SOMETIMES, if very rarely, history and heritage trump efficiency. Nowhere is that truer than in Laxton, the north Nottinghamshire village that, uniquely, still manages its land in the medieval open-field, strip-farming tradition.
However, it takes people of goodwill to deliver it. When the Crown Estate decided to sell the 1,800-acre estate in 2018, there were widespread doubts as to whether anyone would be willing to take on this historic anachronism with all its complex covenants, undertakings and conditions attached. Whoever acquired the land would have to give guarantees that its 13 tenant farmers and their management by a Manorial Court—the last fully functioning one in the country—would be preserved.
Present-day Laxton, after all, is a historical accident. Located seven miles east of Sherwood Forest, a 15-minute drive north from Newark,
