Chapter 6 - The Age of 'Improvement': Privatisation and the Reconfiguration of Common Land

Summary

Much of the literature on the history of common land has focused on its demise through enclosure in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, dwelling on the causes and consequences of its loss – the drivers behind enclosure, the process and its impact. In England, common rights were extinguished over more than 6.8 million acres (2.75 million ha) of land, 21 per cent of the total land surface, as a result of Parliamentary enclosure (largely in the century between c.1760 and c.1860), converting almost all open fields and much manorial waste into private property no longer used communally. The same process took place in Wales and, within a different legal framework, the period saw the loss of most common grazings across large parts of Scotland. The impact of enclosure – on the landscape, the agrarian economy and the livelihoods of the rural poor – has been the subject of much literature, a dominant theme being the negative impact on the poor, as customary uses of common land were swept away. This chapter takes a rather different approach, focusing not only on the loss of common land but also on how some commons came to be reconfigured as a result of enclosure. Paradoxically, improvement and Parliamentary enclosure did not always result in complete ‘privatisation’, as the process perpetuated communal use of some areas of common land under redefined regimes.

From the seventeenth century, ‘improvement’ came to dominate agricultural discourse, becoming an all-pervading imperative which had dramatic consequences for commons. Improvement represented a shift of paradigm, changing perceptions of the value of common land and culminating in its widespread loss. Commons were viewed as ‘wasted’ land, crying out to be ‘reclaimed’ and improved, as part of a wider change in attitudes to land, when profit and securing private property rights became dominant motives.

The idea of improvement can be traced back to the sixteenth century. At its heart lay a desire to increase income from land, one aspect of which involved changes in land use, including reclamation of marsh, enclosure of open fields, and changed management of woods and meadows. In his Boke of Surveyeng and Improume[n]tes(1523), Fitzherbert saw enclosure of common pastures, as well as arable land and meadows, as a prerequisite to increasing the value of a township.