The following tentative hypothesis may be suggested as an explanation. It is based on the presumption that the _names_ represent a more ancient set of circumstances than the actual facts recorded in the tithe apportionment.
I think it, on the whole, more probable that these units of holdings are based upon ploughing by horses than upon ploughing by oxen. In other words, I think that the system of co-aration persisted unimpaired in these particular villages after horses had superseded oxen for ploughing purposes, which might have happened at a very early date. This seems plainly indicated by the fact that during the 190 years from 1649 to 1839 the majority of the copyholders in Stratton and Grimstone had only one horse apiece, therefore they must have combined to work even a two-horse plough; and, as I have said above, the practice of helping one another with horses for ploughing only died out in very recent years.
I think further, that in all three manors, a “whole place” or “whole living” meant the land cultivated by one plough, but that in Stratton and Grimstone the plough was a light and shallow one drawn by two horses only, and in Fordington a heavier plough drawn by four horses. The soil in Stratton and Grimstone is very thin and stony, and would not bear deep ploughing; that of Fordington is much deeper and heavier. Further, Stratton and Grimstone fields lie on the steep slopes descending from the downs; Fordington field is gently undulating. Therefore, a four-horse plough in Fordington would plough more than twice as much land as a two-horse plough in the other villages. A whole place then in Fordington naturally would have common rights for four horses; in Stratton and Grimstone for two horses only.
A half-place in Stratton and Grimstone was, therefore, the holding allotted to the tenant who had one horse, and it carried a common right for one horse. Though a half-place in Fordington carried in 1841 a common right for three horses, I am inclined to believe that it originally was the holding of a tenant who had two horses, _i.e._, half a plough team, and originally had a common right for two horses only; and, similarly, though a farthing hold in 1841 had a common right for two horses, I am inclined to think it originally was the share of the man who had one horse only, and only carried a common right for one horse. That is to say, I think the _names_ here a better guide than the nineteenth century common rights. If one were to adopt the opposite view on this point, one would infer that a “half-place” was a misnomer for a “three-quarter place,” and was the allotment of the man who had three horses, and that a “farthing hold” should properly be called a half-place. But on this assumption it would be hard to explain the fact that the arable land attached to a half-place is, on the average, a little less than half that attached to a whole place, and that attached to a farthing hold only a little more than one quarter.