230 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS 



In Gloucestershire ^ (1794) common fields and common meadows 

 still prevailed over extensive districts. Of the Cots wold district 

 the Reporter says : " probably no part of the kingdom has been 

 more improved within the last forty years than the Cotswold Hills. 

 The first inclosures are about that standing ; but the greater part 

 are of a later date. Three parishes are now inclosing ; and out of 

 about thirteen, which still remain in the common field state, two, 

 I understand, are taking the requisite measures for an inclosure : the 

 advantages are great, rent more than doubled, the produce of every 

 kind proportionably increased." Of the Vale of Gloucester he 

 says : "I know one acre which is divided into eight lands, and 

 spread over a large common field, so that a man must travel two 

 or three miles to visit it all. But though this is a remarkable 

 instance of minute division, yet, it takes place to such a degree, as 

 very much to impede all the processes of husbandry. But this is 

 not the worst ; the lands shooting different ways, some serve as 

 headlands to turn on in ploughing others ; and frequently when 

 the good manager has sown his corn, and it is come up, his slovenly 

 neighbour turns upon it, and cuts up more for him, than his own is 

 worth. It likewise makes one occupier subservient to another in 

 cropping his land ; and in water furrowing, one sloven may keep 

 the water on, and poison the lands of two or three industrious 

 neighbours." Lot meadows were numerous in the county, on which 

 the herbage was common after hay-making. Several tracts such 

 as Corse Lawn, Huntley and Gorsley Commons were practically 

 wastes, " not only of very little real utihty, but productive of one 

 very great nuisance, that of the erection of cottages by idle and 

 dissolute people, sometimes from the neighbourhood, and sometimes 

 strangers. The chief building materials are store-poles, stolen from 

 the neighbouring woods. These cottages are seldom or never the 

 abode of honest industry, but serve for harbour to poachers and 

 thieves of all descriptions." In the Vale of Tewkesbury the common 

 fields were " very subject to rot. . . . Though it is reckoned they 

 (farmers) lose their flocks once in three years on average, there is a 

 considerable quantity kept, the farmers being persuaded they could 

 not raise corn without them. The arable fields after harvest are 

 stocked without stint. When spring seedtime commences, they 

 are confined to the fallow quarter of the field, and stinted in pro- 

 portion to the properties ; they are folded every night, and kept 

 » Turner's Qlouceaterahire (1794), pp. 10, 39, 49. 



