Roads.—Commissioners have power to set out and shut up roads (turnpike roads excluded), footpaths, etc., but if they shut up a footpath through old inclosed land, the person for whose benefit it is shut is to pay such compensation as the Commissioners decide, the money going towards the Expenses of the Act.

Power of Appeal.—To Quarter Sessions only, and not in cases, e.g. claims and allotment, where the Commissioners’ decisions are final and conclusive or a provision for trial at law is made.

Arrangements between Act and Award.—As soon as the Act is passed the Commissioners are to have sole direction of the course of husbandry. Exception.—They are not to interfere with Thomas Wood and Peter Wood, Gentlemen, in their cultivation of such parts of the common fields of Waddon as are leased to them by the Archbishop. (Four years of the lease are still to run.)

Award.—Date, March 2, 1801. Clerk of Peace or of County Council, Surrey.

Amending Act, 1803.—(Private, 43 George III. c. 53.)

Passed in response to a petition (February 16, 1803) from the Vicar, Churchwardens, Overseers, and other inhabitants of Croydon, stating that whereas the Commissioners have set out 237 acres 2 roods for the inhabitants of Croydon, instead of 215 acres, doubts have arisen as to whether this land is vested in trustees as was directed to be done with the 215 acres.

Main Features.—The 237 acres 2 roods to be treated as the 215 acres. Land up to 5 acres to be sold to defray cost of this new Act; any surplus to go to Use and Benefit of Poor, any deficit to be made up by rents or sale of gravel.

Note on Results.—Third Report of Select Committee on Emigration, 1826–7, p. 369. Dr. Benjamin Wills stated that as the result of the loss of common rights suffered under the Bill, he had seen some 900 persons summoned for the Poor Rate. ‘By the destruction of the common rights, and giving no remuneration to the poor man, a gentleman has taken an immense tract of it and converted it into a park: a person in the middling walk of life has bought an acre or two; and though this common in its original state was not so valuable as it has been made, yet the poor man should have been consulted in it; and the good that it was originally to him was of such a nature that, destroying that, has had an immense effect.’

APPENDIX A (5)

Haute Huntre, Lincs.—Enclosure Act, 1767