In 1870 the present Lord Onslow came into the property, and when a year or two later he attained his majority, he proceeded to consolidate his property in Merrow Field, by buying out the other proprietors, or giving them land elsewhere in exchange. The field is still bare of hedges, and under tillage; but enclosure, in the technical sense, has been completely carried without an Act of Parliament. Since the enclosure the allotments, which had been numerous, have generally been given up; but the labourers do not attribute this to the enclosure, but to the industrial evolution. “There are no farmers nowadays, only land spoilers. They’ve turned market gardeners, and they sell _milk_” (with intense scorn). “The land ought to grow beef, and barley to make good beer, that’s what Englishmen want,--yes, and wheat to make bread. But now they all grow garden stuff, what’s the good of an allotment to a man? If you have anything to sell, you can’t sell it. It’s no good growing any more than you can eat.” It may be added that along the river Wey, from Guildford down to Byfleet, there are some very extensive lammas meadows, known by such names as Broad Mead and Hook Mead. The holdings in these are intermixed, individual pieces sometimes not exceeding an acre. STEVENTON AND THE BERKSHIRE DOWNS. That part of Berkshire which lies between the valley of the Kennet and the Thames would appear, from the return of 1873, to be specially rich in surviving open fields. The Blue Book assigns to Brightwell 1000 acres of common field. West Hagbourne 550 ″ ″ East Hendred 2794 ″ ″ West Hendred 1900 ″ ″ East Ilsley 1400 ″ ″ Wallingford St. Leonard 570 ″ ″ Yattenden 252 ″ ″ As Brightwell was enclosed in 1811, and East Hendred in 1801, the statement with regard to these two parishes plainly is incredible; but in view of the undeniable fact that Steventon, which lies almost in the centre of this district, was not enclosed till 1883, there seemed so much possibility of survivals in the other parishes that in July, 1904, I traversed the whole district in search of such survivals. But the search was entirely unsuccessful; it was plain that Steventon was at the time of its enclosure the last remaining example of the old system in this part. Here, as in the Hertfordshire district described above, and in the Wiltshire district dealt with in Chapter X., “Enclosure and Depopulation,” enclosure is one aspect of a change of which the most vital aspects are the engrossing of farms and the consolidation of properties. In each parish this movement proceeds along the line of least resistance; in one parish all impediments in the way of the most profitable management of estates are swept away by the drastic remedy of an Enclosure Act; in others they are removed gradually.