The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields

by Gilbert Slater

But this verdict of “Not guilty” only applies to the enclosure authority since it was chastened and corrected by the movement for the preservation of commons. All the early reports of the Enclosure Commissioners, or the Enclosure, Tithe and Copyhold Commissioners give abundant evidence of the hard, legal spirit in which the claims of cottagers were considered, and the slight reasons which were considered good enough for refusing recreation grounds and allotments. The twenty-seventh annual report—the apologia of the Commissioners—pleads, as we have seen above, that 8,000,000 acres of commons, and 1,000,000 acres of commonable arable fields or meadows still existed, which was absurdly inaccurate, and that “of all modes of tenure in a fully peopled country there is none more prejudicial to improved culture than that of holding in common.” Again, the thirty-second report makes a great deal of the fact that the 590,000 acres of common and commonable land dealt with since the Act of 1845 had been distributed among 26,000 separate owners; which, however, only proved that the number of people who owned rights over unenclosed land had been greater than the number of owners of a corresponding area of enclosed land—but whether that was because commons and common fields favoured the creation or preservation of small properties (as it certainly does in many cases), or whether because a multiplicity of owners favours the preservation of commons and common fields (which is always the case), no credit was due to the General Enclosure Act, or to the body administering it.

We find that between 1845 and 1875, out of a total area of 590,000 acres divided and allotted, just 1758 acres were set aside for recreation grounds, and 2195 acres for field gardens and allotments. The administration of the Act since 1877 is, therefore, a very severe condemnation of its administration in the earlier period.

We have seen in the case of Ewelme and the neighbouring parishes, how the cottagers were injured on enclosure, by losing their source of fuel, without getting any compensation. I am indebted to Mr. John Swain for the following description of the effects of enclosure of a Welsh mountain.

“The parish of ——, in the county of Montgomeryshire, is about five miles long by two miles broad. It consists for the most part of a hill, lying between a river and one of its tributaries. The hill rises to about 900 feet above sea level, and contains no unenclosed land. We have, therefore, in this parish, two strips of low-lying meadow land, land of a moderate quality on the hill slopes, and rough pasture land near the summit. On this hill most of the cottage holdings are to be found, usually in some sheltered hollow near a spring or a running stream....

“Previous to the Enclosure Act, passed early in the nineteenth century, the greater part of the hill was open. The farms occupied the bottom lands, and the foot of the hill, up which they crept, their boundary fences forming an irregular line on the hillside, being higher or lower as the nature and quality of the land tempted enclosure. The unenclosed portion of the hill was used as a common pasture by all the farmers whose land adjoined it, and the amount of stock each one was allowed to feed on it was roughly regulated by the size of his holding.

“About 120 years ago a number of the poorer peasantry began settling on this common land. There was a general understanding that if a house was raised during the night so that the builders were able to cause smoke to issue from the chimney by sunrise, they thereby established a right of possession which none could gainsay. Timber in the neighbouring woods was abundant and cheap, so an intending squatter had little difficulty in procuring the material for building his cottage. With the help of his friends he procured sufficient wood for the framework, and then selected a convenient site in a sheltered spot with a southern aspect, and marked down the foundations of his future dwelling. When all preparations were made he gathered together all the help he could, and in the dusk of the evening had all his materials conveyed to the selected spot. Rough stonework was laid to form the foundations and chimney end of the cottage, and then the framework was quickly set up. The panels were interwoven with stout laths, and covered with clay, over which was smeared a coating of lime-plaster, while a roof of thatch completed the edifice. Windows were not for a time considered necessary, but the entrance was carefully secured by a stout door. Then just as the dawn was breaking, a fire was kindled on the hearth, and the curl of smoke above the rude chimney told the workers that they could now relax their efforts....

“A dwelling-house having been erected, the next step was to appropriate a few acres of land surrounding it.... The difficulty of obtaining sufficient land for the keep of a cow was no more than the labour of enclosing and reclaiming it.

“In this way some thirty or forty families were settled in cottages built by themselves, around which were three or four fields, where for many years they lived in undisturbed possession. By patient labour the gorse and fern were got rid of, trees were planted round the cottage, or allowed to grow where they sprang up in suitable places in the hedgerows; by cultivation and manuring the herbage was improved.

“With the Enclosure Act there came a disturbance of this state of affairs. The partition of the unappropriated land seems to have been carried out fairly, by adding to each farm a quantity of land in proportion to the amount of pasturage the occupier enjoyed on the common.... When, however, we come to consider the case of the cottager, his treatment was by no means fair. Enclosures of over twenty-one years’ standing were not interfered with, and their owners were left in undisturbed possession, but such as had been enclosed for a shorter period were claimed by the Lord of the Manor, who lived some twelve miles away, and possessed little or no land in the parish. He advanced his claim cautiously, asking only a nominal rent, and as unlettered peasants felt the inequality of a contest in the matter, this rent was paid. Consequently more than half the cottage holdings fell into his hands, and the poor occupiers were deprived of the ownership of the dwellings they had erected, and of all the improvements they had put into the land they had enclosed. None of them had to leave their holdings, and the rent at first charged was trifling; but except in cases where life-leases were granted, the cottagers had lost all their rights, and they and their holdings were left entirely in the hands of a large landowner.”