CHAPTER VI 



The Influence of the Celtic System in England 



Northumberland 



The history of Northumberland open fields was nearly completed 

 before the period of parhamentary enclosure. The reporters to 

 the Board of Agriculture in 1794 declared that the parts of this 

 county " capable of cultivation " were " in general well enclosed 

 by live hedges," the only exceptions being " a small part of the 

 vales of Breamish, Till, and Glen," where enclosure was then in 

 progress. They noted further that lands which were or might 

 be cultivated by the plough constituted two-thirds of the county, 

 an area equal to nearly twice that of Oxfordshire.^ Of acts of 

 parUament earUer than 1760 Slater found two relative to North- 

 umberland, enclosing respectively 1300 and 1250 acres of arable; 

 of acts later than that date he discovered but six.^ Two of the 

 latter do not distinguish between arable and common, in three 

 others the amount of arable to be enclosed is estimated at 380 

 acres altogether, while at Corbridge only did the open arable 

 field amount to as much as 945 acres.^ Parhamentary enclosure 

 of common fields in Northumberland after 1760 is practically 

 negUgible. 



The earher acts, those of 1740 and 1757, point to the comple- 

 tion of an enclosure movement which had been in progress for a 

 century and a half. Some information regarding this process 

 may be obtained from the monumental History of Northumber- 

 land, since the contributors, in their accounts of the various par- 

 ishes, refer at times to the enclosing of the open fields. North 



1 J. Bailey and G. Culley, General View of the Agriculture of the County of North- 

 umberland (London, 1794), p. 50: " Lands which are or may be cultivated, 817,200 

 acres; mountainous districts improper for tillage, 450,000 acres." 



* English Peasantry, p. 294. The two earlier acts relate to Gunnerton (1740) 

 and West Matfen (1757). 



' A History of Northumberland (in progress by the Northumberland County 

 Histor>' Committee, vols, i-x, Newcastle, etc., 1893-1914), x. 143. 



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