Agricultural History Review, Volume 48 Part 2 (2000), pp. 171–199

Urban agriculture and town commons have been largely overlooked in the existing literature, and have never been systematically surveyed. This study lays out a typology of urban commons, citing examples fi'om across the country. It focuses on the uses and users of one urban common, in the cloth-producing town of Sudbury, Suffolk, between 17m-28. It details the occupational profile of commoners, distinguishes differences in their use of the commons, and compares them with those freemen who did not common animals. The study explores corporate management of this resource, in response to economic uncertainty, and in the context of wider urban agriculture. It concludes that the importance of urban agriculture and agrarian resources has been under-estimated, as has their survival and significance into the 'modern' period. 

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