CHAPTER XL 



OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS 



(1793-1815). 



Condition of open-field arable land and pasture commons as described by the 

 Reporters to the Board of Agriculture, 1793-1815; (1) The North and 

 North- Western District ; (2) West Midland and South- Western District ; 

 (3) South-Eastem and Midland District ; (4) Eastern and North-Eastem 

 District ; (5) the Fens ; the cumulative effect of the evidence ; procedxire 

 under private Enclosure Acts ; its defects and cost ; the General enclosure 

 Act of 1801 ; the Inclosure Commissioners ; the new Board of Agricultm-e. 



It might perhaps be supposed that in 1793 the agricultural defects 

 of the ancient system of open arable fields and common pasture 

 had been remedied by experience ; that open-field farmers had 

 shared in the general progress of farming ; that time alone was 

 needed to raise them to the higher level of an improved standard ; 

 that, therefore, enclosures had ceased to be an economic necessity. 

 In 1773, an important Act of ParMament had been passed,^ which 

 attempted to help open-field farmers in adapting their inconvenient 

 system of occupation to the improved practices of recent agriculture. 

 Three-fourths of the partners in village-farms were empowered, 

 with the consent of the landowner and the titheowner, to appoint 

 field-reeves, and through them to regulate and improve the cultiva- 

 tion of the open arable fields. But an}^ arrangement made under 

 these powers was only to last six years, and, partly for this reason, 

 the Act seems to have been from the first almost a dead letter. 

 At Hunmanby, on the wolds of the East Riding of Yorkshire,^ 

 the provisions of the Act were certainh^ put in force, and it is 



1 13 Geo. III. c. 81. 



* Isaac Leatham's General View of the Agriculture of the East Riding of York- 

 shire (1794), p. 45. Thomas Stone, in his Suggestions for Rendering the In- 

 closure of Common Fields and WaMe Lands a source of Population and Riches 

 (1787), says that he knew of no instance in which the Act had been put in 

 force. 



