Our Legal Heritage, 4th ed. | Page 5

a lot.
Circles of big stones like Stonehenge were built so that the sun's position with respect to the stones would indicate the day of longest sunlight and the day of shortest sunlight. Between these days there was an optimum time to harvest the crops before fall, when plants dried up and leaves fell from the trees. The winter solstice, when the days began to get longer was cause for celebration. In the next season, there was an optimum time to plant seeds so they could spring up from the ground as new growth. So farming gave rise to the concept of a year.
There were settlements near rivers. Each settlement had a meadow, for the mowing of hay, and a mill, with wooden huts of families clustered nearby. Grain was stored in pits in the earth. Each hut had a garden for fruit and vegetables. A goat or cow might be tied out of reach of the garden. There was a fence or hedge surrounding and protecting the garden area and dwelling. Outside the fence were an acre or two of fields of wheat and barley, and sometimes oats and rye. These were usually enclosed with a hedge to keep animals from eating the crop. Flax was grown and made into linen cloth. Beyond the fields were pastures for cattle and sheep grazing. There was often an area for beehives.
Crops were produced with the open field system. In this system, there were three large fields each divided into long and narrow strips. Each strip represented a day's work with the plough. One field had wheat, or perhaps rye, another had barley, oats, beans, or peas, and the third was fallow. These were rotated yearly. Each free man was allotted certain strips in each field to bear crops. His strips were far from each other, which insured some very fertile and some only fair soil, and some land near his village dwelling and some far away. These strips he cultivated, sowed with seed, and harvested for himself and his family. After the year, they reverted to common ownership for grazing.
The plough used was heavy and made first of wood and later of iron. It had a mould-board which caught the soil stirred by the plough blade and threw it into a ridge. Other farm implements were: coulters, which gave free passage to the plough by cutting weeds and turf, picks, spades and shovels, reaping hooks and scythes, and sledge-hammers and anvils. Forests were cleared to provide more arable land.
The use of this open field system instead of compact enclosures worked by individuals was necessary in primitive communities which were farming only for their own subsistence. Each ox was owned by a different man as was the plough. Strips of land for agriculture were added from waste land as the community grew.
There were villages which had one or two market days in each week. Cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, calves, and rabbits were sold there.

Flint was mined for arrowheads. People used bone and stone tools, such as stone hammers, and then bronze and iron tools, weapons, breast plates, and horse bits, which were forged by blacksmiths. Weapons included bows and arrows, daggers, axes, and shields of wood with bronze mountings. The warriors fought with chariots drawn by two horses. The horse harnesses had bronze fittings. The chariots had wood wheels, later with iron rims. When bronze came into use, there was a demand for its constituent parts: copper and tin, which were traded by rafts on waterways and the sea. Lead was mined.
Corpses were buried far away from any village in wood coffins, except for Kings, who were placed in stone coffins after being wrapped in linen.
With the ability to grow food and the acquisition of land by conquest, the population grew. There were different classes of men such as eorls, ceorls [free farmers], and slaves. They dressed differently. Freemen had long hair and beards. Slaves' hair was shorn from their heads so that they were bald. Slaves were chained and often traded. Prisoners taken in battle, e.g. Britons, became slaves. Criminals became slaves of the person wronged or of the King. Sometimes a father pressed by need sold his children or his wife into bondage. Debtors, who increased in number during famine, which occurred regularly, became slaves by giving up the freeman's sword and spear, picking up a slave's mattock [pick ax for the soils], and placing their head within a master's hands. Children with a slave parent were slaves. The slaves lived in huts around the homes of big landowners. Slaves often were used as ploughmen, sowers, haywards, woodwards, sheperds, goatherds, swineherds, oxherds, cowherds, dairymaids, and barnmen. A lord could kill his slave at will.
The people were worshipping pagan gods when St. Augustine came to England in 596 A.D. to Christianize them.