Also 6 coylett, quyllett, 6–7 quillett. [Of obscure origin.]
1. A small plot or narrow strip of land. Now only local or Antiq.
1533–4. Act 25 Hen. VIII., c. 13 § 10. No maner person … shall take in ferme … any quillettes of landes or pastures.
1538. Leland, Itin., IV. 82 § 2. Impropriating Benefices unto them and giving them Coyletts of Land.
c. 1640. J. Smyth, Lives Berkeleys (1883), I. 151. Reducinge his scattered quillets of ground togeather into entire enclosures.
1774. T. West, Antiq. Furness, p. xlv. The abbots of Furness permitted the inhabitants to enclose quillets to their houses.
1824. Heber, Jrnl., 9 Aug. Each quillet … had its little stage and shed for the watchman.
1888. Archæolog. Rev., March, 17. The fields … in North Wales are still, in many cases, divided into … ’quillets,’ that is to say, into open strips marked off from each other merely by boundary stones.
† 2. A hamlet. Obs. rare–1.
1597–8. Act 39 Eliz., c. 25. The sayde Hundred doth consiste onely of five small villages and thre small Quyllettes or Hamlettes.
