Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Some Evidence from

James P. Bowen

Abstract This article examines the local impact of cottage building on common wasteland in the -pasture countryside of the county of Shropshire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Based on the study of written documentary records, contemporary accounts and original maps, it examines the process of cottage building on in both rural agrarian and industrial contexts, exploring case studies of cottage settlement in a range of localities within Shropshire including , heathland, woodland and wetland areas. It outlines the character of the cottage economy and considers the regulation of cottages in relation to statute law concerning cottage building, poor relief and . It complements the existing body of local and regional studies of cottage building, providing insight into the everyday of cottagers who built their cottages and encroached on common , relying on commons access for their survival. Despite the informal existence of cottages and the fragile lives of those who inhabited them, it argues that it is possible to recover a picture of the impact of cottage settlement at a local level, and its significance as part of the development of the landscape. Common wasteland has long been the focus of historians’ attention given its importance as a component of medieval and early modern , and its subsequent enclosure and improvement. Commons provided pastoral : specifically that of herbage, pasture or grazing. Whilst in Shropshire there was enclosure for arable cultivation, enclosure and agrarian improvement was mainly for pasture given the predominantly pastoral farming economy and the emergence of agricultural specialisms. In the Severn lowland of Alberbury, cottagers were allowed unstinted pasture rights for and pigs.1 Labourers, cottagers and husbandmen benefitted from customary common rights. Cow keeping and the grazing of a few was generally allowed for the payment of a small fee for agistment.2 There were, however, a multiplicity of other common rights, legal or customary, which included the right for swine to forage for acorns, beechmast and nuts (); and non-agricultural resources which encompassed rights to timber, firewood, bracken, fern and rushes (estovers), peat and turf (turbary), fish (piscary); certain rights to take some or part of the such as gravel or earth, and the right to wild animals (ferae naturae). Common waste also provided an area which could be settled by cottagers and

1 The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), C 2/Eliz/A8/58; K. Wrightson, , 1580–1680 (2nd ed., London, 2003), pp. 41–42. 2 Agistment is the movement of animals to grazing for the payment of a fixed per capita charge for each grazing animal.

11

James P. Bowen squatters and, according to Shaw-Taylor, ‘Of all the uses of common waste, remains the most under-researched’.3 Despite work on the size of cottage holdings and rural housing and findings emerging from folklore, landscape studies, local history, industrial archaeology and vernacular architecture, little has been written about cottage building and encroachment on commons.4 The county of Shropshire boasted extensive areas of heathland and woodland commons which were extremely attractive to cottagers and squatters, as were similar zones in , Wiltshire, Sussex and other woodland areas which offered clay and other raw materials as well as fuel and grazing for animals.5 Areas of open heathland and lightly wooded country were settled by cottagers who sought to encroach on waste, being attracted to such environments because, according to Hindle, ‘they were not generally overshadowed by either the manor house or the parish church and were therefore somewhat ineffectively regulated’.6 This reflected a wider trend of immigration by which woodland or forest zones and upland areas were encroached upon as the rural labouring population swelled during the late sixteenth century, making it necessary to defend and restrict access to commons and their resources.7 Hence the antiquary and surveyor John Norden (1547–1625) remarked: In some parts where I have travelled, where great and spacious wastes, Mountains, , , and Heaths are, that many such Cottages are set up, the people given to little or no kind of labour, living very hardly with Oatenbread, sour whey, and Goat’s milk, dwelling far from any Church or Chapel, and are as ignorant of God, or of any civil course of , as the very Savages amongst the Infidels, in a manner which is lamentable, and fit to be reformed by the .8

3 L. Shaw-Taylor, ‘The Management of in the Lowlands of Southern Circa 1500 to Circa 1850’, in M. De Moor, L. Shaw-Taylor and P.S. Warde (eds), The Management of Common Land in North West Europe, c. 1500–1850 (Turnhout, 2002), p. 78. 4 A.M. Everitt, ‘Farm Labourers’, in J. Thirsk (ed.), Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. 4: 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 401–403; J. Broad, ‘Housing the Rural Poor in Southern England, 1650–1850’, Agricultural History Review, 48 (2000), pp. 151–70; R.J. Silvester, ‘Landscapes of the Poor: Encroachment in Wales in the Post-Medieval Centuries’, in P.S. Barnwell and M. Palmer (eds), Post-Medieval Landscapes: Landscape History after Hoskins (Macclesfield, 2007), pp. 55–67; K. Jones, M. Hunt, J. Malam and B. Trinder, ‘Holywell Lane: A Squatter Community in the Shropshire Coalfield’, Industrial Archaeology Review, 6 (1982), pp. 163–85; J.H. Bettey, ‘Seventeenth Century Squatters’ Dwellings: Some Documentary Evidence’, Vernacular Architecture, 13 (1982), pp. 28–30. 5 D.G. Hey, An English Rural Community: Myddle under the Tudors and Stuarts (, 1974), p. 10; P.R. Edwards, ‘Competition for Land, Common Rights and Drainage in the (Shropshire): the and Meeson Disputes, 1576–1612’, in R.W. Hoyle (ed.), People, Landscape and Alternative Agriculture: Essays for Joan Thirsk (Exeter, 2004), pp. 39–41; R.E. Jones, ‘Population and Agrarian Change in an Eighteenth Century Shropshire Village’, Local Population Studies, 1 (1968), pp. 6–29; D. Tankard, ‘The Regulation of Cottage Building in Seventeenth Century Sussex’, Agricultural History Review, 59 (2011), pp. 18–35; Bettey, ‘Seventeenth Century Squatters’ Dwellings’, pp. 28–30. 6 S. Hindle, On the Parish? The Micro Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England c. 1550–1750 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 32–33. 7 Hey, English Rural Community, p. 10; A.J.L. Winchester, The Harvest of the Hills: Rural Life in Northern England and the Scottish Borders 1400–1700 (Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 17, 39, 125 and 149. 8 J. Norden, The Surveyor’s Dialogue (1618): a Critical Edition, ed. M. Netzloff (Farnham, 2010), pp. 98–99.

