ENCLOSING, FENCES, GATES. 55 
ill cleaning and repairing about 3 or 4s. more. It is 
reckoned to take about five years rent to enclose a 
farm. 
In the Yale of Evesham, enclosures have very much 
decreased population, and every year will have still 
less occasion for labourers ; this will be more the case 
where the farms are converted from small into large 
ones; but where large commons and waste lands are 
enclosed, it must tend to increase both the growth of 
corn and the population. 
Mr. Darke, who is very enthusiastic for enclosures, 
observes, “ The parish of Bredon consists of seven 
hamlets, five of which are in open fields; the soil 
various, near one half bears turnips tolerably, the other 
parts gravelly clay, or loam, with pebbles. Situation, 
exposed to the south-west, having few intervening hills 
between and the Bristol channel; the west end of 
Bredon Hill is about three miles from Tewkesbury, 
Gloucestershire, the southern part of the parish runs 
up within one hundred yards of that town. The Earl 
of Coventry has six hundred acres of enclosed land at 
Mitton in a ring fence, scarce to be equalled in rich¬ 
ness and fine produce; to this farm the plough is a 
stranger, the soil a black loam; the parish is bounded 
for five miles on the west by the navigable river Avon, 
and by the river Carran for three miles on the east. 
“I have every reason to speak in praise of enclosures; 
about twenty years back, I obtained an act to enclose 
a parish in Gloucestershire, of strong clay land, my 
allotment was 433 acres, which averaged about 8s. 
per acre, and will now bring upwards of 30s.; we 
must allow some part of the increase to the times, but 
the improvement is greatly owing to its turning from 
indifferent arable to most excellent pasture. Before the 
enclosure 
