The Extent and Nature of Parliamentary Enclosure By JOHN CHAPMAN N SPITE of the recent advances in our suffering from the same problems as the knowledge of the Parliamentary enclos- 'Domesday'. I ure movement, notably through the With regard to the breakdown into types work of Dr Michael Turner, ~ the details of of land affected, the situation is far worse. precisely what land was affected remain The act estimates are quite useless from this somewhat obscure. Turner's edition of point of view, since only a tiny handful give Tate's 'Domesday' offers figures for most of this type of detail, and the summaries given the English enclosures 2 but, quite apart from in the awards are only marginally better. those where no figure is given, many are Though there are now a number of major based on the act and award estimates, which studies available of some individual coun- can be wildly inaccurate. This has been ties, or substantial parts of them, these are demonstrated in detail elsewhere for North- neither numerous enough, nor necessarily ern England,3 but is by no means restricted calculated on a sufficiently comparable basis, to the remote uplands, as might be assumed. to give any overall picture of the movement Substantial errors occur in Sussex, 4 and an as a whole. ~ examination of some Leicestershire material produced surprising errors even there. Comparison of the sums of the allotments I with the award estimates given in Turner for This paper seeks to remedy some of these sixteen awards revealed that although eleven problems by presenting the results of a fell within 2 per cent the remaining four were national survey of the Parliamentary enclos- all over I 4 per cent out, rising to 23.5 per cent ure awards, v The data were collected from a at Congerstone. Strangely, in the two worst Io per cent sample of all English and Welsh cases the act estimates were far closer to the awards, full details of every individual true figure. A similar exercise on eleven allotment being abstracted for each selected Kesteven awards found eight without any award. 8 In view of the known and suspected award figure; one, Eagle, completely variations in enclosure awards in different accurate; and two over 2o per cent out. The parts of the country, 9 a simple unrestricted situation with regard to Wales is still worse, random sample was statistically unaccept- for the only list covering the whole country, able, since there was a substantial danger of that ofBowen, 5 is incomplete, in addition to drawing, for example, a disproportionate ' M Turner, English Parliamentary Enclosure, Folkestone, 198o, and (' For example, the recent work of E and R C Russell, LaMscape Enclosures in Britain 175o--183o, 1984. Changes in South Humberside: The Endosures of Thirty-Seven Parishes, : W E Tate, A Domesday of Ene.lish Enclosure Acts and Awards, M E Hull, x982, and Old and New Landscapes in the Horncastle Area, Turner, editor, P,eading, 1978. Lincoln, t985. •~ J Chapman andTM Harris, 'The Accuracy of Enclosure Estimates: v Subsequent to the unions of tile respective Parliaments with tile Some Evidence from Northern England', jolm;al of Historical English one, there appear to have been one enclosure for Scotland Geoqraphy, 8, 1982, pp 261-264. and ten for Ireland. These have been omitted. 4j Chapman, 'Some Problems in tile Interpretation of Enclosure l am grateful to the ESRC, then the SSRC, for their financial Awards', Ag Hist Rev, 26, 1978, pp l 1 I-I 12. assistance for this work, and to Dr T M Harris, then my research l Bowen, The Great Enclosures qfCommon Lands hi Wah,s, Chiswick, assistant, for his invaluable help on the project. 1914. ') Turner, English Parliamentary Enclosure, pp 32-62. 26 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW Distribution of sample enclosures pre-174g × 1750-1769 + 1770-1789 X 1790-1809 OO ~ x 1810-1829 ,~1830-1849 ~7 O x + O 1850-1869 oo L * 1870 onwards ' O~ ,[3 in <)x Xx +x O q x o + [] + +0 x u +x+ ,,~ +x+ :¢o+ XxxgV ~ V+ x :.~ += # ,<o÷ x x x <)'t/X~x + / x V x x F x. ~ ~ x=~ ~+,x x ~ ~xX.~'~ / / ~ ~' + × u, -,.. +d~, x = =-@#o~< ~o 'o o f /- + "-~ _+++ ,..¢, #., ox ,,u a 0 _ o o oX+E] x~X~+x~x~"£, o x+ oO ~ .~" BD C~ + + x OD [] XoX~<~''" ~~ x x x x [] o .J l-..- v.. rn u 0 xo o_~> x 0 ..J I xX===x [] ~ _2Xx 0 '~.- u-_..'