12

Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste

There is a definitional problem of what a cottager or squatter actually was. Contemporaries understood and used the term ‘cottager’, although its meaning changed over time. In the medieval period, cottagers would have been manorial tenants who had no land other than that which was attached to their dwelling. They could otherwise be people with smallholdings of open field land, typically three or four acres. More simply, the term ‘cottager’ could be applied to an individual who lived in a cottage rather than a farmhouse and had no land. Gregory King estimated that there were 400,000 ‘cottagers and paupers’ families’ by which he was referring to farm labourers and poor families.9 Muldrew has distinguished between the term employed by King and cottagers ‘in a geographical sense’, which he suggested referred to those who lived in ‘dwellings with very low rental and little land attached, usually only a or close’.10 By comparison a squatter was an individual who took possession of land or a without legal or consent. Prior to the 1588 Erection of Cottages Act, passed into law in 1589, it was sometimes believed that someone could build a house on common land and claim it was his home if he or she could build it overnight and have a fire in the hearth between sunrise and sunset.11 This alleged right to a property and common rights was, however, very problematic, particularly at the point of enclosure when such a person was viewed as essentially landless. At enclosure, squatters were allowed in some instances to keep their property if they could prove that they had been living there for more than 20 years. As the extent of common land reduced and the population increased, there was increasing conflict and tension between those who were legally entitled to common rights and those who were squatting. In terms of the character and form of cottage or squatter settlement, it is necessary to distinguish between that which occurred in farming localities and that associated with industrial activity. Using a range of archival sources including documentary records, contemporary accounts and original maps, this article will examine examples of cottage building from the county of Shropshire and assess its chronology, geographical distribution and the wider legal context with regard to statute concerning cottage building, poor relief and vagrancy. Questions to be considered include who precisely were cottagers, what occupations were they employed in and to what extent were they a socially separate section of rural communities? How were cottagers defined and did the meaning of the term change over time? Were cottagers granted legal common rights as manorial tenants, or did they claim access to commons informally on the basis of custom and habitation, despite Gateward’s Case (1607) which ruled against rights by inhabitancy at common law.12

9 G. King, ‘A Scheme of the Income and Expense of the Several Families of England Calculated for the Year 1688’, in J. Thirsk and J.P. Cooper (eds), Seventeenth-Century Economic Documents (Oxford, 1972), pp. 780–81. 10 C. Muldrew, , and the creation of Industriousness: Work and Material Culture in Agrarian England, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 23. 11 Act against the erecting and maintaining of cottages 31 Eliz. I, c. 7 (1589). 12 E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London, 1991); R.B. Manning, Village Revolts: Social Protest and Popular Disturbances in England, 1509–1640 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 85–87; L. Shaw-Taylor, ‘Management of Common Lands’, p. 72.

13

James P. Bowen

Rural cottage settlement Much cottage settlement occurred in rural localities throughout Shropshire. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was an influx of migrants into rural parishes including, as surnames suggest, many from Wales, who sought to take advantage of the waste.13 There was much cottage settlement and encroachment on the open heathlands of north Shropshire and the Tern Valley in places like Morton Say, Stoke-on-Tern, Upton and despite attempts by manor courts to restrict the pressure placed on wastes. For instance, the once wooded manor and parish of was, according to Samuel Garbett (1685–1756), writing around 1750 ‘overcharged with divers poor cottagers’.14 At Whixall and Prees, squatters were generally amerced 6d by the manor court, essentially licensing cottage building and providing income for the lords who later granted leases.15 Similarly, a survey of the parcels of waste ground or commons encroached upon in the manors of Myddle, Ness Strange, Knockin, Ellesmere and Hampton in north-west Shropshire and Maelor, Bangor, Penley and Worthenbury in neighbouring Flintshire, gives an impression of the piecemeal enclosure of areas of common waste with individuals being recorded for ‘encroaching a parcel of the lords land’ and having erected a house or cottage.16 It appears that cottage settlement happened alongside the division and enclosure of woodland. For example, a map of Holt Preen Wood in Cardington parish in south Shropshire dating from around 1657 shows the division of the wood and the presence of cottage dwellings.17 Contemporaries often described cottages and their inhabitants. For example at Myddle, Richard Gough (1635–1723) recalled that Thomas Chidlow lived in a house adjacent to Divlin Lane which he described as ‘a poore pitifull hutt, built up to an oake’, whilst two labouring families utilised the natural shelter of a cave: the ‘Goblin Hole’ which was ‘made into a habitation, and a stone chimney built up to it by one Fardo’.18 The growth of cottages and squatter settlement from the sixteenth century gave rise to a distinctive settlement pattern, such as can be seen at Myddlewood, Bilmarsh and Balderton Green in Myddle parish. Settlement characteristically took the form of a cottage and one or two small enclosures occupied by the growing local population as well as those new to the parish, whilst existing tenements were extended through the addition of intakes and assarts.19 Gough wrote that formerly Myddlewood was: a famous wood of timber; there is a great part of itt incloased, some into tenements, as Challoner’s, Cooper’s, Watson’s, Davies’, Challoner’s, a cooper,

13 Edwards, ‘Competition’, pp. 39–41; Hey, English Rural Community, pp. 162–84. 14 S. Garbett, The History of Wem and the Following Townships: Edstaston, Cotton, Lowe and Ditches, Hortons, Newtown, Wolverley, Northwood, Tilly, Sleap, Aston, and Lacon (Wem, 1818), p. 59. 15 J.R.W. Whitfield, ‘The Enclosure Movement in North Shropshire’, Transactions of the Caradoc and Severn Valley Field Club, 11 (1939–42), p. 56. Amercement is a financial penalty in English law imposed by a manor court. 16 Shropshire Archives, (hereafter SA), 212/Box 345/25, October 1591. 17 TNA, MPA 1/100. 18 R. Gough, The History of Myddle, ed. D.G. Hey (Harmondsworth, 1981), p. 32. 19 Hey, English Rural Community, p. 10.

14

Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste

Joneses, and Parker’s tenements. Severall persons have cottages on this common, and one or two pieces incloased to every cottage, as Endley, Jones, Higinson, Rogers the glover, Blathorne, Rogers the taylor, Reves, Hanmer and Groome. Severall pieces of this common have been incloased and added to tenements in Myddle and Marton.20 The inhabitants of cottages on commons typically eked out a living by combining the grazing of a few livestock with the exploitation of non-agricultural resources which were fundamental to the rural craft occupations in which they were employed and to which Gough referred. Family reconstitution for Myddle revealed that in addition to the ‘stable’ or ‘old’ families, ‘new’ families who settled in the parish remained, becoming in time ‘permanent residents.’21 It is likely that as the population grew many of those who built new cottages on commons were already existing members of communities, whereas others were incomers to parishes. Likewise, between 1680 and 1800 the population of Moreton Say parish in north-east Shropshire doubled, and whilst between 1700 and 1821 the farming population halved, the labouring population increased fourfold with much of the increase being housed in cottages on commons, specifically Smythemoor—situated in a low-lying valley through which the River Duckow flowed.22 This demographic trend probably characterises north Shropshire more generally. An impression emerges that the predominant type of rural cottage settlement was that which occurred on heathland and lightly wooded commons in the north Shropshire and eastern sandstone plains. For example, an early seventeenth century map by Samuel Parsons, surveyor of Rudge Heath close to the border with and north Worcestershire, where the soil was light and thin, shows numerous cottages along the edges of the common namely ‘Elliott’s cote’, ‘Billingsley’s cote’, ‘Sutton cote’, ‘Ridges cote’, ‘Thomasons cote place’, ‘Greenes cote’ and the place where ‘3 ancient cotes’ formerly stood (Figure 1).23 In the case of the Weald Moors, an area of extensive undrained fenland which was historically intercommoned, a map of Crudgington and Sleap by Thomas Burton c. 1720 shows Crudgington Green and a small area of cottage settlement close to the main settlement of Crudgington (Figure 2).24 The cottages depicted were inhabited by Richard Oliver and John Luther, and a further cottage close to the ‘Great’ and ‘Lawnde’ strines and the point where Crudgington Green funnelled onto the upper moor was inhabited by Jonathan Felton. Their holdings totalled 1 rood 20 perches, 3 roods 10 perches and 3 roods 26 perches respectively. Comparison with an earlier map of Crudgington township c. 1635 by Richard Wicksted, surveyor, indicates that the cluster of cottages on the edge of Crudgington Green were constructed in the intervening period.25 Emerging at the end of

