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English Open Fields and Enclosures: Retardation or Productivity Improvements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Michael Turner
Michael Turner
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Economic History at the University of Hull, Hull, HU67RX, England.
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Abstract

This paper is concerned with the relative efficiency of farming in open fields or enclosures in England. It uses surveys covering the acreage, yield, and output of the principal grain crops for the period 1795–1801, initially concentrating in some detail on selected but widely distributed English counties before concluding with a section which summarizes the data for England. Efficiency meant improvements in per unit acre yields and in total parish output. But it also had important implications for total agricultural productivity because the land which was saved by improved farming in enclosures was used to promote a better balance between arable and animal farming.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 669 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1986

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References

1 Mingay, G. E., English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1963), p. 179.Google Scholar

2 On the theories see McCloskey, D. N., “The Enclosure of Open Fields: Preface to a Study of its Impact on the Efficiency of English Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century,” this JOURNAL, 32(1972), pp. 15–35, and “The Persistence of English Common Fields”Google Scholar, in Parker, W. N. and Jones, E. L., eds., European Peasants and their Markets: Essays in Agrarian History (Princeton, 1975).Google ScholarOn the most recent attempt at measurement see Allen, R. C., “The Efficiency and Distributional Consequences of Eighteenth-Century Enclosures,” The Economic Journal, 92 (1982), pp. 937–53.Google Scholar

3 Turner, M. E., “Agricultural Productivity in England in the Eighteenth Century: Evidence from Crop Yields,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 35 (1982), pp. 489–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 McCloskey, “Enclosure of Open Fields,” p. 17.Google Scholar

5 See for example Kerridge, E., The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967), pp. 94–95;Google ScholarYelling, J.A., Common Field and Enclosure in England, 1450–1850 (London, 1977), p. 164.Google Scholar

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8 See also Yelling, J. A., “Changes in Crop Production in East Worcestershire, 1540–1867,” Agricultural History Review, 21 (1973), especially pp. 24–28 for evidence of progressive open-field farming in East Worcestershire, especially of improving the arable as distinct from adapting the open fields to introduce more livestock husbandry. In his summary of the Champion district of the county, however, Yelling was inclined to suggest that in comparing open with enclosed parishes “during its last stages common field practice had in some respects become anachronistic,” which we can take to mean staid and conservative, and not progressive (p. 33).Google Scholar

9 Turner, M. E., English Parliamentary Enclosure (Folkestone, 1980), chap. 6.Google Scholar

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16 Yet on this point see Yelling, Common Field and Enclosure, pp. 163–70.Google Scholar

17 As explained in Turner, English Parliamentary Enclosure, chap. 6.Google Scholar

18 Even in Durham, a non-Midland county and not usually associated with this trend, there was a wave of early enclosure before 1750 related to the development or extension of the pastoral economy; see Hodgson, R. I., “The Progress of Enclosure in County Durham, 1550–1870,” in Fox, H. S. A. and Butlin, R. A., eds., Change in the Countryside: Essays on Rural England, 1500–1900 (London, 1979), p. 93.Google Scholar

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21 My emphasis; taken from Turner, M. E., ed., Home Office Acreage Returns (H067), Public Record Office, List and Index Society, vol. 190 (1982), p. 80.Google Scholar

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23 These last two paragraphs based on Turner, , Home Office Acreage Returns, vol. 190 (1982), p. 102; vol. 189 (1982), pp. 193, 225; vol. 195 (1983), pp. 85, 68, 104; vol. 190 (1982), p. 107.Google Scholar

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29 Turner, , Home Office Acreage Returns, vol. 190 (1982), pp. 153–54.Google Scholar

30 Soil differences, even in adjacent counties, may account for this.Google Scholar

31 Havinden, “Agricultural Progress,” p. 72.Google Scholar

32 Turner, M. E., “The 1801 Crop Returns for Buckinghamshire,” Records of Buckinghamshire, 19 (1974), p. 477; unfortunately for neighboring and apparently more progressive Oxford shire there are surviving 1801 crop returns for only ten parishes. It is one of the least represented counties in the returns.Google Scholar

33 Harris, A., The Rural Landscape of the East Riding of Yorkshire, 1700–1850 (London, 1961), p. 61 (and in general for more detail and a greater appreciation of East Yorkshire regional differentiation)Google Scholar, and The Open Fields, p. 10.Google Scholar

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35 In texts like Chambers, J. D. and Mingay, G. E., The Agricultural Revolution, 1750–1880 (London, 1966), p. 84;Google Scholar and in the journal literature see Purdum, J. L., “Profitability and the Timing of Parliamentary Land Enclosures,” Explorations in Economic History, 15 (1978), pp. 313–26.Google Scholar

36 Turner, “Agricultural Productivity in England,” p. 498.Google Scholar

37 In Bedfordshire, the average acres per parish for wheat, potatoes, and rye was the same for open and enclosed parishes. There were fewer acres of oats and pulses per unit in enclosed parishes and more acres of barley and turnips. Calculated from Table 1. See also Mark Overton's recent and interesting analysis of the introduction and diffusion of turnips in Norfolk and Suffolk in the period 1580–1740, in particular where he says that “There is scant evidence of turnips being grown on ‘open fields,’” He suggests that turnips were likely to be introduced where private property rights predominated, that is, in enclosed places. Overton, M., “The diffusion of agricultural innovations in early modern England: Turnips and clover in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1580–1740,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, n.s., 10 (1985), pp. 205–21, especially pp. 215–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 In many places 1793 was taken to represent this notion of a “common average year.” An alternative method I employed in earlier published findings was to take regional yields as the mean of individual parish yields. whether at the county or national level, although the precise measurements from the two methods differed, the broad trends remained unaltered. See also the note attached to Appendix Table 7.Google Scholar

39 Only the yield ratios are reported in the appendix; the full table giving acres and bushels is available on request.Google Scholar

40 Though the parishes in this England study are self-selected by the documents themselves, there is in fact a marked bias in their distribution vis-à-vis the date of enclosure. But I think this bias works for rather than against the thesis being propounded. Of the 116 parishes involved, 42 were enclosed in the 1760s and 1770s; and in 1801, 47 were embarking on their last two “open” decades. The England summary is essentially a comparison between parishes with a generation of experience of farming in severalty and those in their last generation of the open fields.Google Scholar

41 Hodgson, “The Progress of Enclosure in County Durham,” especially pp. 96–98.Google Scholar

42 Davis, T., General View of the Agriculture of Wiltshire (London, 1811), p. 46.Google Scholar

43 Stone, T., Suggestions for Rendering the Inclosure of Common Fields and Waste Lands a Source of Population and Riches (London, 1787), p. 25.Google Scholar

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