in agriculture, the term "meadow" has a specific definition. It is (and has been for centuries) a piece of land on which grass and herbs are grown for hay, and which is opened for pasture after the harvest. Usually, the lowest producing strips of land were turned into meadows.

In Sweden, with its low population 19th Century density, cattle were left basically on their own, roaming about and feeding on their own in the village surroundings. The only fenced areas were the fields and the meadows, the fences thus keeping the cattle on the outside (cattle were kept for producing manure, not for producing milk or meat). Today, its the other way around, and I can imagine that this was the case in Britain as well in the 19th Century.