where there is a difference in the hedges in the west and the east of the county, at Hatfield Broad Oak in Essex where the modern hedges still follow the boundaries of an ancient forest, and at Shelley in

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

where there is an unusually long hedge made up of coppiced

lime trees ''Tilia'' is a genus of about 30 species of trees or bushes, native throughout most of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The tree is known as linden for the European species, and basswood for North American species. In Britain and Ireland they ...

that is the remnant of a nineteenth-century woodland clearance.Barker, Hugh ''Hedge Britannia'' 2012 Bloomsbury, London pp 26–7

History

Assarting has existed since

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...

times and often it relieved population pressures. During the 13th century, assarting was very active, but decreased with environmental and economic challenges in the 14th century. The

Black Death The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...

in the late 1340s depopulated the countryside and many formerly assarted areas returned to woodland. Assarting was described by landscape historian Richard Muir as typically being "like bites from an apple" as it was usually done on a small scale but large areas were sometimes cleared. Occasionally, people specialized in assarting and acquired the surname or family name of 'Sart'. Field names in Britain sometimes retain their origin in assarting or colonisation by their names such as: 'Stocks'; 'Stubbings'; 'Stubs'; 'Assart'; 'Sart'; 'Ridding'; 'Royd'; 'Brake'; 'Breach'; or 'Hay'. Many Northern French places called ' Les Essarts' or ending with '-sart' refer to that practice.

Process

History

References

Further reading