The Parliamentary Enclosure of Upland Commons in North–West England: Economic, Social and Cultural Impacts

Abstract

Parliamentary enclosure was one of the most important socio-economic changes to affect English communities in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, affecting up to 8.4 million acres (3.4 m ha) in England and Wales (Turner 1980). In midland, southern and eastern England much of this was open field arable and lowland commons. Enclosure in these areas had considerable social impacts. The nature and scale of these have been widely debated since the nineteenth century with opinions oscillating between Marxist and classical economic stances. Marxist interpretations have portrayed parliamentary enclosure as an instrument for oppressing the rural proletariat, with loss of common rights forcing smallholders to sell out because of the heavy costs that enclosure demanded, and turning cottagers and smallholders into biddable full-time wage labourers for the larger farmers, a form of social engineering. The alternative view is that the process was reasonably fair and did not severely disadvantage most of those in the lower strata of rural society with the main phase of decline of small farmers occurring well after parliamentary enclosure had occurred (Chambers and Mingay 1966; Mingay 1997; Neeson 1993; Snell 1985). Over much of northern England, however, parliamentary enclosure involved mainly upland common pasture. In the early nineteenth century, Cumberland and Westmorland had the highest proportion of their areas in unenclosed common of any English counties (Williams 1970). Open fields had mostly been removed before the later eighteenth century by piecemeal enclosure (Winchester 1987). In North West England (here taken as comprising the pre-1974 counties of Cumberland and Westmorland together with north Lancashire), over 500,000 acres (202,342 ha) were enclosed under parliamentary act, much of it in upland or upland marginal areas (Whyte 2003). There was an initial burst of enclosure in the 1770 s involving mainly smaller lowland commons which were capable of conversion to arable. A second major phase of enclosure occurred in the early nineteenth century during the period of high wartime food prices and included more marginal pasture at higher altitudes. The third surge of activity took place in the mid nineteenth century, especially following the General Enclosure Act of 1845, again involving land of relatively poor quality (Whyte 2003). It is important to appreciate, however, that not all common pasture in north-west England was enclosed by parliamentary act. There had been a good deal of piecemeal enclosure associated with population increases in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, either for cultivation (Appleby 1978) or as stinted cow pastures shared between small groups of farmers (Winchester 2000b). Equally much land completely escaped enclosure. In Westmorland for example, c.100,000 acres (40,468 ha) of land were enclosed under parliamentary act, but 129,000 acres (52,204 ha) remain as open common pasture today (Humphries 2008). The poor quality of some of the land involved probably helps to explain the failure to enclose at least some other commons.