Austrey Web-site

[ Home ] [ Up ]

ENCLOSURE

Phase 3   Piecemeal Enclosure, 1651-1747

Walton (D)                 Barlestone? (L)                 Snarestone? (L)

Donisthorpe ? (D)                 Heather? (L)                 Swepstone? (L)

Oakthorpe? (D)                 Osbaston? (L)                 Austrey (W)

Measham? (D)                 Sheepy Magna (L)                 Whittington (W)

The third phase of enclosure was between 1650 and 1748 when the first Parliamentary enclosure award was enacted.  Only a handful of townships in the region lost their common fields in this period.  Private enclosure agreements survive for three of them: Walton-upon-Trent (1652-1653), Sheepy Magna (1659) and Austrey (1744). A 1673 glebe terrier from Walton gives some hint of the process involved when it refers to two different types of enclosure, the informal exchanges made by landholders and the consolidations of the lord of the manor by written agreement. The Austrey Enclosure Agreement of 1796 [CR 466], referring to an earlier agreement from 1744, appears to suggest that written documents merely confirmed what had already happened. Here enclosure came about through a series of “mutual and unanimous exchanges” among the tenants. By 1744 Austrey’s open fields seem to have shrunk to a mere 270 acres, or 13% of the parish. In 1744, 23 Austrey landholders disposed of 504 acres of open field arable, common and pasture.

One major incentive to draw up an enclosure agreement was to rationalise odd parcels of land left over from earlier, piecemeal exchanges.  The post-war enclosures begin to look more and more like the inevitable winding up of a complex, informal system of land tenancy and cropping arrangements that had evolved over several centuries.

The emphasis in this period appears to have been cropping innovation, rather than enclosure.  Large tracts had already been enclosed.  In 1673 Blome announced that almost all of the southern and eastern parts of Derbyshire were ‘enclosed and improved, yielding good corn and grass’. A quarter of a century later Celia Fiennes described the Market Bosworth area as ‘a great flatt full of good enclosures’. Farmers had turned their attention to increasing yields, improving their herds and introducing profitable cash crops such as hemp, flax and dye-stuffs. This was in response to two trends: the general slackening of population growth observable throughout the midlands at this time, and declining grain prices.  The gradual shift from grain production to subsidiary cash crops was accompanied by an increased emphasis upon labour -intensive activities, as shown in the references to bees, orchards and cheese-making in the probate wills.

Notes and References

Enclosure Agreements for Walton in Derbyshire Record Office D1129/P21; D1129/PF25; Sheepy Magna in Leics. Record Office, DE 1621/91; DE 1621/31/2; Austrey in Warwickshire Record Office, CR 466. cf Walton Glebe terrier, 1673 in D.R.O. D1129A/P21.

Descriptions in Blome, Britannia, pg. 74; Morris (ed.), Celia-Fiennes, pg.164.

Thirsk estimates that 40 acres of flax yielded more profit than 160 acres of corn and grass: Economic Policy and Projects, 102-3; Cf. publication of horticultural manuals like Jobn Worlidge's, Systema Horticulturae (London, 1667) and Apiarium, Or a Discourse of Bees... (London, 1676).  For further discussion of late 17th and early 18th century farming developments in the midlands see E.L. Jones, ‘Agriculture and Economic Growth in England, 1660-1750: Agricultural Change’, in Essays in Agrarian History, W.E. Minchinton, ed., (Newton Abbot, 1968) I, 205-19; Thirsk, VCH Leics. II, pg. 220. J.E.T. Rogers, Agriculture-and Prices V, pp. 210, 270, 272.

Phase 4    Parliamentary Enclosure etc.  1748-1830

Croxall (D)                        EA   1794        Orton-on-the-hill (L)    EA     1783

Lullington (D)                    P  1826+ ?                       Ratcliffe Culy (L)         EA      1767

Chilcote? (D)                     P   1774                    Sbackerstone (L)        EA      1774?

Clifton Camville (S)                    EA   1797                                 Sheepy Magna (L)      EA       1815

Comberford (S)            EA  1771                                 Sheepy Parva (L)        EA       1769

Coton (Tamwortb)  (S)            EA  1771                                 Sibson (L)                    EA       1804

Edingale (S)       EA  1794                   Seal*   (D/L)                 EA      1799

Elford (S)                                           EA               1766                          Atberstone (W)             EA      1786

Harlaston (SP   1774                          Austrey*    (W)              EA      1796

Wigginton (S) EA              1771                          Grendon (Polesworth)   EA     1806

Appleby (L)                          E  1772                            Glascote (W)               P       1808?

Ashby (L)                            E  1769                     Newton Regis (W)          EA      1797

Ashby Wolds (L)                             EA 1807                 Warton (Polesworth)      EA      1772

Congerstone (L)                  EA 1826       Shuttington (W)                     EA      1805

Norton (L)                                   EA 1748

KEY

*confirmation of earlier enclosure

EA            Enclosure Award

P          Private enclosure agreement

Parliamentary Enclosure, the fourth and final phase of enclosure between 1748 and 1830 helps to consolidate the earlier changes.  In terms of actual parishes or townships enclosed this period is undoubtedly the most prolific. Parliamentary acts and awards, supplemented by private agreements, record the demise of common field agriculture in no less than twenty-seven townships of the eighty in the survey area.  They also provide, for the first time, reliable estimates of the acreages involved.  The redistribution involved some 23,000 acres or a fifth of the area of the entire region. A concentration of awards in the 1760s, 1770s and 1790s bears out Marshall’s report of a sudden increase in enclosure in the thirty years or so before publication of the survey. Austrey relinquished the last remnants of its common fields in this period. When Marshall included Austrey among “the four townships that remain in any degree open” he was referring to the open landscape of the parish, as yet unbroken by hedgerows, rather than to the survival of open-field farming per se. By the 1890s Austrey’s open fields had shrunk considerably: Deadamore or the Nether Field covered 215 acres, while Ridgeway and Hasley Field covered only 28 and 21 acres respectively. Judging from the contents of 13 farm wills and inventories from 1680 -1720 – only one of which makes any mention of common field arable lands - they may well have been as shrunken as this in 1700.

The most characteristic feature of these later Parliamentary awards is the comparatively large areas of non-arable waste and commons which were enclosed.  The award for Warton in Polesworth parish, for example, includes 217 acres of waste and common with 925 acres of open field arable.  Separate awards enumerate 187 acres of heath in Clifton Campville (1797), and 1,877 acres of waste on Ashby Wolds (1807).  The area under tillage being enclosed was considerably less than the total area of land actually listed in the awards. It seems then that Marshall witnessed the final stages of a process which was by 1790 already substantially complete. The piecemeal enclosures and exchanges of the previous centuries needed only the final seal of Parliamentary approval.

Notes and References

Acreages for the awards provided in W.E. Cox, A Domesday of English Enclosure Acts and Awards (Oxford, 1978). For Marshall’s comments see Rural Economy I, pg 8.

Map:  The Progress of Enclosure, 1500-1830

© Alan Roberts, 1986-2002.