20 Gough, History of Myddle, p. 63. 21 Hey, English Rural Community, p. 198. 22 Jones, ‘Population and Agrarian Change’, p. 10. 23 SA, 5586/13/4. 24 SA, 972/7/1/12. 25 SA, 972/7/1/9.

15 James P. Bowen

Figure 1 Early Seventeenth Century Map of Rudge Heath by Samuel Parsons, Surveyor, Showing Numerous Cottages Along the Edges of the Common

Source: Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury, 5586/13/4. the seventeenth century is the perceived problem of cottagers and, particularly, their keeping of dogs which posed an everyday nuisance to livestock pasturing on common land, thus contravening established conceptions of ‘good neighbourhood’.26 In 1650, the jury of the court of Crudgington, Tern and Cold Hatton laid a by-law that ‘no cottager belonging to our commons in the Weald Moors should keep any dogs that tears flesh, troubles or kills any of our cattle’.27 In Michaelmas 1689, Crudgington manor court ordered that all the cottagers ‘dwelling or residing at or near Crudgington Green’ be amerced 3s 4d each for ‘keeping dogs to molest sheep or their cattle’.28 Similarly, in 1691, John Luther and Jane Perkin were amerced 6d by the jury for ‘keeping a dog to molest the inhabitants’ cattle and sheep upon the commons’.29 Both individuals were presented the following year, along with John Perkin, who was likewise amerced 6d for ‘keeping dogs to molest the town’s sheep and cattle on the commons within this manor’.30 The repeated presentment of these individuals at consecutive courts indicates an inability to tackle the problem and social

26 Winchester, Harvest of the Hills, pp. 39–40, 45–47. 27 Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford (hereafter SRO), D593/J/11/7. 28 SRO 593/J/11/3/2, 25 October 1689. 29 SRO D593/J/11/3/2, 1 May 1691. 30 SRO D593/J/11/3/2, 27 September 1691.

16 Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste tension between cottagers and settled residents. There are also numerous presentments concerning the harbouring or keeping of inmates, a preoccupation of courts which increasingly came under parish administration given the rising costs of poor relief. For example, in 1670 the manor court amerced widow Challinor 2d for ‘taking in inmates into a cottage upon Crudgington Green’, implying that the inhabitants of the cottage and the cottage-holder were different people.31 She was again presented in 1671, although this was crossed out, implying the practice was not strictly enforced or that she settled out of court.32 Either way, the fine was very low if it was a serious attempt at exclusion and an alternative interpretation is that the manor court was operating a licensing system—a practice that seems to have been happening at Windermere (Westmorland).33 The nature of these presentments reflects the court’s function and the manorial framework within which the juries operated, maintaining the preserve of the lord and the community by seeking to exclude the landless. Jurors, through the threat of by-laws, sought to encourage individuals lodging in the manor to move on before becoming a burden on the community. The 1589 act which forbade the building of cottages with less than four acres of land attached, specified that ‘there shall not be any inmate or more families or households than one’ living in a cottage.34 However, it is not clear whether this was enforced on the ground. Despite much drainage and agrarian improvement after the sixteenth century, considerable areas of common land remained unenclosed. Much common heathland survived in north Shropshire until comparatively late, for example a late eighteenth century map shows an open Walford Heath.35 This reflected the fact that, in comparison with heavier clay soiled areas which could be drained and improved, such light heathy could not be converted into good pasture. The manor of Prees in north Shropshire provides a case in point. In 1579, the manor court laid a pain of 3s 4d prohibiting cottage construction and unlicensed encroachment, it being ordered that ‘none shall encroach or enclose any parcel of the lord’s waste without licence’.36 Despite this, cottagers encroached on the 3 waste taking advantage of open areas. By 1593, tenants had encroached on 133 ⁄4 acres of Prees Heath. A court of survey dated July 1634 refers to the growing number of cottages.37 This small-scale colonisation of waste corresponds with the pattern for north Shropshire.38 A rental of Prees manor for Michaelmas 1673, records that the cottages on Higher and Lower Heaths provided an income of £3 7s 1d and £5 4s 3d respectively.39 Clearly the lord was complicit with the extent of cottage building on the commons, acquiring a sizeable

31 SRO, D593/J/11/3/2, 26 April 1670. 32 SRO, D593/T/4/19/1, 9 May 1671. 33 Winchester, Harvest of the Hills, p. 125. 34 Act against the erecting and maintaining of cottages 31 Eliz. I, c. 7 (1589). 35 SA, 9/1. 36 SA, 3607/II/A/15, 18 October 1579. 37 SA, 212/346/19. 38 Whitfield, ‘Enclosure Movement’, pp. 53–62; S. Watts, ‘The Significance of Colonisation in Two North Shropshire Parishes: Wem and Whitchurch, c. 1560–1660’, Midland History, 25 (2000), pp. 66–70. 39 SA, 731/1/5/1.

