The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields

Appendix D. General Acts Affecting Enclosure 322

APPENDIX E. A NORFOLK OPEN FIELD PARISH 331

INDEX 333

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

VIEW OF OPEN FIELD IN EPWORTH, AXHOLME Frontispiece.

MAPS:--

LAXTON, WEST FIELD, AND PART OF MILL FIELD To face 8

STRATTON MEADOW ″ 25

ENCLOSURE OF COMMON FIELDS BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT ″ 73

LELAND’S ITINERARY ″ 161

EAST MIDLANDS. SECTION I. ″ 196

EAST MIDLANDS. SECTION II. ″ 197

HAMPSHIRE, SURREY, AND SUSSEX ″ 233

PART OF BRAUNTON GREAT FIELD ″ 250

INTRODUCTION.

THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY AND THE ENCLOSURE OF COMMON FIELDS.

The enclosure of common fields, and the passing away of the English Village Community to make room for the agricultural organisation prevailing to-day, is a subject not merely of historical interest, but one which touches very closely some of the most vital national problems of the twentieth century.

During the past five generations mechanical, industrial, and commercial progress, with the consequent creation of great towns and cities, has so occupied the national activities, and has made us to such an extent a nation of town-dwellers, that there has been a tendency to overlook rural life and rural industries. But in recent years social reformers have come to see that the solution of many of the problems of the town is to be found in the country, and increasing attention is being paid to the causes of the rural exodus and the best means by which it can be arrested. No industry can be in a healthy condition which does not provide an opportunity for the small man to improve his position; and consequently such questions as the provision of allotments and small holdings, agricultural co-operation, the preservation of the independence of spirit of the agricultural labourer, and the securing for him the prospect of a continually advancing career on the land are recognised as matters of urgent national importance.

In this book Dr. Slater shows that the movement for the enclosure of arable open and common fields has been a movement for the sweeping away of small holdings and small properties; that the “Village Community” which any Enclosure Act of this character abolished was essentially an organisation for agricultural co-operation. He shows that at least in certain parts of the country even in comparatively recent times enclosure has produced rural depopulation, and has converted the villager from “a peasant with a mediæval status to an agricultural labourer entirely dependent on a weekly wage.” He further makes us doubt whether these little village revolutions, while they temporarily stimulated agricultural progress by facilitating improved stock-breeding and the economy of labour, did not also to a certain extent destroy the opportunities of future progress by separating farmer from labourer by a gulf difficult to cross, and thus cutting off the supply of new recruits to the farming class.

At the same time, whatever reasons there may be for regretting the enclosure of our Common Fields, and for wishing that the interests of the humbler tillers of the soil had been more sedulously guarded on enclosure, in the main the process was inevitable. Common field Agriculture was a survival of customs and institutions which had grown up when each village lived its life to a great extent in isolation. It was necessary that the villager should almost forget that he was a Little Pedlingtonian to realise that he was an Englishman. Village patriotism had to die down temporarily to make way for national patriotism; and when the spirit died out of the Village Community its form could not be preserved.

Now and in the future there is need that local patriotism, pride in the local community, and willingness to serve it, whether it be village or city, should be kindled again to its old vigour. With the revival of the spirit will come a revival of some of the old forms of village common life, and a creation of new forms in place of those which will remain among the forgotten facts of the past. The Village Community is a hope of the future as well as a memory of the past, and therefore those who are interested in the movement for reviving British Agriculture on democratic lines and for improving the social and economic conditions of our villages have reason to welcome Dr. Slater’s attempt to describe existing and recent survivals of the English Village Community, and to ascertain the circumstances, causes, and consequences of its gradual extinction.

CARRINGTON.

28th November, 1906.

THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY AND THE ENCLOSURE OF COMMON FIELDS.

CHAPTER I.. Enclosure in General.

ENCLOSURE IN GENERAL.

The internal history of our villages is a more obscure, but not less important a part of English history, than the internal history of our towns. It is, indeed, more fundamental. A town is ordinarily by origin an overgrown village, which never loses the marks of its origin. And it was by agricultural and social changes in the villages that the way was prepared for the great industrial revolution, or more properly, evolution, which is the underlying fact of the history of English towns, especially during the last two centuries.

