Also 5 ? crofe, croofte, 5–6 crofft(e, 5–7 crofte, 6–9 Sc. craft. [OE. croft enclosed field, app. corresp. to Du. kroft, krocht prominent rocky height, high and dry land, field on the downs. Ulterior etymology unknown.]
1. A piece of enclosed ground, used for tillage or pasture: in most localities a small piece of arable land adjacent to a house.
Ray, N. C. Words 133, notices that in the north it implied adjacency to a dwelling-house, but that this attribute did not attach to its general English use. Cf. the Cornish use in quot. 1880, and the quot. from Milton 1634, which suggests the Dutch sense.
969. Cod. Dipl., III. 37 (Bosw.). Æt ðæs croftes heafod.
c. 1290. S. Eng. Leg., I. 478/558. Ase he stod in is crofte.
1362. Langl., P. Pl., A. VII. 35. For þei [birds] comen into my croft and croppen my whete.
1483. Cath. Angl., 83. Crofte, confinium.
1486. Bk. St. Albans, F v b. Who that … closith his croofte wyth cheritrees.
1523. Fitzherb., Surv., i b. A curtylage is a lytell croft or court … to put in catell for a tyme.
1604. in Eng. Gilds (1870), 437. All ould tenants shall haue a croft and a medow.
1634. Milton, Comus, 531. Tending my flocks hard by i’ th’ hilly Crofts That brow this bottom glade.
1718. Bp. Hutchinson, Witchcraft, xv. (1720), 268. In a croft or close adjoining to his Father’s House.
1794. Wordsw., Guilt & Sorrow, xxiv. A little croft we owned—a plot of corn.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., viii. To occupy her husband’s cottage, and cultivate … a croft of land adjacent.
1842. Tennyson, Two Voices. Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew.
1864. Glasgow Herald, 16 May, 6/6. The croft is now generally the best land of the farm, and every farm almost has its croft.
1880. W. Cornwall Gloss., Croft, an enclosed common not yet cultivated.
b. fig.
c. 1460. Towneley Myst., 314. Com to my crofte Alle ye … Welcom to my see.
1588. A. King, trans. Canisius’ Catech., 184 b. Quhilk proues … vs to be as fruictful tries in the croft or feild of the kirk.
1636. James, Iter Lanc. (1845), 360. Happie they whose dwelling’s in Christs crofte.
c. Toft and croft: a messuage with land attached: see TOFT.
2. A small agricultural holding worked by a peasant tenant; esp. that of a CROFTER in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (see quot. 1851).
1842. Alison, Hist. Europe, XIV. xcv. § 53. It has covered the country, not with Tuscan freeholds, but with Irish crofts.
1851. 2nd Rep. Relief of Destit. Highlands 1850, 42. The crofting system was first introduced, by the arable part of the small farms previously held in common being divided among the joint tenants in separate crofts, the pasture remaining in common.
1883. A. R. Wallace, Land National, in Macm. Mag., Sept., 367/1. The Highland crofters are confined to miserably small holdings—the largest croft in Skye, for example being seven acres.
1884. Spectator, 17 May, 642. In some parts of North Uist there are no crofts in individual ownership.
3. attrib. and Comb., as croft-bleaching, bleaching by exposure on the grass; croft-land, ‘the land of superior quality, which, according to the old mode of farming, was still cropped’ (Jam.).
1791. Statist. Acc. Dumfr., I. 181 (Jam.). Lime and manure were unknown, except on a few acres of what is called croftland, which was never out of crop.
1796. R. Moyle, in Trans. Soc. Enc. Arts, XIV. 154. Waste land, consisting of marsh, croft, and sandy soils.
1875. Ure, Dict. Arts, I. 366. After being altered by the action of chlorine, or by insolation or croft-bleaching.
1878. Cumbrld. Gloss., Croft land, a range of fields near the house, of equally good quality with the croft.