_ 0 C~Lx °0 . / o ~ o~ ' 80 kil0metres FIGURE I THE EXTENT AND NATURE OF PARLIAMENTARY ENCLOSURE 27 number of large northern enclosures, or of for England, or a grand total ofjust over 8.85 Midland open field ones. The sample was million acres for the whole Parliamentary therefore drawn separately from each enclosure movement. In practice these county, or, in the Welsh case, group of figures must be regarded as representing an adjacent counties, thus producing a regional upper limit, for doubts must be expressed stratification, and ensuring that each region about the validity of some of the enclosures was proportionately correctly represented in making up the grand total. If the proportion the whole. (See Fig I.) of spurious enclosures discovered in the The definition of an 'enclosure' which was sample were to be matched in the overall used was that adopted originally by Tate, ,o total for England, some seventy awards multiple awards under a single act being would be rejected, giving a projected total of regarded as part of the same enclosure. A 7.57 million acres. The Welsh figures would number of awards examined proved not to be unaffected since almost all Welsh awards fall within the normal definition of enclos- were examined and the total contains only ure, for example because they consisted those meeting acceptable criteria. The same entirely of exchanges of already enclosed is also true of several English counties, so land" or because they were simply regula- that although a figure of 8.75 million acres tory, ,2 and these were replaced by reserves, might be taken as the lower limit of the range as were any awards which were lost or too it seems likely that the true figure would lie defective to be usable. closer to the upper limit of 8.85 million. The adjusted totals of enclosures proved It must be noted that these figures refer to to be 5570, 5341 in England and 229 in Wales. the total land affected by enclosure, and as Owing to the effects of rounding in such do not equate exactly with the total individual counties, the sample consisted of amount of open or common land abolished 559 awards, 535 from England and 24 from by the process. It was a frequent practice at Wales. As this involved a slight over- enclosure for landowners to exchange small representation of Wales, and subsequent patches of old enclosed land for the new analysis demonstrated a number of signifi- allotments in order to eliminate awkward cant differences between English and Welsh detached pieces of their estates, and pro- enclosures, most calculations were per- vision for this was normally included in the formed separately for the two countries acts. Some acts, however, went further, and before figures were amalgamated to specified that all detached fields of less than a produce grand totals. This had the added particular size, usually three acres, should be advantage of permitting comparisons with thrown into the melting pot, ,3 while others existing published figures, which normally similarly incorporated any land within the refer to one or other country individually. same fence which was owned by more than In total, the sample awards affected one owner. ,4 Though the acreage involved 892,o89.25 acres of land, including old was usually small, it was by no means enclosures exchanged or reallocated. negligible, and cases involving larger areas 768,449.95 acres lay in England and are not rare. ,s In consequence, the total land 123,639.3o in Wales. Taken at face value, allotted by the awards exceeds the amount these would imply totals of approximately theoretically available for enclosure. Dis- I. 18 million acres for Wales and 7.67 million '~ e.g. Llangybi, Monmouthshire. Gwent County Record Office, Enc t. '° See, for example, W E Tate, 'A Handlist of Sus:lex Enclosure ,4 e.g. Bosham and Funtington, Sussex. West Sussex County Acts and Awards', East and West Sussex County Councils, Record Office, Rm 3 DC7; Broadwater, Sussex, PRO Record Publication, ,, 195o. CP43/9t ,. " e.g. Evington, Leicestershire; and Carisbrooke and Godshill, ,s e.g. Romsey Extra, Hampshire. Hampshire County Record Isle of Wight. Office, Enc 89; Bury, Sussex. West Sussex County Record "~ e.g. Luton, Bedfordshire. Office, QDD/6/WI8. 28 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW regarding certain doubtful areas, which will hence overstate the earlier changes, quite be considered later, 33, I46 acres, or 3.94 per apart from any other objections which might cent of the sample, consisted of such be raised. ,9 already-enclosed land, and for England separately the figure is proportionately higher, at 4. I9 per cent. The totals actually II enclosed were thus 736,267 acres for With regard to the type of land involved, the England and I22,676 for Wales, giving overwhelming majority of awards specify implied totals of 7,253,955 and I~7,o3o clearly whether the land concerned in any respectively. The grand total enclosed particular allotment was open field, would appear to have been over 8.42 million meadow, or common waste. While this acres. division may beg certain questions about the For England alone the amount of open or real nature of some open field land common land abolished by enclosure would immediately prior to enclosure, and the therefore appear to fall in a range from 7.25 degree to which common waste had been million acres, assuming a maximum number encroached and cultivated, the legal situ- of erroneous enclosures, to 7.35 million, ation, at least, is usually clear.