Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Enclosure in England (ca. 1750–1860) was a parliamentary system of property redistribution whereby common lands for farming, grazing, and hunting, freely enjoyed by small tenant farmers, peasant villagers, cottagers, and farm laborers since the middle ages, were measured, surveyed, and privatized, with ownership largely reassigned to the landed gentry and aristocracy who controlled the machinery of government. “Enclosure” refers specifically to a closing-off of rural lands with fences, ditching, and other techniques, accompanied by extremely punitive new laws for trespassing, poaching, and hunting. The grand estates and farms of the aristocracy were often clearly demarcated with fences and walls, but ownership of millions of acres of English land formerly held in common for the people, and managed under a complex and customary scheme of public use applied over centuries, was transferred to the politically powerful landed classes. Enclosure changed the entire socioeconomic fabric of wide swaths of rural England and Scotland. What had been an ample inventory of open fields, forests, and fens available to the peasantry for growing food and raising livestock since medieval times were now severely narrowed and, in large sections of the rural countryside, eliminated altogether. In all, during this time nearly 4,000 Acts of Parliament transferred more than 6 million acres of land – one-fourth ... log in or subscribe to read full text