17 James P. Bowen

Figure 2 Map of Crudgington and and Sleap by Thomas Burton c. 1720

Note: The map shows the settlement of Crudgington and a cluster of cottage holdings on land enclosed from Crudgington Green adjacent to the fields named ‘Crab Lake’ and ‘Green Nr. Lessow’ (leasow – a pasture field). Crudgington Green was an area of common which led to the Weald Moors over which the tenants of Crudgington had an exclusive right of pasture. Source: Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury, 972/7/1/12. income (£34 5s 10d) from cottages and the warren amounting to 22.85 per cent of the total rental.40 Cottagers were amerced by the manor court for their cottages, the lord later granting leases. The court was not forcing cottages to be pulled down. On the one hand, this might indicate that the court was ineffective. On the other hand, it might indicate that sufficient waste remained to be exploited and that the lord was sympathetic towards cottagers, or that the waste was underused and the cottagers were a source of income. Increasing pressure was placed on waste in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is likely that cottage building both licensed (by manor courts or the Quarter Sessions) and unlicensed was taking place. Records indicate that the right of turbary was significant, the heathlands and mosses yielding large quantities of turves which were used primarily for domestic fuel.41 An undated survey of Prees commissioned by Thomas Morton (1564–1659), Bishop of

40 SA, 3607/II/A/23. 41 Turbary is the right to dig peat or turf (turves).

18

Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste

Lichfield and Coventry Diocese recorded that ‘fuel of turf, peat and grigg (heather) was very plentiful within the manor’.42 It is evident that resident cottagers did legally have common right of turbary, however, the exploitation of turf by new cottagers in the sixteenth century led to the lord and his officers nominating ‘appointed persons’ to assess how many loads of turves those ‘inhabiting in any new cottage’, should have. Subsequently, in 1585 cottagers were granted a day’s digging to ‘get turves for their own use’ granting, in effect, a cottage right which tied a common .43 The acknowledgement that cottagers who legally did not hold land in the manor, having enclosed part of the lord’s waste, should be given the right to take a quantity of turves is a recognition by the manor court—which sought to protect and uphold the interests of the lord and his tenants—that the problem posed by cottagers needed confronting. Moreover, it implies that the exploitation of waste by individuals who were, in effect, the local poor was condoned, with them being allowed to exploit the resources under licence allowing for a nominal fee to be paid. Significantly this pre-dates the enacting of the 1598 poor law, manorial resources being used as an informal relief system, providing further evidence of the wide range of sources of relief which existed before the onset of a national system of poor relief.44 An estate map of Prees manor in north Shropshire dated 1788 shows outside the village and hamlets, a prevalence of cottages and small dwellings along the roadsides and edges of wastes, often with small, irregular enclosures.45 Other cottages stand isolated with no garden or access. There are several concentrations of cottage settlement on Prees Higher Heath, Prees Lower Heath, Prees Wood, Willaston Common and Northwood Common. The rural economy of Prees and north Shropshire more generally consisted of lowland pastoral agriculture, as well as brick making and other rural crafts utilising clay, sand, soil and wood as part of a cottage economy. In particular, Prees Wood, a common between Prees and Darliston, was an area of long established small holdings whose occupiers followed a craft, trade or non-agricultural occupation (for example, carpenter, shoemaker, miller or brick maker). An enclosure act of 1795 which covered the manors of Prees, Darliston, Fauls, Mickley, Willaston, Moreton Say, Longford and Stanton upon Hine Heath, awarded in 1801, covered a total of 2,651 acres.46 In Prees manor, for instance, Prees Higher and Lower Heaths were enclosed resulting in the creation of a new fieldscape and road network which transformed the rural landscape. It was, according to Sylvester, parliamentary enclosure between 1763 and 1891 that ‘brought about a wholesale

42 Lichfield Joint Record Office, Lichfield B/A/21/123308/I ff. 309–23. 43 SA, 6001/350; SA, 3607/II/A/15, October 1585. 44 M. McIntosh, Poor Relief in England, 1350–1600 (Cambridge, 2012); C. Dyer, ‘Poverty and its Relief in Late Medieval England’, Past and Present, 216 (2012), pp. 41–78. 45 SA, 6007/28. 46 An Act for dividing and inclosing certain commons or waste lands, in the townships of Prees, Darleston, Fauls, Mickley, Willaston, Moreton Say, Longford, and Stanton upon Hineheath, in the county of Salop. SA, 3607/III/E/1; SA, QE/1/2/10; SA, 327/5/9/3; SA, P221/T/2/1–2; W.E. Tate, ‘A Hand List of English Enclosure Acts and Awards’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society,52 (1947–48), p. 31.

19 James P. Bowen transformation of the heaths and peat mosses’ of north Shropshire, to the point that by 1900 little common remained.47 Collectively cottage settlement and encroachment resulted in a distinctive landscape. In rural forest, woodland and champion areas cottage settlements typically took the form of common- and green-edge agglomerations with the regular and irregular intaking of holdings, which starkly contrasted with the evolved field pattern of the surrounding countryside. Cottage and squatter settlement also took the form of isolated cottages with small, irregular enclosures or island encroachments, particularly in industrial or areas or marginal, upland hill commons where the mushrooming of cottages and irregular enclosure of waste frequently occurred. A comparable pattern is evident on an estate map produced by John Rocque (1709–1762) in 1747 which shows Sheinton and Kenley Commons.48 It has been pointed out that in the case of Ashley Heath, on the Shropshire/Staffordshire border, enclosure sought to prevent the complete settlement of the common by the poor through encroachment.49 Also, a description of Eccleshall (Staffordshire) by Gregory King (1648–1712) in 1679–80 as well as other surviving documentary sources, records that there were a large numbers of labourers, cottagers, encroachers, craftsmen and poor with a strong concentration on Greatwood Heath, an area of common encompassing Blackwaters, Croxton Bank, Fairoak, Greatwood, Offley Brook, Offley Hay, Westland Gate, Wetwood and Woodwall Green.50 Similarly Richard Parrott’s survey of Audley (Staffordshire) in 1733, describes the cottages in each township as being between 30 and 100 years old, having been constructed between 1633 and 1703. Their inhabitants were typically employed in non-agricultural activities as colliers, nailers, locksmiths, shoemakers, masons, carpenters, thatchers, glassmakers, tailors and blacksmiths.51 Generally by the late sixteenth century most woodland and forest areas were beginning to experience ‘waves of immigration’, with incoming husbandmen and labourers being absorbed into existing settlements, although distinctive squatter settlements developed on the edges of forest commons, so that much of the literature concerning cottage building and squatter settlement has been focused on forest areas.52 Such a pattern has been identified in the case of Kinver and Needwood Forests (Staffordshire), the Forest of Dean (Gloucestershire), Feckenham and Wyre Forests (Worcestershire) and in the Forest of Arden (Warwickshire), where population build-up in the form of landless cottagers led to an increase in barley growing to meet demand and the development of new employment

47 D. Sylvester, The Rural Landscape of the Welsh Borderland (London, 1969), p. 300. 48 SA, 6802. 49 D.G. Brown, ‘The Rise of Industrial Society and the End of the Self-Contained Village, 1760–1900?’, in C. Dyer (ed.), The Self-Contained Village? The Social History of Rural Communities 1250–1900 (Hatfield, 2007), pp. 122–3. 50 M. Spufford and J. Went, Poverty Portrayed: Gregory King and the Parish of Eccleshall (Keele, 1995). 51 S.A.H. Burne, ‘Parrott’s Audley Survey, 1733’, in Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 24 (Newcastle-under- Lyme, 1944), pp. 1–74. 52 Gough, History of Myddle, p. 175.

