ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with one possible antecedent type. R. J. Hodgson and Butlin Baker have outlined the key characteristics of the field systems of County Durham: a critical landscape divide runs from the Tyne valley to Chest er 4e-Street, Durham, Bishop Auckland and Barnard Castle. The progress of enclosure in boundary zones between contrasting areas often involved the silent and piecemeal restructuring of townfields long before the period of classic open-field enclosures of the second half of the eighteenth century, although, of course, Durham lowland townfields are exceptional because they experienced seventeenth-century enclosure. Cockfield, the subject of a case study, lies in the same type of terrain, at about 700 feet: it retains to this day a visible field system, which may represent one antecedent type, although one must hesitate to apply the term ‘townfield’ to it. Cockfield is a very different type of green village to those of the lowlands, with their rigidly formal plans and often highly-organised townfields.
