wrangland

In the open field system the unit of cultivation was the strip or ‘land’ and these were in groups, often known as furlongs or shutts. It was usual for the strips to be long and straight with just a slight ‘S’ shaped curve but the terrain meant that was not always the case. One of the words used to describe certain strips was ‘wrang’, a spelling of wrong which was common in Yorkshire and survives in dialect speech. It survives also in the place-name Wranglands Drain in Appleton Roebuck and Wranglands in Holderness. The use of ‘wrang land’ as a vocabulary item seems to be implicit in a North Riding conveyance of 1613, in which six acres of arable, meadow and pasture in the common fields of Huntington included a brode wrangland … lying between six narrow wranglands. In South Cave in 1618, a wrangland of wheat was valued at 10s in the inventory of John Marshall. Other references are to very early place-names and they possibly record pre-Conquest uses of the term. In 1202, for example, Robt de Thorenton granted to William de Barton dim. acram terrae cum pert. in Wrangelandes, Thornton le Clay. An undated thirteenth-century deed mentions Wrangelandes in Tunstall near Catterick and fourteenth-century examples include Wranglandes in Marston near York and Wranglands in Preston in Holderness. ‘Wrang’ was also the specific element in the undated thirteenth-century reference to Wrangeflath in Normanby, le Wrangakere in Everley in 1290-1 and the selion called Wrangstang in Drax in 1352. 'Wrang' could mean twisted or crooked, but the exact interpretation in such place-names remain uncertain. It can be compared with 'crumb', which is dealt with under the head-word Crown Flatt, and further research may establish whether the meaning suggested there is satisfactory and also whether the two terms were regionally distinct.