assarting
Sign in to saveAssarting is the act of clearing forested lands for use in agriculture or other purposes. In English land law, it was illegal to assart any part of a royal forest without permission. This was the greatest trespass that could be committed in a forest, being more than a waste: while waste of the forest involves felling trees and shrubs, which can regrow, assarting involves completely uprooting all trees—the total extirpation of the forested area.
In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 100 inbound references to assarting, and connects out to French, forest and agriculture.
It is catalogued under topics including Climate forcing, English forest law and English legal terminology.
Vinony links it to 5 Wikipedia language editions.
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
4 sectionsContents
- Process
- History
- References
- Further reading
Assarting is the act of clearing forested lands for use in agriculture or other purposes. In English land law, it was illegal to assart any part of a royal forest without permission. This was the greatest trespass that could be committed in a forest, being more than a waste: while waste of the forest involves felling trees and shrubs, which can regrow, assarting involves completely uprooting all trees—the total extirpation of the forested area.
The term assart was also used for a parcel of land assarted. Assart rents were those paid to the British Crown for the forest lands assarted. The etymology is from the French word essarter meaning to remove or grub out woodland. In northern England this is referred to as ridding.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “assarting” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.