20

Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste opportunities in agricultural work, woodland craft occupations, cottage industries such as tanning and weaving and charcoal production.53 A parallel can be made with findings from forest areas in Shropshire. Morfe Forest (later Morfe Common) located in eastern Shropshire near the market town of was formerly a and part of an extensive belt of woodland which stretched from the forests of Kinver (Staffordshire) to Wyre (Worcestershire). By the late sixteenth century following the sale of wood and the collapse of forest administration, it was characteristically bare lowland heathland. The creation of Morfe Forest in the Norman period prevented the gradual spread of settlement. Consequently, the settlement pattern takes the form of small and scattered moated farmsteads, with the exception of the larger more prosperous nucleated villages of Claverley and Worfield. Forest areas in champion landscapes typically present a ‘dispersed settlement pattern, featuring poorly nucleated hamlets and large common-edge agglomerations’, although this is not exclusively the case.54 Depicted on a map of Morfe Forest dated 1613 are isolated cottages each surrounded by a single enclosure, dividing the cottage and its holding from the common.55 There are surprisingly few given the abundance of common land, however, the extent of cottage building is hidden by the fact that much early settlement took place within the existing township structure (Chicknel, Farncott and Wondal) as the forest gradually contracted in size, cottage building being largely confined to the edges of Morfe. Evident on the edge of the common are regular intakes of cottages and their holdings, collectively giving rise to a distinctive landscape of encroachment which starkly contrasts with the evolved field pattern of the surrounding countryside, the light, sandy and thin soil allowing for open field cultivation and large heaths and commons within husbandry practices. The extent of population increase was higher in the forest areas of the Midland counties due to the depopulation of the open field villages and this, in part, explains why the extent of pressure on Morfe was not as high compared with more arable orientated counties which had a relative shortage of waste. Regarding the forest villages of , Pettit suggested the scale of immigration by cottagers was indicative of ‘a state of relative overpopulation in the surrounding country and the capacity of forest villages to provide them with some sort of livelihood’.56 Similarly, there was much cottage settlement in the upland forest areas of north-west Shropshire. In Norden’s detailed survey of lordship in 1602 he referred to the

53 N.J. Tringham (ed.), Victoria County History: Staffordshire, Vol. 10 Tutbury and Needwood Forest (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 32–76; P. Coones, ‘Encroachment in the Forest of Dean: Settlement, Economy and Landscape Change at the Margin’, in J. Langton and G. Jones (eds), Forests and Chases of England and Wales c.1500–c.1850: Towards a Survey and Analysis (Oxford, 2005), pp. 37–40; P. Large, ‘From Swanimote to Disafforestation: in the Early Seventeenth Century’, in R.W. Hoyle (ed.), The Estates of the English Crown 1558–1640 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 389–417; V. Skipp, Crisis and Development: An Ecological Case Study of the Forest of Arden 1570–1674 (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 51, 54–64; J. Thirsk, ‘Industries in the Countryside’, in F.J. Fisher (ed.), Essays in the Economic and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 70–88. 54 T. Williamson, Shaping Medieval Landscapes: Settlement, Society, Environment (Macclesfield, 2004), p. 71. 55 SA, 4269/1. 56 P.A.J. Pettit, The Royal Forests of Northamptonshire: A Study in their Economy 1558–1714 (Northampton, 1968), p. 145.

21 James P. Bowen presence of cottages and encroachments, and complained about the detrimental use of the forests and wastes.57 There were five or six cottages upon the forest of Treveloge, with their inhabitants being given as Edward ap Thomas Carter, Owen ap John, Maude Evan, Margaret Morris, Griffith ap Howell and John Thomas ap Meredith.58 It was, however, recorded that: ‘But by what warrant the same cottages were soe erected they cannot tell’.59 Evidently cottagers were perceived to be a problem, their presence having a detrimental impact on the forest wastes given the level of destructiveness of their goats and their exploitation of wood resources for fuel and a variety of other uses, highlighting the need for greater oversight. For instance concerning ‘The Duparts’, Norden noted: Theis cottagers are noisome neighbours unto the forests, for they and their goats confound the underwoodes as fast as they grow. And the inhabitants nere must be inhibited to cut, for a tenant of one Mr. Morris ap Meredith had cut and brought home to his house manie bauens out of the forest which I finding in my perambulacion reprove him for it, and he verie peremptorylye sayde he woulde cut whoseo sayde nay. Therefore it appeareth they are growne to a height of conceyte, that they doe what they liste, there must be some good overseers.’60 Cottages and encroachments are listed, the places referred to corresponding with the map of Oswestry and adjoining lordships in the sixteenth century (Figure 3).61 For instance, at Kefen-y-Maes, Roger Kiffin of Sweeney and Reginald ap John Lewes each held a cottage and a little piece of land containing an acre and the latter had also erected a cottage on the north side of the hill, although no ground was attached.62 Norden noted that: ‘There might be ground layde to all theise houses and then they were fit for poore men to dwell in for if this waste were incloased and made into tenements (as there would be manie fit for poore men) it would be commodious to your Lordship and good for the common wealth.’63 This account further supports the interpretation that the exploitation of waste by the local poor was condoned before the Elizabethan poor laws were enacted. At Kynynion, Richard ap John held a ‘little house and a little piece of land’, totalling 5 acres whilst in Soughton it 3 64 was noted there were ‘encroachments with a cottage’ totalling 6 ⁄4 acres. In Mynydd Sweeney there were nine encroachments totalling 11 acres 3 rood and 20 perches and there was a cottage in the ‘green way’, leading to Gronwen, reflecting the tendency for cottages

57 W.J. Slack, The Lordship of Oswestry, 1393–1607 (Shrewsbury, 1951), pp. 60, 70–73, 90–91. 58 Slack, Lordship of Oswestry, p. 60. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid.. 61 British Library, London Royal MS 18 D III f.93. 62 Slack, Lordship of Oswestry, p. 70. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid.