The central fact in the history of any English village since the Middle Ages, is expressed in the word “enclosure.” Primarily “enclosure” means surrounding a piece of land with hedges, ditches, or other barriers to the free passage of men and animals. Agriculturally, enclosure of arable land in the midst of unenclosed arable land is a preliminary step to its conversion into pasture, the hedge is erected to keep animals in; enclosure of land in the midst of open common pasture is a preliminary step to tillage, the hedge keeps animals out. But in either case the hedge is the mark and sign of exclusive ownership and occupation in the land which is hedged. Hence by enclosure collective use, usually accompanied by some degree of community of ownership, of the piece of land enclosed, is abolished, and superseded by individual ownership and separate occupation.

The form of enclosure which is familiar to our minds is the enclosure of land previously uncultivated; in the legal phrase, “enclosure of waste of a manor,” in the ordinary phrase, “enclosure of commons.” Enclosure in this sense has been, and is still, a matter of very vital interest to the urban population, a fact which might be brought vividly to our minds by a recital of the commons within London and its immediate neighbourhood which have been lost or preserved with difficulty. It is sufficient to refer to Epping Forest, Hadley Wood, Hampstead Heath, Wimbledon Common, Hayes and Keston Commons, Bostall Heath and Plumstead Common.

Far more important from a broad national point of view, is the enclosure of common fields--the enclosure, that is, of land previously cultivated according to a system which did not involve the separation of one holding from another by any tangible barrier. Enclosure of this sort, when suddenly effected, as by a Private Act of Enclosure, is rightly termed the extinction of a village community. In the following chapters it will be shown in detail from existing and recent survivals, what was the nature of the system of cultivation in open and common fields in different parts of England, up to the time of enclosure; the question when and how enclosure was brought about in different counties will be discussed; and light will be thrown upon the result of the transition from the medieval to the modern system of village life upon the material and moral condition of the villagers, the peasants, farmers or labourers, who underwent the change. In these chapters facts drawn directly from observations and inquiries in the villages themselves, from the observations of agricultural writers who speak from direct and intimate knowledge, and from the Enclosure Acts, will be left in the main to tell their own story. But a generalised statement will perhaps make that story clearer.

Here is a typical Enclosure Act of the type which encloses common fields, taken at random, and a good example of the 2565 Acts of its class enumerated in the Appendix, by which about 3000 parishes were enclosed. It was passed in 1795 (c. 43) and begins:--“Whereas there are in the parish of Henlow, in the County of Bedford, divers Open and Common Fields, Meadows, Pastures, Waste Lands, and other Commonable Lands and Grounds, containing by estimation, Two Thousand Acres, or thereabouts.... And whereas the said Open and Common Fields, Lands, Grounds, Meadows and Pastures, lie intermixed, and are inconveniently situated, and are in their present state incapable of Improvement, and the several Proprietors thereof and Persons interested therein are desirous that the same may be divided and enclosed, and specific Shares thereof set out and allotted in Lieu and in Proportion to their several and respective Estates, Rights, and Interests therein; but such Division and Inclosure cannot be effected without the Aid and Authority of Parliament. May it therefore please your Majesty----.”

The total area of the parish of Henlow is 2450 acres, and it has a large park. It appears, therefore, that when the Act was passed practically the whole of the arable, meadow, and pasture land in the parish lay entirely open, and was commonable. The more remote and least cultivable parts of the parish were, no doubt, common pastures; on these the villagers kept flocks and herds according to some recognised rule based on the sizes of their holdings in the arable fields. A drift would lead from the common to the village, passing through the arable fields, and fenced or hedged off from them. Immediately behind the cottages, clustering together to form the village, there would be small closes for gardens or paddocks; beyond these all round the village would stretch the open, common, arable fields, in area probably considerably more than half the parish. These were probably divided into three or four approximately equal portions, and cultivated according to a three or four year course, imposed rigidly on all occupiers by a mutual agreement sanctioned by custom. The holdings would be of various sizes, from three or four acres of arable land upwards, but all small; and a holding of, say, twenty acres of arable land would consist of about thirty separate strips of land of from half an acre to an acre each, scattered over all the three or four arable fields, but approximately equally divided between each field, so that each year the occupier would have, for example, about five acres under wheat, five under barley, five under pulse, and five fallow, provided that were the customary course of husbandry. Right through the year the fallow land would be used as common pasture, and the land under crops would become commonable after the crops were carried.

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