Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 1 (2004), p. 113

This is the latest volume to appear in a long line of publications by the Centre of North West Regional Studies at the University of Lancaster. In lowland England it would be fair to say that its subject matter – parliamentary enclosure – has been done to death. What singles out this volume is that it relates to upland England: and the intimate history of parliamentary enclosure above the 100 to 200 metre datum is far from understood. Moreover, the study area, the Cumbrian region, had the largest proportion of such formerly unenclosed land of any English region. So for the transformation of the open fields substitute the transformation of the moors and fells, and other upland commons. They were mainly held as pasture before enclosure, a land use that was mainly retained after enclosure, though not always. While there is a certain ruggedness to the untrained modern eye, they are in fact every bit as planned a landscape as their counterparts in the midland counties and elsewhere. They just look different, in particular in their use of stone walls, as well as fences, for the demarcation of boundaries.

The misapprehension that has abounded historically is that in their unenclosed state they were wastelands. In truth, they were servants of a specific economy that was merely different, but an economy that at times was as productive as the exigencies of altitude and the weather permitted, against a background of changing market conditions. It is not simply pedantic to highlight this difference between less and more productive, between waste and improvable. The economy of these wild places may have been enhanced through their transformation from open moors and commons to more regulated pasture, but the timing of that enhancement is also instructive. For example, if the open fields of the English Midlands came under pressure over time, so also did the upland commons. Not least was this the case when stint-ing norms were subject to overgrazing often through the external pressure placed on them by the demand for grazing by the passing Scottish cattle trade, a pressure that local commoners accommodated by offering agistment or leasing rights to that trade. This pressure on grazing built up as the eighteenth century advanced and in time it threatened the sustainability of these commons. It was but a short step from regulated but communal ownership that was increasingly difficult to police, to an ownership pattern in severalty. This was only one reason for the emergence of enclosure and we should not dismiss the fact that sometimes there was a 114 the agricultural land use change from pasture to arable production. Moreover, not all land involved was high up the valleys or on the fells. The topography sometimes relented. Therefore the resulting enclosure history in this part of England is more complicated than perhaps is always allowed.

Although we are talking about an economy dominated by animal production rather than arable it was undoubtedly the case that high prices during the French wars encouraged a plough-up of some land and a conversion to arable production. In addition, although parliamentary enclosure occurred in this region from the 1750s through to the 1890s, over half was concentrated from 1800 to 1830 when arable prices were at their greatest. There was also quite a considerable enclosure after 1850, especially in Westmorland, for which a link with the extension of the railways has been made. In short, monocausal explanations for the enclosure history of this otherwise distinctive region, as with any other, are doomed to failure.

However, what is apparent is the ease with which the chapters unfold as if telling that self-same story about the Midland counties. Thus chronology and location, economic motivation for change, opposition to that change, the social consequences ensuing, and the administration of the process, all have chapters and passages devoted to them in a way that replicates the unfolding of the story elsewhere. Similarity of presentation is one thing, but we must beware of suggesting too easily that it was such a uniform story. It was not, and we must thank the author for presenting it in a familiar way but uncovering some unfamiliar outcomes. One of the most striking relates to the social outcome, in which the emphasis is on the underlying continuity in rural society. Moreover, in Westmorland at least, as much common still remains open as was enclosed, and therefore to that extent the story remains yet incomplete.