Common land (also: common, commons) was legally speaking land within a manor that was not privately owned but communally (pasture, woodland, rights of way, watercourses). Farmland and meadowland in the fallow period (Fallow) before and after tillage was subject to temporary common land use. Economically speaking, this was productive land that was extensively farmed, and hence was in common use, as distinct from the intensively and individually farmed fields and meadows.