Purlieu

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Purlieu is a term used of the outlying parts of a place or district. It was a term of the old English forest law, and meant, as defined by Manwood (Treatise of the Forest Laws), a certain territory of ground adjoining unto the forest,. . .which. . .was once forest-land and afterwards disafforested by the perambulations made for the severing of the new forests from the old. The owner of freelands in the purlieu to the yearly value of forty shillings was known as a purlieu-man or purley-man. There seems no doubt that purlieu or purley represents the Anglo-French pural, puralee (0. Fr. pouraler, puraler, to go through Latin perambulare), a legal term meaning properly a perambulation to determine the boundaries of a manor, parish, &c. For example, Dibden Purlieu in Hampshire, on the border of the New Forest.

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.