Enclosure and landscape

Most of England’s enclosure acts were passed between 1760 and 1815, and the acts transformed the British landscape. Before enclosure, yeoman farmers lived in villages, and trudged each day to their scattered strips of land to work. Before enclosure, according to Maggie Lane, “one-third of the land enclosed in England had previously been either common, on which villagers had traditionally enjoyed grazing rights, or waste – rabbit-warrens, ant-hills, weeds, rocks or scrub.”

Enclosure brought a “fundamental reworking and recolouring of the very fabric of the landscape, whereby England became a lush green patchwork,” the England of fantasy, “stitched together by dark hedges and embroidered, here and there, with clumps of trees deliberately planted to give shelter and shade.”

Once land-holdings were consolidated, moreover, it became efficient for farmers to live on their land: “numerous outlying farmhouses came to be built, to the great advantage of the landscape, for a farmhouse of Georgian design snuggled into a fold of the hills amid its cluster of barns, a light column of smoke ascending, gave to the scene an air of ‘cheerful inhabitancy.’”

Laborers were no longer boarded and housed by landowners, and this meant that cottages were built for them: “Often these dwellings were mere hovels, but even when cramped and insanitary within, they could present a charming appearance to the casual passer-by; and that more and more were model cottages, provided by a benevolent landlord, the great increase in pattern-books for cottages around the turn of the century attests.”

Roadways were changed in the process. The Agricultural Board conducted a series of studies on road conditions and found that “not only the roads are bad, but the difficulty of discerning public roads from mere drift-ways, or from passages to lands of different proprietors is so great, that without a guide, some of them cannot be traveled by a stranger without safety.” A new road system connected villages, and also “opened up not only distant markets for produce, but wider mental horizons.”