234 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS 



from Westbury to Cricklade were in a " wet rotten state," depas- 

 tured by an " unprofitable kind of stock," but " wanting only 

 inclosing and draining to make them as good pasture land as many 

 of the surrounding inclosures." Some of the cold arable fields 

 would have been much more valuable if turned to pasture, and, in 

 their undrained state, even the driest were " not safe for sheep in 

 a wet autumn." 



3. From the South-Eastern and Midland District the evidence is 

 the fullest, because the district was still in a great measure farmed 

 on the open-field system. 



In Berkshire 1 (1794) there were 220,000 acres of open-fields, 

 and downs, to 170,000 acres of inclosed land. Hah* of the county 

 " is still lying in common fields ; and though it is not divided into 

 such very small parcels as in some other counties, the farmer 

 labours under all the inconvenience of commonable land ; and by 

 that, is withheld from improving or treating his land, so as to 

 return the produce which it ought to do, if entire, and under a 

 good course of husbandry." " We generally see on all the commons 

 and waste lands, a number of miserable cattle, sheep, and horses, 

 which are a disgrace to their respective breeds, and the cause of 

 many distempers." 



In Buckinghamshire 2 (1794) 91,906 acres remained hi open- 

 fields. The Reporters point out that " the slovenly operations of 

 one man are often of serious consequence to his neighbours, 

 with whose property his lands may lie, and generally do lie, very 

 much intermixed. Every one is aware of the noxious quality of 

 weeds, whose downy and winged seeds are wafted by every wind, 

 and are deposited upon those lands which are contiguous to them ; 

 and which before were perhaps as clean as the nature of them 

 would admit, to the manifest injury of the careful and attentive 

 farmer. Inclosures would, in a certain degree, lessen so great an 

 evil ; they would also prevent the inroads of other people's cattle, 

 as particularized in the parish of Wendover, and in which one man 

 held eighteen acres in thirty-one different allotments." 



Oxfordshire 3 in 1794 contained " upwards of an hundred unin- 

 closed parishes or hamlets." The Reporter enumerates several 

 advantages of enclosure. " The first of these is getting rid of the 



1 Pearce's Berkshire (1794), pp. 13, 49, 69. 



1 James' and Malcolm's Buckinghamshire (1794), pp. 32, 68. 



Davis's Oxfordshire (1794), pp. 22, 30. 



