CHAPTER XI. 



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-Eastern and Midland District ; (4) Eastern and North-Eastern 

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

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

 Act of 1801 ; the Inclosure Commissioners ; the new Board of Agriculture. 



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 Parliament had been passed, 1 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 any 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, 2 

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



J 13 Geo. III. c. 81. 



2 laaac 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 Waste Lands a source of Population and Riches 

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

 force. 



