From: Hexham Courant
FANS of BBC's Lark Rise to Candleford will have seen the villagers fretting recently about collecting "leazes" to see them through the winter.
Apparently, "leazing" is gleaning corn dropped by the reapers. Well it may be so in Oxfordshire, but not in Northumberland.
We have plenty of leazes here, but they are not spare ears of grain shared among the poor, though the word does mean community co-operation.
North-East "leazes" were small, communal hay fields. Each villager had rights to a portion of the leazes’ fodder, and could graze a set number of his beasts on the leazes after mowing.
It was a popular idea copied by almost every settlement in the region. Newcastle has its Leazes Park, Allendale has Thornley Leazes, Corbridge has Leazes Terrace, and Hexham has Shaftoe Leazes.
Today, Shaftoe Leazes is a street of substantial Victorian town houses, with hanging baskets and walled flower beds providing scarcely a mouthful of fodder.
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