Burgage plots

Burgage is a medieval land term used in England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland, well established by the 13th century. A burgage was a town ("borough") rental property (to use modern terms), owned by a king or lord. The property ("burgage tenement") usually, and distinctly, consisted of a house on a long and narrow plot of land (Scots: toft), with a narrow street frontage. Rental payment ("tenure") was usually in the form of money, but each "burgage tenure" arrangement was unique, and could include services. As populations grew, "burgage plots" could be split into smaller additional units. (Amalgamation was not so common, until the second half of the 19th century.) Burgage tenures were usually money based, in contrast to rural tenures which were usually services based. In Saxon times the rent was called a landgable or hawgable.

Burgage was the basis of the franchise in many boroughs sending members to the unreformed House of Commons before 1832. In these boroughs the right to vote was attached to the occupation of particular burgage tenements. These could be freely bought and sold, and the owner of the tenement was entitled to convey it for the duration of the election to a nominee, who could then vote. Thus by purchasing the majority of the burgages one could acquire the right to nominate the Members of Parliament. Most of the burgage boroughs became pocket boroughs in this way. The practice was abolished by the Great Reform Act 1832 which applied a uniform franchise to all boroughs.

In medieval England and Scotland, and some parts of the Welsh Marches, burgage plots or burgage tenements were inclosed fields extending the confines of a town, established by the lord of the manor, as divisions of the 'open' manorial fields. The burgesses (equivalents of "burghers") to whom these tracts were allotted, as tenants of the enclosed lands, paid a cash rent instead of, as previously, feudal service. In 1207, for instance, Maurice Paynell, the Lord of the Manor of Leeds, granted a charter to 'his burgesses of Leeds' to build a 'new town', and so created the first borough of Leeds, Briggate, a street running north from the River Aire.

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