The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common FieldsSlater, Gilbert
History
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
Slater, Gilbert
Agriculture -- England; Inclosures; Peasants -- England; Village communities -- Great Britain
The non-Parliamentary enclosure in the nineteenth century was
peculiarly active in Berkshire. William Pearce, the Board of
Agriculture surveyor, computed that in 1794 the common fields and
downs occupied 220,000 acres; forests, wastes, and commons, 40,000;
and the enclosed lands, including parks and woods, only 170,000 acres
(“Agriculture of Berkshire,” p. 13). He further assures us that at
least half of the arable land was in common fields (p. 49). As rather
less than 20 per cent. of the total area of the county was enclosed by
Acts at a later date, it would follow that about 30 per cent. of its
area was enclosed without Acts after 1793; and from my own inquiries
I can quite believe this conclusion is accurate. Enclosure under the
general Acts of 1836 and 1840 may have been specially extensive in
Berkshire.
Dorset underwent enclosure at an earlier period. The percentage
of Parliamentary enclosure is only 8·7, which is similar to that
of Hampshire, 6.0; and there is no evidence of very extensive
non-Parliamentary enclosure in the nineteenth century. Stevenson
in 1812 reported, “There are but few uninclosed fields remaining”
(“Agriculture of Dorset,” p. 194); and the earlier reporter, Claridge,
in 1794, said, “Very few parishes in this county have of late years
been enclosed” (“Agriculture of Dorset,” p. 46). In the intervening
period only fourteen Acts enclosing sixteen parishes were passed;
Dorset must therefore have been mainly enclosed before the time of
the American War; enclosure having no doubt spread eastwards from
Devonshire, which was a very old enclosed county.
Celia Fiennes adds little to our information, except that she says the
Vale of the White Horse, in Berkshire, “extends a vast way, a rich
jnclosed country” (p. 19), that there were “Good lands, meadows, woods
and jnclosures” in the Isle of Purbeck, (p. 6), and that the country
round “Stonidge,” like that round Newtontony, was “most champion
and open, husbandry mostly corn and sheep” (p. 10). But there is a
significant passage in John Norden, which shows that the characteristic
Wiltshire and Dorsetshire common-field management in 1600 prevailed
over all four counties. “In Dorset, Wiltshire, Hamshire, Barkeshire,
and other places champion, the farmers do much inrich their land indeed
with the sheepfold” (Book V., p. 232).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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