The Financing of Parliamentary Waste Land Enclosure: Some Evidence from North Somerset, 177O-I 83 O I

The Financing of Parliamentary Waste Land Enclosure: Some Evidence from North Somerset, 177o-I 83 o I ByBJBUCHANAN I demonstrated that, contrary to the assump- ISTORICAL studies of enclosure, the tion amongst modern agricultural histor- process by which the system of ians that land sales were of little signifi- H cultivation was transformed from cance as a way of financing enclosures until the traditional and corporate method of the nineteenth century, in North Somerset farming in common to the modern and at least the method was well established by individualistic one of farming in severalty, the I77O'S. Ample evidence of this claim have tended to focus upon the arable open can be extracted from the enclosure awards fields rather than upon the commons and which reveal details of both the financial waste lands.: Indeed, the changes in and economic costs imposed by this farming organization outside open-field method. The paper examines, first, the England have been most informatively financing of the North Somerset enclo- explored in recent years by those approach- sures, and second, the relationship between ing the subject as geographers, although this evidence and that which is generally attention has then necessarily been concen- available on the subject. By emphasizing trated on the physical rather than the the economic aspects of the enclosure of economic aspects of change over time. 3 the waste lands it is intended that this study There is therefore a need for the subject of should offer a corrective to both the tradi- the waste lands to be reclaimed by tional concern of historians with the arable historians, to ensure that the generaliza- open fields, and that of geographers with tions which are made about the financing of physical change. enclosures are not unduly weighted by the research bias towards the open fields. This paper is concerned with the subject of waste-land enclosure costs. It will be II Our initial concern is with the parliamentary enclosure of some 42,000 acres of waste Whis article draws st, bstantially on chapters 2 and 3 of B J land in the northern third of the historic Buchanan, 'Capital Formation in North Somerset, 175o--183o', thesis submitted to the University of Bristol, 1979. I would like to county of Somerset, stretching from the thank Professor W Ashworth and Dr C G A Clay for their helpful southern slopes of the Mendip Hills north- comments and advice. I am also grateful for the help received from Mr D M M Shorrocks of the Somerset P, ecord Office (SRO) and wards to the River Avon. Within this Miss M E Williams of the Bristol Ardfive Office (BAO) and their region there were three quite different colleagues. Whe case for the inclusion of the waste lands was made by E K C farming areas. First there were the uplands, Gonner, Common Land and hldosure, 1912, pp 192-4, but they have chiefly the carboniferous limestone Men- been excluded by more recent scholars, for example D N McCloskey, 'The Enclosure of Open Fields . 2, jnl Eron Hist, dips and its outliers but including also the XXXII, 1972, pp 15-.t5. southerly extensions of the oolitic lime- 3For example Michael Williams, 'The Enclosure of Waste Land in Somerset, 17oo-I9oo', Trans lust Brit Geq~s, LVll, 1972, stone Cotswolds, for example Dundry Hill pp 99-123, and John Chapman, 'Parliamentary Enclosure in the south of Bristol. Second, there was the Uplands: the Case of the North York Moors', Ag Hist Rev, XXIV, 1976, pp ~-~7. northern extension of the central Somerset II2 WASTE LAND ENCLOSURE 113 Levels, low-lying and frequently flooded Evidence of the financing of North peat bogs and alluvial lands that skirted Somerset enclosures did not at first seem much of the coast from the mouths of the promising. Commissioners' accounts are Rivers Axe to Avon and lay inland by the rare, thus ruling out the possibility of a river valleys. Third, there was the rest of study of costs like that conducted so com- North Somerset, undulating lands between prehensively for Warwickshire, and very the northern slopes of the Mendips and the little extra-award material has been found, River Avon, made up largely of fertile red unlike that discovered for Buckingham- marls and sandstones. By the mid-eighteenth shire. 