The abandoned farmsteads may just as well have been remembered and respected as part of the family history.
The arable lands are not considered to be part of the farmstead here.
These geometric farmsteads were often built with little regard for local topography.
Some labour-intensive tasks saw no mechanisation at all until very recently, most notably in routine hedging and ditching and in materials handling around the farmstead.
At most, then, only 20 per cent of the sales went to those not renting and operating the farmstead at the time of the sale.
Dunning's concept of an urban farmstead requires a new integrated thinking that seems well suited to discovering more information about commoners.
Interestingly, the gradual process towards stable farmsteads begins at a time when the communal urnfields are no longer in use.
This would be in line with the idea of farmsteads as a place associated with the ancestors of a family group.