22 Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste

Figure 3 A Coloured Map Showing Oswestry and the Adjoining Lordships in North-West Shropshire, c. 1579 Referred to in John Norden’s Detailed Survey of Oswestry Lordship in 1602

Source: © The British Library Board, Royal 18 D lll f.93. to be built on roadside verges.65 In Treveleche there were 28 encroachments including eight cottages in Gwern Fynin, Gwern-yr-Hirdire, Mynydd Sweeney, Porthywaen and the forest of Treveleche, totalling 68 acres 3 roods.66 In Trefonen there were twelve encroachments including three cottages totalling 9 acres 3 roods and 26 perches; in Bryn there were fifteen encroachments on Mynydd Bryn, Rhos-y-Bryn, Pant-y-Lladron, Gwern-y-Bychan, including a cottage and a ‘kilne house’ totalling 67 acres 3 roods 36 perches; at Blodwall

65 Ibid., p. 71. 66 Ibid., pp. 71–72.

23

James P. Bowen there were twelve encroachments and a cottage totalling 27 acres 1 rood 24 perches; and at Llynclys there were five encroachments including a cottage totalling 3 acres 2 roods and 28 perches.67 In Crickheath there were eight encroachments totalling 7 acres 3 roods and in the case of the latter it was further recorded that David ap John, a ‘lead man’, held a cottage and a piece of ground in the forest ‘of whom the lord was to have use of.’68 In Hisland there were nine encroachments and a cottage, totalling 12 acres 1 rood 22 perches; and of Sandeforde it was stated: There are sundrye greate peeces of lande barrayne and heathye grounde yet good for Rye for the most parte inclosed by Mr. Jones tenants of Sandeforde, and 2 cottages or tenements builded upon them, contayninge in the whole as I was directed where and how it hath bene inclosed.69 There were fourteen encroachments and two cottages totalling 23 acres 1 rood in Wotton and six encroachments including two cottages and a pond totalling 5 acres 3 roods 12 perches in Myddleton.70 In the Trayan or ‘Tertia pars’ it was recorded that at Ifton John ap Morris and others had enclosed 3 acres 3 roods and 30 perches by their cottages, whilst in Weston there had been six encroachments totalling 16 acres 15 perches including two cottages.71 In Bronygarth, it was recorded that Richard ap David ap Edward, Hugh ap David and Rice ap Ieuan had erected a cottage upon the waste at the end of Glyn Ceiriog Forest, given on the map as ‘Foresta Montana’, near Pont Waine or the Stone Bridge.72 Moreover, regarding the former it was noted that: ‘There is about this cottage ground to be let to make it more helpful to the poor cottager’, indicating that there was, in compliance with the 1589 act a recognition of the need to allocate land to cottagers in order to provide for their subsistence and avoid the growth of a landless population.73 In hill and upland parts of north-west and south-west Shropshire, and England and Wales more generally, cottage settlement and encroachment took the form of hillside intakes, field names such as ‘common piece’ giving an indication of the enclosure of common as holdings extended up hillsides. Upon marginal, upland commons in neighbouring Powys relict squatter settlements, so-called ‘landscapes of the poor’ have been identified with place names reflecting their origins or characteristics of the inhabitants.74

Statute and cottage settlement In considering the reasoning behind cottage settlement it is important to recognise the significance of statute law concerning vagrancy, poor relief, settlement and cottage

67 Ibid., p. 72. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., p. 73. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., p. 90. 72 Ibid., p. 91. 73 Ibid. 74 R.J. Silvester, ‘Landscapes of the Poor’, pp. 56–67.

24

Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste building.75 Prior to the 1662 Act of Settlement or the Settlement and Removal Act, it was the 1589 and 1598 statutes regarding the erection of cottages and poor relief which influenced the pattern of migration, settlement and vagrancy. The 1598 and 1662 statutes made specific reference to the movement of the poor to parishes where there were commons.76 The latter observed that poor People are not restrained from going from one Parish to another, and therefore do endeavour to settle themselves in those Parishes where there is the best Stock, the largest Commons or Wastes to build Cottages, and the most Woods for them to burn and destroy.77 According to formal settlement rules, to be resident in a parish an individual had only to be in the parish for 40 days.78 In other words, before 1662, the lack of a definition of settlement meant that in practice, manorial and parochial officials were caught between providing relief for the maintenance of the poor whilst, at the same time, enforcing exclusivist policies relating to cottages and inmates in order to maintain the stability of communities. As Hindle has pointed out: ‘[t]here can be little question that parish officers and ratepayers alike were alarmed by the impact of unchecked immigration on the burden of poverty in rural communities’.79 In fact, Clause V of the 1598 Poor Relief Act allowed parishes to build ‘convenient houses of dwelling’ on common wastes for the poor with the lord’s agreement.80 It also allowed parishes to place inmates or more than one family in a cottage or house in order to provide ‘necessary places of habitation’, despite the 1589 statute regulating cottage building.81 This was further affirmed by Clause IV of the 1601 Poor Relief Act which stipulated that ‘overseers may, with consent of the lord of manor, build houses on the waste for the impotent poor and place inmates there’.82 Following the 1662 Act of Settlement and Removal the definition of settlement was tightened.83 Any incoming migration from outside the parish was subject to parochial control under the settlement laws which sought to restrict the number of migrants who as residents would gain access to common resources regardless of whether they had formal rights and, furthermore, to make those settled in the parish responsible for paying poor relief.

75 Vagrancy: e.g. Act against the Harbouring of Inmates, 1 Eliz. I, c. 17 (1559); poor relief: e.g. An Act for the Relief of the Poor, 39 Eliz. I, c. 3 (1598); An Act for the Relief of the Poor, 43 Eliz. I, c. 2 (1601); settlement: e.g. An Act for the better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom, 14 Car. II, c. 12 (1662), also known as the Settlement Act or the Settlement and Removal Act; and the regulation of cottage building: e.g. Act against the Erecting and Maintaining of Cottages, 31 Eliz. I, c. 7 (1589). 76 An Act for the Relief of the Poor 39 Eliz I, c.3 (1598); An Act for the better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom, 14 Car. II, c. 12 (1662). 77 An Act for the better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom, 14 Car. II, c. 12. (1662). 78 Hindle, On The Parish?, pp. 306–307. 79 Ibid., p. 311. 80 An Act for the Relief of the Poor, 39 Eliz. I, c. 3 (1598). 81 Ibid. 82 An Act for the Relief of the Poor, 43 Eliz. I, c. 2 (1601). 83 P. Styles, Studies in Seventeenth Century History (Kineton, 1978), pp. 175–204.

