Definition
Lammas lands are open, arable, and meadow lands in England that were held in severalty by individual owners during the growing season but became subject to common rights of pasturage — available to neighboring owners, parishioners, and other inhabitants — after the harvest crop was removed, continuing until the next sowing season. The system created a dual-use property arrangement: private ownership and exclusive cultivation during part of the year, followed by a legally recognized right of common enjoyed collectively over the same ground for the remainder.
The name derives from Lammas Day (August 1, or August 12 under the reformed calendar following the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, 24 Geo. II c. 23), which marked the approximate start of the open period — reaping time — when the severalty crops were taken off and the land reverted to common use. The common rights extinguished each spring when individual owners reasserted exclusive possession for sowing.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not independently defined; "Lammas" refers to a harvest festival observed on August 1st, historically associated with the first wheat harvest in the British Isles.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Lammas" — The first day of August; — called also Lammas day, and Lammastide. It was formerly a festival of the Roman Catholic Church, when bread was consecrated that was made from the first ripe grain.
The common term is purely calendrical and liturgical. The legal term, however, designates a distinct property regime tied to that date — one involving enforceable rights of common, seasonal severalty, and communal pasturage. A researcher encountering "Lammas" in a historical document must determine whether the reference is to the holiday itself or to a legally operative land use cycle.
Common Confusion
Lammas lands are sometimes loosely grouped with common fields or open-field systems generally, but the concepts are not identical. Classic open-field systems involved cooperative cultivation in strips from the outset. Lammas lands, by contrast, began each season as individually held severalty — owners had exclusive possession during cultivation — and only became common after harvest. The commonable right was therefore periodic and conditional, not a standing feature of the tenure. Lammas lands should also be distinguished from rights of common appurtenant (attached to a dominant tenement as a permanent incident) and rights of common in gross (personal rights not attached to land). The Lammas common right was typically tied to residency or occupation within a parish, manor, or borough, not to ownership of a particular parcel.
Why It Matters in Research
Lammas lands appear almost exclusively in English property law sources predating the enclosure movement. Researchers will encounter the term in historical title chains, enclosure awards, manor court rolls, and tithe disputes. Several points warrant attention:
First, the calendar shift matters. Sources before 1752 will reference Lammas Day as August 1st; sources after that date should reflect the corrected date of August 12th under 24 Geo. II c. 23. A document that appears inconsistent on this point may simply straddle the reform.
Second, the practical extinction of Lammas lands through enclosure means the term rarely appears in modern English land law. Most Lammas land rights were extinguished by Parliamentary enclosure acts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Researchers should treat the term as a marker of pre-enclosure property structure, and should consult enclosure awards and tithe commutation records to determine whether a specific parcel's Lammas character survived or was extinguished.
Third, there is no American analog. The term will not appear in U.S. case law or statutes except in rare historical quotation. Researchers working in colonial land records should be cautious about inferring Lammas land obligations in the American context; the English common-field system was not systematically transplanted.
Fourth, Lammas lands sit at the intersection of several bodies of historical law — rights of common, severalty, enclosure, and parish or manorial jurisdiction — meaning productive research will require cross-referencing sources across those categories rather than treating Lammas lands as a self-contained topic.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the essential structure: individual severalty during the growing season, followed by common pasturage rights after harvest and until sowing. Black's (both editions) draws directly from Wharton's Law Lexicon and offers the most condensed formulation without elaboration. Rapalje & Lawrence provides slightly more context, emphasizing the plurality of owners in severalty and the communal character of the post-harvest period, but the entry is partially obscured by a typesetting artifact running adjacent entries together.
Bouvier's is the most detailed and the most legally useful of the four. It correctly identifies the class of persons entitled to the common rights — not only co-owners but inhabitants of the parish, manor, or borough — which is a substantive distinction the other dictionaries elide. Bouvier's also supplies the specific statutory reference (24 Geo. II c. 23, § 5) establishing August 12th as the operative opening date after the calendar reform, a detail Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence omit entirely. No source dictionary addresses the enclosure history or the extinction of these rights, which represents the most significant gap for modern researchers.
Jurisdictional Note
Lammas lands are a feature of English property law with no surviving counterpart in the law of any U.S. jurisdiction. They are of research relevance primarily in English legal history, manor and parish records, and comparative property scholarship. Researchers in Scotland or Ireland should note that analogous but distinct common grazing customs existed under different names and legal frameworks.