“By section 3 a Provisional Order made by the Board for ‘regulation’ may provide for the ‘adjustment of rights,’ and section 4 shows how much can be done upon such an adjustment.”
This opinion was given in March, 1897. The very significant passage which pointed out that since the cottagers held their cottages from the farmers, they could not effectively claim any rights which the farmers did not choose to grant them, threw cold water on the agitation.
Elmstone Hardwicke is apparently another case in which something would be gained and nothing lost by an Act of Enclosure.
Ewelme (Oxfordshire).
Rather more than half this parish, near Wallingford, is legally in the condition of open common fields, and there is besides a very extensive “cow-common” on which is a golf course. The neighbouring parishes of Bensington[9] and Berwick Salome had until 1852 common fields which were in part intermixed with those of Ewelme, and there were commons commonable to all three parishes. In 1852 an Act was passed which was carried into effect in 1863 for the enclosure of Bensington and Berwick Salome, and the parts of Ewelme which were intermixed with these. Ewelme is owned by a number of small proprietors who chiefly farm their own land. These made a voluntary division,[10] but they still enjoy certain rights of common and of shooting over one another’s land. No labourers enjoy rights of common.
- [9] The Vicar of Bensington has the custody of a remarkable eighteenth century map of the three intermixed parishes.
- [10] Exchanges of land in common fields so as to enable proprietors to consolidate their properties are authorised by 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 30.
There are two significant facts about this parish.
In the first place, one particular farm enjoys a special right of pasturing sheep on the cow-common, not shared by other farms. This is significant when taken into consideration with the facts for Cambridgeshire and elsewhere related below.
Secondly, this gives a typical instance of the effect of enclosure of commonable waste on the poor. One of the commons enclosed was known as the “Furze Common,” and it supplied the poor of the neighbourhood with their fuel, for every inhabitant had the right of cutting furze on it. After enclosure the Furze Common was allotted to one man, who allowed no trespass on it, and the owners of cottages were awarded allotments of land in consideration of rights which the cottagers had exercised. The lands so allotted became part of ordinary farms, and the poor simply lost their supply of fuel without any compensation whatever. This was done under the sanction, not of an Enclosure Act rushed through Parliament before 1845, but of the Enclosure Commissioners, appointed expressly to prevent any injury to the class least able to guard its own interests, as well as to facilitate enclosure.