Piece, courtil, camp

Their meanings in terms of Guernsey landholdings, by Peter Girard, and a note by Rene Lepelley.

The meaning of the word pièche is discussed by P J Girard in an article 'Les Hougues, Câtel,' in Report and Trans. Soc. Guernesiaise 1960, p. 72 ff. He concludes that they were rectangular unenclosed strips, perhaps separated from each other by uncultivated land and possibly boundary stones. Though situated very close together, they might belong to different people; some were eventually combined and enclosed, he proposes, to form 'courtils.' They generally seem to describe a strip of land much smaller than a courtil, but (usually) larger than a camp, and were still thus regarded by his contemporaries. After the mediaeval period, the word 'camp' came to mean simply 'a plot.'

Rene Lepelley, 'Le vocabulaire des pommes &c,' Langue française, 19 (1973) pp. 42-64:

The noun camp does not have the same meaning as the French word, champ. A camp is a strip of worked land, a parcel of a champ measuring about a dozen metres in length, slightly raised and separated from its neighbour by a deepish furrow, to allow water to drain off. It is a very localized term, found only in the north of the Manche (Mouchel, Glossaire et expressions du parler normand, Avranches 1944, p. 31, Fleury, Essai 1886, p. 153), in Jersey (Le Maistre, Dictionnaire, p. 81 b), and in Guernsey (de Garis, strip of land, p. 198 b). There are no occurrences in FEW (W. von Wartburg, Franz. etym. Woerterbuch &c, II 156.)