308 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



open fields as still mainly intact.^ Considerable enclosing there- 

 fore took place at some time between 1600 and 1750. How 

 much of it occurred before 17 14 may be in part discerned 

 from a summary of the plans of nineteen estates lying in a 

 somewhat larger number of townships in the central and eastern 

 part of the county and belonging to St. Helen's, the Boys', and 

 other hospitals in Norwich.^ 



It will be seen that about eighty per cent of the total area of 

 these estates was enclosed when the plans were made; but whether 

 most closes had arisen through encroachments upon the open 

 fields may be doubted, since in nine estates all or a part of 

 them bordered upon the respective common wastes. In those 

 estates, however, in which enclosures from the waste play a 

 smaller part, the open and enclosed areas nearly balance each 

 other. In the Trowse and Bixley property of 58 acres the 

 area of the scattered enclosed plats was 34 acres, that of the 

 open-field strips 24 acres; in the Buxton estate there were 

 20 acres enclosed, 18 open; at Shropham, the open-field strips 

 seem to have contained about the same number of acres as the 

 scattered closes, neglecting enclosures from the common; at 

 Snitterton unenclosed strips predominated. In general, then, it 

 is possible that not more than one-half of the open arable fields in 

 the region round Norwich had been enclosed before 17 14. 



The method followed in bringing about enclosure before this 

 date was the piecemeal one described by Nathaniel Kent at the 

 end of the eighteenth century and still employed at that time.^ 



^ Certain of these surveys are referred to below (p. 313 sq.) in the discussion 

 of field arrangements. Corbett, describing the open fields of six Norfolk villages, 

 infers that in four instances enclosure had afifected not more than one-half of the 

 arable and in the two others much less than this (" Elizabethan Village Surveys," 

 p. 87). 



^ Cf. p. 309. These plans, which are among the Norwich records kept in the 

 castle, were made known to me through the kindness of J. S. Tingey, Esq. 



' " There is still a considerable deal of common field land in Norfolk, though a 

 much less proportion than in many other counties; for notwithstanding common 

 rights for great cattle exist in all of them and even sheep walk privileges in many, 

 yet the natural industry of the people is such, that wherever a person can get four 

 or five acres together, he plants a white thorn hedge round it, and sets an oak at 

 every rod distance, which is consented to by a kind of general courtesy from one 

 neighbor to another " {General View of the Agriculture of Norfolk, p. 22). William 



