Lastly attention must be drawn to the great number of Acts of Enclosure for Yorkshire enclosing common pasture or waste only.
Nottinghamshire.
Nottinghamshire may be said to consist of an ancient “champain” district, which has an enclosure history exactly similar to that of the neighbouring districts of Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, and an ancient forest district.
The county as a whole has a percentage of Parliamentary enclosure, 32·5, which must be considered high when allowance is made for the fact that so much land must have been enclosed directly from the forest state without passing through the common-field system. The two surviving examples of common-field parishes, Laxton and Eakring, have been before described; Bole also was till recently unenclosed.
The Board of Agriculture reporter, Robert Lowe, attempted to give an account of the state of enclosure of the different parishes in 1793, but evidently found it beyond his powers to make the lists at all complete. But his list of unenclosed parishes enables us to give the following nine parishes as enclosed without Parliamentary intervention since 1793:—
- Askham
- Kirklington
- Rampton
- Saundby
- Treswell
- North Wheatley
- South Wheatley
- Kneesall
- Widnerpool
together with the hamlets of Ompton and Clipston.
And his list of recently-enclosed parishes enables us to give the following nine parishes as enclosed without Parliamentary sanction shortly before 1793:—
- Bingham
- Carcolston
- Selston
- Shelton
- Cotham
- Kneeton
- Orston
- Sibthorpe
- Thoroton
together with the hamlets of Aslacton, Newton, Oldwork, and Cropwell Butler.