NORTH AND NORTH-WESTERN DISTRICT 227 



acres of improvable common, which were " generally overstocked." 

 " No improvement of breed was possible, while a man's ewes mixed 

 promiscuously with his neighbour's flocks." There were " few 

 commons but have parts which are liable to rot, nor can the sheep 

 be prevented from depasturing it." "If any part of the flock 

 had the scab or other infectious disease, there was no means of 

 preventing it from spreading." A large part of these commons 

 was good corn-land ; if enclosed, and part ploughed for grain crops, 

 not only would there be an increased supply of corn, but, instead 

 of " the ill-formed, poor, starved, meagre animals that depasture 

 it at present," there might be "an abundant supply of fat mutton 

 sent to our big towns." In Cheshire (1794), 1 there were said to 

 be of " common fields, probably not so much as 1000 acres." 

 Staffordshire 2 in 1808 contained little more than 1000 acres of open- 

 fields, which " are generally imperfectly cultivated, and exhausted 

 by hard tillage." Since the reduction of their area, the general 

 produce of the county is stated to be greater, the stock better, and 

 the rent higher by 5s. an acre. The county was " emerging out of 

 barbarism." But, thirty years before, on some of the " best land 

 of the county," the rotation had been " (1) fallow ; (2) wheat ; 

 (3) barley ; (4) oats ; and often oats repeated, and then left to 

 Nature ; the worst lands left to pasture and spontaneous rubbish ; 

 turnips and artificial grasses scarcely at all known in farming." 

 In Derbyshire s (1811), a list of the thirteen open arable fields which 

 remained is given. " Many of them," says the Reporter, " must 

 remain in their present open, unproductive, and disgraceful state, 

 (though principally in the best stratum in the County) " owing to 

 the expense of enclosure. There were, however, still thirty-six 

 open commons, such as Elm ton, with its " deep cart-ruts, and 

 every other species of injury and neglect that can, perhaps be 

 shown on useful land ; part of it has been ploughed at no distant 

 period, as completely exhausted as could be, and then resigned to 

 Weeds and Paltry " ; or Hollington, which, " though overgrown 

 with Rushes through neglect, is on a rich Red Marl soil " ; or 

 Roston, " miserably carted on, cut up, and in want of Draining ; 

 in wet seasons it generally rots the sheep depastured on it ; ... pro- 

 bably injurious, rather than beneficial, in its present state, both to 

 the Parishioners and the Public." 



1 Wedge's Cheshire (1794), p. 8. Pitt's Staffordshire ( 1 808), pp. 13, 51,313. 

 1 Farey's Derbyshire (1813), vol. ii. p. 77. 



