The total area of the parish of Henlow is 2450 acres, and it has a large park. It appears, therefore, that when the Act was passed practically the whole of the arable, meadow, and pasture land in the parish lay entirely open, and was commonable. The more remote and least cultivable parts of the parish were, no doubt, common pastures; on these the villagers kept flocks and herds according to some recognised rule based on the sizes of their holdings in the arable fields. A drift would lead from the common to the village, passing through the arable fields, and fenced or hedged off from them. Immediately behind the cottages, clustering together to form the village, there would be small closes for gardens or paddocks; beyond these all round the village would stretch the open, common, arable fields, in area probably considerably more than half the parish. These were probably divided into three or four approximately equal portions, and cultivated according to a three or four year course, imposed rigidly on all occupiers by a mutual agreement sanctioned by custom. The holdings would be of various sizes, from three or four acres of arable land upwards, but all small; and a holding of, say, twenty acres of arable land would consist of about thirty separate strips of land of from half an acre to an acre each, scattered over all the three or four arable fields, but approximately equally divided between each field, so that each year the occupier would have, for example, about five acres under wheat, five under barley, five under pulse, and five fallow, provided that were the customary course of husbandry. Right through the year the fallow land would be used as common pasture, and the land under crops would become commonable after the crops were carried.
Along the streams flowing into the river Ivel would be the open commonable meadows. These would be divided into a number of plots, half-acres, quarter-acres, or even smaller, marked by pegs driven in the ground, or stones; and a certain number of these plots were assigned to each holding, in proportion to the amount of arable land. During the spring, while the cattle were on the common pasture, the meadow would be let grow for hay; when the time for hay harvest came, each peasant cut his own plots, and the meadow became commonable during the rest of the summer. Some of the peasant occupiers would be small freeholders, some probably copyholders, others legally annual tenants. All would meet together on certain occasions to settle questions of common interest.