25 James P. Bowen

The gradual progress of cottage settlement thus appears to have been allowed in order to house the elderly, widows and the poor under the terms of the poor law, but also in response to the burgeoning local population. Woodland areas, such as Shropshire, saw much in- migration as the labouring population grew in the sixteenth century with waste being encroached and built on by cottagers and the landless. Cottage building was benevolently accepted in a paternalistic sense as a form of notional relief, providing a way of housing the poor and a growing population that was displaced with enclosure and the engrossment of holdings. Manor courts tried to enforce sixteenth and seventeenth century statute controlling cottage building through the laying of by-laws. For example, it was ordered in 1636 that no person within the lordship or manor of Whitchurch, north Shropshire was to build, make or erect any manner of cottage for habitation or dwelling, nor convert any building made or to be made, to be used as a cottage for dwelling unless the same person do assign and lay to the same building 4 acres of ground at the least according to the statute in that case provided being his or her own freehold and upon pain to pay and forfeit for every month that every person shall uphold or maintain such cottage 30s.84 At Ellesmere, north Shropshire, in 1683 Mr Frances Smith was amerced 10s for ‘converting Houghton House into several cottages not laying 4 acres of land to them’.85 There is, however, little evidence that the act against the erecting and maintaining of cottages was successfully enforced and it was eventually repealed in 1775.86 Findings correspond with Broad’s assertion, based on evidence from southern England that ‘much [cottage] building was haphazardly permitted for profit’, lords ‘acknowledging new cottages on manorial wastes in return for fines and quit rents’, despite being aware of the impact of cottagers in terms of the agricultural life of local communities and their claims for poor relief.87 Also, they support the Hammonds’ suggestion that cottage building and squatting was ‘generally sanctioned’.88

Industrial cottage settlement Cottage or squatter settlement frequently occurred in industrial and mining areas, cottagers providing labour necessary for such activities. An important to consider is the shift in the proportion of labour employed in agriculture and industry. In industrialising parts of Shropshire, such as the Clee Hills (Figure 4), the Stiperstones and the east Shropshire coalfield, cottagers were likely to be colliers, miners and industrial or transport workers.89 At Ketley and Leegomery, lords, requiring labour for mining enterprises, actively

84 SA, 212/Box59A, 28 April 1636. 85 SA, 661/443, 19 October 1683. 86 Broad, ‘Housing the Rural Poor’, p. 156. 87 Ibid., p. 155. 88 J.L. and B.L Hammond, The Village Labourer (London, 1978), pp. 4–5. 89 For the growth of cottages in , a parish in the east Shropshire coalfield, see A.J.L. Winchester, ‘Dawley: Growth of Settlement’, in G.C. Baugh and C.R. Elrington (eds), Victoria County History: Shropshire, Vol. 11 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 107–11.

26 Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste

Figure 4 Aerial Photograph Showing Cottage Settlement Associated with Industrial Activity on the Clee Hills, South Shropshire. Identifiable are Cottages Clustered Around the Edge of the Commons and Isolated Cottages with Small, Irregular Enclosures or Island Encroachments

Source: Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT), Welshpool 95-c-1745. encouraged settlement resulting in distinctive commons landscapes with the mushrooming of cottages and irregular enclosure of waste.90 Bayston Hill three miles south of Shrewsbury originated as a squatter settlement and Lubberland Common in south Shropshire is an example of a distinctive commons landscape composed of irregular enclosures, small stone cottages and relics of former mining activities.91 Significantly the statute which required cottages to be allocated four acres of land did not apply to industrial and coastal areas.92 There is evidence that conflict between cottagers and settled residents occurred, riots breaking out at between 1605 and 1607, when colliers brought in by James Clifford, lord of the manor, who were dwelling in cottages upon the commons and wastes were attacked by freeholders and substantial tenants aggrieved by the reduction of their common rights. Access to the commons and wastes would have been physically restricted by the presence of cottagers, whose cottages had been built on them, and it is probable that

90 T. Rowley, The Making of the English Landscape: the Shropshire Landscape (London, 1972), pp. 151–3; B. Trinder, The in Shropshire (Chichester, 1981), pp. 186–92. 91 Rowley, Shropshire Landscape, pp. 151–2. 92 For cottages in coastal and fishing villages, see H.S.A. Fox, The Evolution of the Fishing Village: Landscape and Society Along the South Devon Coast, 1086–1550 (Oxford, 2001).

27

James P. Bowen some of the resources would no longer have been available.93 Lordship seems to have had an influence on events, with Roland Lacon of Willey, a prominent landowner who claimed to have a share in the lordship, instigating the attack on the cottagers. During the period 1570–1700 it has been estimated that population increased 18 times to nearly 2,000, to the point that the commons were ‘in greatest measure built up and enclosed by poor people’.94 However, in rural Shropshire there seems to have been little agitation directed towards cottagers who were widely accepted prior to 1662, thus implying that there was no shortage of common waste and that remaining was gradually utilised. Particulars and lists of tenants and rents for the manors of Great and Little Dawley and Little Wenlock, provide a snapshot as to the growth of cottages on waste built to house industrial workers with cottages housing multiple occupants.95 Similarly a survey of the Craven Estates in Shropshire dated 1769–72 includes a map of Dawley Parva recording the scale of woodland clearance and subsequent settlement, and further maps and indexes record the prevalence of cottages on Catherton Common and numerous townships surrounding the Clee Hills.96 In his tour from to Shropshire in 1776, the agricultural commentator Arthur Young (1741–1820) described the abundance of cottages in woodland near Coalbrookdale, ‘the inhabitants being employed in the vast works of various kinds carried on in the neighbourhood … potteries, pipe makers, colliers and iron works’.97 Holywell Lane in Little Dawley, comprising 30 cottages constructed from the 1700s is an example of the many cottage or squatter communities that grew up in the Shropshire coalfields and elsewhere in Britain during the Industrial Revolution.98

Conclusion Cottage settlement, whether in the form of common edge or roadside agglomerations, isolated cottages surrounded by irregular enclosures, regular intakes of cottages and enclosures or associated with industrial development, resulted in a distinctive fieldscape, contrasting with that of the surrounding early-enclosed countryside and further complicating Shropshire’s mixed settlement pattern.99 The examples discussed reveal distinctive patterns of cottage settlement. These reflect the availability and the landscape character of commons on which to settle, the extent of manorial regulation and whether statute was enforced. They were also influenced by the economy of a particular locality, for instance whether it was primarily agricultural and rural or industrial. Further factors include demographic trends, such as the need to house a growing settled population, the deserving

93 M.D.G. Wanklyn, ‘Rural Riots in Seventeenth Century Shropshire’, in A. Charlesworth (ed.), Rural Social Change and Conflicts since 1500 (Hull, 1983), pp. 11–13. 94 Wanklyn, ‘Rural Riots’, pp. 11–13; J.U. Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry (London, 1966), p. 208. 95 Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California EL 6631–6638. 96 SA, 6001/2481 Vol. 2. 97 A. Young, Tours in England and Wales, selected from the Annals of Agriculture (London, 1932), pp. 145–50. 98 Jones, Hunt, Malam and Trinder, ‘Holywell Lane’, pp. 163–85. 99 Rowley, Shropshire Landscape, pp. 26–28; D. Sylvester, ‘Rural Settlement in Shropshire: a Geographical Interpretation’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society, 44 (1927–28), pp. 213–56.

