Enclosure
Enclosure was the process of separating off land by surrounding it with walls, fences or hedges, which
began as early as 1235. The enclosed land became as much as 3 or 4 times as productive as unenclosed land.
The
enclosure might be of:
- Common arable fields for grazing, generally in large tracts.
- Large enclosed arable fields converting them into smaller fields, generally of arable.
- Common pasture, for grazing or tillage.
- Common meadows or mowing grounds.
It was the process of enclosure that produced the familiar narrow, winding roads bordered
by hedgerows that are still to be seen in rural England.
Before then a ...
... great part of the land was in a wild and uncultivated state of
fen, heath, and wood, the latter sometimes growing right up to the walls of the towns.
An
unbroken series of woods and fens stretched right across England from Lincoln to the Mersey,
and northwards from the Mersey to the Solway and the Tweed; Warwickshire, Northamptonshire,
and Leicestershire were largely covered by forests, and Sherwood Forest extended over nearly
the whole of Notts. Cannock Chase was covered with oaks, and in the forest of Needwood in
Camden's time the neighbouring gentry eagerly pursued the cheerful sport of hunting. The great
forest of Andredesweald, though much diminished, still covered a large part of Sussex, and the
Chiltern district in Bucks and Oxfordshire was thick with woods which hid many a robber. The
great fen in the east covered 300,000 acres of land in six counties, in spite of various
efforts to reclaim the land, and was to remain in a state of marsh and shallow water till the
seventeenth century.
North and west of the great fen was
Hatfield Chase, 180,000 acres mostly swamp and bog, with here and there a strip of
cultivated land, much of which had been tilled and neglected; a great part too of
Yorkshire was swamp, heath, and forest, and of Lancashire marshes and mosses, some of
which were not drained till recent times. The best corn-growing counties were those lying
immediately to the north of London, stretching from Suffolk to Gloucestershire, and
including the southern portions of Staffordshire and Leicestershire; Essex was a great
cheese county; Hants, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, and Bedfordshire were famous for
malt, and Leicestershire for peas and beans. ... Of the whole population no fewer than
eleven-twelfths were employed in agriculture.
Until 1845 an Act of Parliament was theoretically required before land could be enclosed.
This was expensive and slow and it was not unknown for freeholders to exchange or transfer
parcels of land to allow worthwhile enclosure to take place.
A report on Wiltshire shows the effects of enclosure there:
Before enclosure:
... the tenants usually occupied yard-lands consisting of a homestead, 2 acres of meadow, 18
acres of arable, generally in eighteen or twenty strips, with a right on the common meadows,
common fields and downs for 40 sheep, and as many cattle as the tenant could winter with the
fodder he grew. The 40 sheep were kept by a common shepherd with the common herd, were taken
every day to the downs and brought back every night to be folded on the arable fields, the
rule being to fold 1,000 sheep on a 'tenantry' acre (three-quarters of a statute acre) every
night.
After enclosure:
... the common flock was broken up. The small farmer had no longer any common to turn his
horses on. The down on which he fed his sheep was largely curtailed, the common shepherd was
abolished, and the farmer had too few sheep to enable him individually to employ a shepherd.
Therefore he had to part with his flock. Having no cow common and very little pasture land he
could not keep cows. In such circumstances the small farmer, after a few years, succumbed and
became a labourer, or emigrated, or went to the towns.
In 1795 the Rev. David
Davies wrote that, 'by enclosure an amazing number of people have been reduced from a comfortable
state of partial independence to the precarious condition of mere hirelings, who when out of
work immediately come on the parish.'
Source:
A Short History of English Agriculture by W. H. R. Curtler
Clarendon Press, 1909
[freely available from Project Gutenberg]
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