In message <200408041856.i74IuMo7030013@mail.rootsweb.com>, Roy <roy.cox@btinternet.com> writes >Good HOT Afternoon - > >The 'meat' of our food production in years past is quite evolutionary and >Terrick VH Fitzhugh has set out an admirable description covering almost two >A5 pages in his book "The Dictionary of Genealogy". I have attempted to >precise this and trust it works! >>>>>>>>>> >"Enclosures" [Physical Process] or "Inclosures" [Legal Process] in the >Middle ages were the typical method of agriculture, now called "The Open >Field System". > >Householders in the manor held strips of land scattered among larger open >fields, hold hay-making and grazing rights in the meadowland and pasture in >proportion to the number of strips they held in the arable. > >The fields are called "OPEN" because there were no hedges or fences between >the various strips. there were grass paths called baulks between each strip, for access. If a man could get hold of the adjacent strip (by purchase or marrying the owner's daughter) he could plough up the baulk as well, but this was unofficial, so that when the time came to add up total strip holdings so that a block of land could be allocated, the baulk land was lost. > It time it became more efficient for a man to hold one >substantial block of land, rather than scattered strips. The lord of the >manor tended to withdraw his strips the lord of the manor generally had demesne land, in a block already, - the strips were as held by his manorial tenants. >into one group and to take in land from >the waste, the waste (uncultivated land) belonged to him anyway, as did all mineral rights, valuable in coal country. > 'Common' generally refers to the pasture fields, in which each tenant had a right to so many cow or sheep commons - i.e., the right to run X numbers of livestock (according to land holding usually). The beasts were turned out together, and it was up to them to get on with it, and eat their fill. Fussy eaters lost valuable fodder, which could be serious in bad seasons. There was generally a date before which cattle could not be pastured on certain common fields - but once they had been, and had eaten, there was no way of recovering the grass, so it was worth paying the fine of 6d or whatever a head, and having a contented cow or ox. > "Common Land" for grazing which I have heard of but know no details! > >The bulk of enclosures were in the late C18 and early to middle C19. The small owners generally lost out, since losing a baulk mattered more, the less total land you had. There was also the matter that the enclosures were asked for by the big farmers, who tended to be allocated the best land, and the small men got the scruff. Locally, they also had to pay for oak pale fencing round their new fields (plus the parson's glebe, which cost a lot of money. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society