28 Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste poor who were benevolently accepted in a paternalistic sense as a form of relief and those displaced by enclosure and engrossment, and the need to absorb an influx of migrants engaged in agricultural or non-agricultural occupations. In terms of chronology it is necessary to acknowledge phases of cottage settlement. In the late medieval period, cottage settlement was ostensibly accepted by lords and large farmers in order to retain a readily available supply of labour for agriculture.100 Sixteenth and seventeenth century cottage settlement reflected a trend by which woodland and forest zones, and upland areas, were encroached upon as the rural labouring population swelled, a point remarked on by contemporaries. Commons, especially areas of open heathland and lightly wooded country attracted cottagers who sought to encroach on common waste due to the apparent lack of regulation and because it provided an area which could be colonised in an otherwise enclosed countryside. Woodland areas saw in-migration in the sixteenth century with waste being encroached and built on by cottagers and the landless and becoming, in effect, the new frontier of colonisation. Although early enclosure had reduced the extent of open field arable, in woodland counties much common heathland, hill and woodland waste remained. This was in contrast to areas such as Northamptonshire where the extent of waste available was relatively small and its significance declined as enclosure and the intensification of farming systems reduced its value from an agricultural asset to a category of that became almost exclusively associated with the usage of the landless poor.101 Much contemporary comment is critical of cottagers and the state of the commons, emphasising the potential benefits of enclosure. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries views changed. There was a notable shift in attitudes towards cottage building from being benevolently accepted to house the poor and a growing population, to being considered in relation to debates concerning enclosure, improvement, the character or perceptions of cottagers and the problem of rural poverty. Such a view emphasised notions of idleness and squalor, an apparent lack of regulation and an association with religious non-conformity. This view corresponds with eighteenth and nineteenth century descriptions of cottages and their inhabitants’ way of life, such as the Board of Agriculture reports and other works of political economy concerning agriculture and rural life. For example, in 1794, John Bishton wrote: [t]he idea of leaving them [the commons] in their unimproved state to bear chiefly gorse bushes, and fern, is now completely scouted, except by a very few, who have falsely conceived that the inclosing of them is an injury to the poor … Let those who doubt, go round the commons now open, and view the miserable huts, and poor ill-cultivated land, impoverished spots erected, or rather thrown together, and enclosed by themselves for which they pay 6d. or

100 H.S.A. Fox, ‘Servants, Cottagers and Tied Cottages during the Later Middle Ages: Towards a Regional Dimension’, Rural History, 6 (1995), pp. 125–54. 101 This view emerges strongly from enclosure historiography. See, for example: J.M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1996).

29 James P. Bowen

Figure 5 Hovel and Tree Near Rushbury, 1891

Source: Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury, A PH/E/4/3/5. 1s. per year, which by loss of time both to the man and his family, affords them a trifle towards their maintenance, yet operates upon their minds a sort of independence.102 Similarly, in 1803, Plymley wrote: [t]he people living in them [cottages], should be tenants to the real landlord, paying a fair annual rent. A cottage, subject only to an amercement, is found by experience … to make the family idle, and the profit from living rent-free … It is the opinion of good men and competent judges … that cottagers living near commons, and not paying any rent, are generally less comfortable in their habitation, and more chargeable to the parish, than those who live in villages.103 In his account of improvements on the estate, James Loch (1780–1855) described the prevalence of cottage building on waste and roadsides, observing it ‘had been at one period the custom to permit huts, to be erected in all parts of the estate’, the huts which amounted to many hundreds were ‘inhabited by the poorest, and, in many instances, by a

102 J. Bishton, General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire with Observations on the Means of its Improvement (London, 1794), pp. 224–5. 103 J. Plymley, General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire (London, 1803), p. 113.

30

Cottage and Squatter Settlement and Encroachment on Common Waste

Figure 6 Photograph of Fred Seabury who Lived in a Hut at the Top of Shuffles Lane, Soudley, Hope Bowdler, 17 May 1890

Source: Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury, PH/H/22/14.

31 James P. Bowen profligate population’ who rather than paying a rent to the estate, were amerced at the courts leet.104 In response to Loch, Thomas Bakewell described cottagers as ‘frugal and industrious working people’, emphasising their maltreatment which reflected the social polarisation of rural society in the nineteenth century.105 He admitted that cottage building and encroachment had been accepted by the manor court on the basis that it marked a form of informal relief, being ‘permitted to such an extent, as a means of keeping their owners from troubling the respective parishes as paupers.’106 A further account describing a typical 1 cottagers’ way of life in the nineteenth century noted that Richard Millward, who lived 2 ⁄2 miles south-west of Shrewsbury had a house, garden and land enclosed and improved from Pulley Common.107 He was a collier by occupation, had six children and ‘the management of the ground’ was largely undertaken by his wife Jane. Millward paid 3s rent per annum for his house and land, it being leased to them for three lives by Lady Malpas.108 Early photographs record the rare survival of cottages and their occupants in the late nineteenth century (Figures 5 and 6). Clearly there is more to be learnt about cottage building on commons. For instance, how widespread was the Welsh custom or practice of building cottages overnight on common waste (tai unnos)? This article has shed some light on the significance of cottage settlement on commons in both rural and industrial parts of Shropshire and the enduring impact this had on the landscape, particularly with regard to settlement. As contemporary accounts imply, commons attracted cottagers not only because of the necessity of land upon which to settle, but also because the availability of commons resources were vital to their household economy. Moreover, the interpretation offered makes a pertinent link with sixteenth and seventeenth century statute concerning cottage building, poor relief and vagrancy and the effects of wider factors, such as demographic change and industrial development on the pattern of cottage and squatter settlement at a local and regional level.

104 J. Loch, An Account of the Improvements on the Estates of the Marquess of Stafford (London, 1820), pp. 181–2. 105 T. Bakewell, Remarks on a Publication by James Loch Esq. Entitled “An Account of the Improvements on the Estates of the Marquis of Stafford” (London, 1820), p. 116. 106 Bakewell, Remarks, p. 120. 107 ‘Account of a Cottager’ by Sir William Pulteney, Bart., in Communications to the Board of Agriculture, on Subjects Relative to the Husbandry and Internal Improvement of the Country, Vol. 4 (London, 1805), p. 344 108 Ibid.

32