7 However, a close study of the century this last area was already surviving awards for the period housed in long enclosed and attuned to the market the Somerset Record Office has revealed economy provided by the growing city that, in the absence of financial details of a and port of Bristol and the seasonal influx more orthodox nature, there is neverthe- of visitors to Bath. 4 It was therefore the less an alternative source of information under-utilized potential of the uplands and which can be used to the same end. This low moorlands, offering common sheep indirect evidence is to be found amongst pasture and cattle grazing respectively, that the profusion of organizational details in excited interest in the second half of the the awards, for these frequently record eighteenth century. both the amount of land sold to finance the The impulse to enclose, of course, was enclosure and the capital sum thus raised. It felt widely at this time, but whereas in may seem a kind of legerdemain to trans- many counties the wastes remained com- mute this land transaction into the total mon grazing ground until pressures were public cost of the enclosure in question, but further intensified in the French Wars, s in the commissioners were instructed by the North Somerset these were with some relevant Acts of Parliament to sell such small exceptions the only areas still to be proportion of the land to be enclosed as enclosed. It was to them, therefore, that they judged would enable them to cover attention was turned, first to the Mendips the cost of the undertaking, and the details from the I77o's and then to the Levels, in the awards indicate that they did so. with interest in the latter increasing from Corroborative evidence comes from the the I79o's. The reasons for these differ- only award accompanied by a set of com- ences in timing can be suggested only missioners' accounts, for the sum realized briefly, but it seems likely that the enclo- by the sale of land as recorded in the former sure of the uplands began early in response tallies exactly with the total cost of the to wheat prices which fluctuated upwards enclosure as accounted for in the latter: from the I75o's because these lighter soils It is this practice of land sale which could be more easily adapted to tillage than makes the North Somerset evidence on the richer but heavier soils of the wet financing markedly different from that of grasslands. The incentive to enclose the other areas studied intensively, though this latter came with the significant rise in meat is probably only a reflection of the former prices during the war years: These stimu- concentration on the open-field counties lated a change in the organization of land- holding in the Levels, if not in land use. vJ M Martin, 'The Cost of Parliamentary Enclosure in Warwick- shire' in E L Jones (ed), Agriculture avd Economic Growth in England, 1650-t815, 1967, pp 128-5X. M E Turner, 'Some Social and 4W E Tate, Somerset Enclosure Acts and Awards, 1948, pp 13-25; Peter Economic Considerations of Parliamentary Enclosure in Bucking- Mathias, The First Industrial Nation, 1969, pp 92-3. hamshire, 1738-1865' , PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 1973, SMichael Turner, English Parliamentary Enclosure, its Historical Geog- and 'The Cost of Parliamentary Enclosure in Buckinghamshire', raphy and Economic History, Folkestone, 198o, pp 86--93. Ag Hist Rev, XXI, 1973, pp 35-46. 6j D Chambers and G E Mingay, The Agricul:ural Revolution sSRO, Shipham and Winscombe Enclosure Award, Q/RDe 13, I75o-188o, 1966, pp 83, ~o. t 797-99. II4 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW aiready observed. Indeed, the method was auctioned were matters for fine judgement, frequently remarked upon by earlier wri- complicated by two sets of problems. ters who had a wide if generalized familiar- First, the commissioners had to estimate ity with enclosure practices, 9 although it the internal costs, and here there was an has been questioned on the basis of more element of uncertainty because of the need recent scholarship. Thus M E Turner has for construction works such as drainage written that the belief that enclosures were channels. However, unexpected and es- ever widely financed by land sales '... was calating costs could be met by further land an erroneous view but one which has been sales, of which there is evidence in both the repeated often. It was only during the awards and the limited supplementary nineteenth century that land deductions evidence. '= As an insurance against such and sales became prevalent. Formerly it delays the experienced commissioners may was strictly applied to certain charity lands have over-estimated the initial acreage to and then only in specific cases. ''° However, be sold, especially as the legal clause direct- of "the 4I parliamentary enclosures in ing the expenditure of any surplus mo- North Somerset between I77O and I83O for nies on lasting improvements relieved which awards survive, 37 were financed by them of the task of dividing this amongst the sale of land and only four by the the proprietors. Second, the commission- levying of a rate. This difference would be ers had to assess the external factors affec- of a positive but limited interest were it not ting the value of land, and again they for the possibly different effect of each sometimes misjudged the situation, the method on enclosure costs.

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