Work in the fields
The
11th and 12th centuries mark the period when man attained mastery of the land.
In Normandy, the increase in the cultivated acreage as compared with the old
terroirs" lay somewhere between 20 and 50%. The wealthiest and most
populated regions seem still to have been in the plains cleared since Roman
times, where it was easiest to grow cereals - the plain around Caen, the
coastal plains of the Bessin and the eastern Cotentin, the Pays de Caux, and
the rich plains of the Eure department on a fiercely disputed border with the
King of France.
The "bocage" or hedgerow regions were cleared more recently, but
that precisely was the great economic development of the 11th and 12th
centuries. This advance was the result, not of immigration or colonisation,
but of individuals or family groups settling on new land. We find traces of
this in local place-names, where the suffix "-ière" or "-érie"
is added to a family name.
Such
mastery of the land was made possible by technological advances.
Archaeological excavations have shown how the use of iron for making all kinds
of tools became more common during this period. The Bayeux Tapestry contains
evidence that Normandy was ahead of its time in the use of certain techniques
such as teams of horses as an alternative to oxen for tilling, the use of
ploughs with a front wheel, or the technique of harrowing.
The Norman peasants also knew how to use soil improvement techniques, such as
marling in the Pays d'Auge and the Pays d'Ouche, or the use of
"tangue", a natural fertilizer produced by the build-up of silt in
the marshy estuaries of the Cotentin and the Bessin.
The water mill was used to grind the grain as well as for various craft
industries (tanner's mills, fuller's mills). Lastly, the Normandy of the dukes
saw the introduction of one major innovation, probably from the east, the
windmill, attested in the Cotentin (Montmartin-en-Graignes) in 1180.
Normandy in this period acquired a reputation for mostly agriculturally-based wealth that was the envy of many. The province was the jewel in the crown of the Plantagenets and provided her early 13th century master, the King of France with a quarter of his income.
