26 
LandmarJis in British Farming, 
or in open-field farms. In each case enclosure took a different 
form. In the first, it meant reclamation of wastes ; in the 
second, the extinction of common rights; in the third, the 
consolidation of open-field farms into separate holdings. Three- 
fifths of the land in England, Wales, and Scotland in 1760 lay 
in one or other of these conditions. From the northern point 
of Derbyshire to the extremity of Northumberland a line might 
be drawn for 150 miles as the crow flies, which passed over 
nothing but wastes. Rossendale in Lancashire was still a chace. 
The forest of Knaresborough in 1734 was “ so thick with wood 
that he was thought a cunning fellow who could readily find 
out ” the “ Spaws ” of Harrogate. From Sleaford to Brigg in 
Lincolnshire extended a desolate moor, over which the land 
lighthouse of Dunstan pillar lighted belated travellers. 
Thousands of acres of moorlands still lie waste and unim- 
provable in the North ; but similar districts are now rare in 
the Midland and Southern counties. Yet Needwood Forest, 
Cannock Chase, Sutton Coldfield, and great tracts of the 
Staffordshire moorlands were still unreclaimed ; Charnwood 
Forest, Rothly Plain, and Ashby Wolds lay waste in Leicester- 
shire. In Nottinghamshu’e Sherwood Forest might still have 
sheltered Robin Hood and Little John. A large part of Berk- 
shire was “ no man’s land ; ” Maidenhead Thicket, Bulmarsh 
Heath, and the downs from Ilsley to Ashbury, knew not the 
hand of labour, and, even in Miss Mitford’s day, a broad belt 
of two to three miles in width, overgrown with bushes and 
rough grass, ran from Inkpen to Windsor Forest. In Mid- 
dlesex, Enfield Chace, Hounslow Heath, Finchley Common, 
Harrow Weald, Sunbury and Riselip Commons, were all un- 
enclosed. In Essex, the forests of Epping and Hainault spread 
over a vast tract of country. Kent had many thousands of 
acres, covered with furze and fern, interspersed with patches 
of coarse grass. The northern part of Sussex contained 110,000 
acres of almost desert tracts. Down to 1791, the Weald of 
Surrey still bore traces of its utter desolation in the posts 
which stood across it to guide letter-carriers. White posts, set 
up by the father of Sir Thomas Lawrence, directed travellers 
over Salisbury Plain, where, in the days of “ lugoldsby,” 
Not a shrub nor a tree, 
Nor a bush can we see, 
No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no stiles. 
Much less a house or a cottage for miles. 
Dorsetshire, from Piddletown, Bere Regis, and Wimborne, 
to the Purbeck Hills, was a dreary, unenclosed waste. Hamp- 
shire not only had its forests, such as the New Forest, Alice 
