What was Enclosure

         Enclosure was the process of taking land, from the common fields or, more especially, from the common grazing, putting a fence round it, and declaring it yours. It would usually be the wealthier, more powerful members of the community who did it, and it had been quietly going on for several centuries – through the reigns of the Tudors, and in the seventeenth century. The problem is that there are few records which tell us of its happening. Occasionally, there would be a great outcry, a riot, in some rural community or other, when the small men tried to resist an enclosing landowner who was depriving them of valuable grazing, but mostly we don’t hear about it. But we know that it happened, both in Shelford, and in thousands of other villages up and down the country. When the definitive Enclosure Map was drawn in Shelford in 1835, it showed “old enclosures”. These encompassed all the garden plots, fields and orchards which were enclosed by fences, and in "several" ownership. This old use of the word several, derived from the Latin, meant separate, and thus, belonging to a single owner. The old enclosures were mostly in the centre of the village.

           Enclosure, or more specifically, Parliamentary Enclosure took off in the 18th century, roughly between 1750 and 1850. It was done in the name of agricultural improvement, promoted mostly by the wealthy and landed, who benefitted most, and was trumpetted as a great rationalization of land, sweeping away the old inefficient system of open field farming and commoning. It was done parish by parish. Once started it went at a great pace, but it came to Cambridgeshire late – only in the nineteenth century, and to Great Shelford, later still, in the 1830s. It is usually referred to as The Enclosure (usually marked out by a capital E), and it was effectively a redistribution of the land in the parish, as we will see later.

          The Enclosure is a subject that can evoke strong feelings in people. Some view it as a wholesale land-grab by the rich, others as something that destroyed the social structure of the village, and destroyed the livelihoods of the small farmers, while yet others view it as a rationalization - getting rid of an archaic system of land-ownership so that agriculture could be improved and feed the rapidly growing population. You’ll have to decide for yourself what you think. But it is a subject that I am keen to explore, so I will try and tell you what happened in Great Shelford.

          However, there is one more aspect to the Enclosure as it was enacted in Great Shelford. It was combined with a Tithe Commutation.  Arguably, the tithes were an even hotter topic in the parish than the unenclosed fields. Jesus College received tithes from the village in kind. The farmers bitterly resented having to pay them, and were keen to see the end of them. So keen that, as part of the enclosure settlement, the college received a large swathe of parish land in lieu of the tithes. It is a subject that I will discuss in more detail on another page.

A First Attempt

In 1813 a notice appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle. It floated the idea of an Enclosure Act for Great Shelford. The timing of the attempt is significant. It was the period when all the neighbouring parishes enclosed: Little Shelford completed in 1815, and was advertised at about the same time as this; Stapleford in 1812; Cherryhinton in 1807; Trumpington in 1802; Hauxton in 1800. The Napoleonic wars were in full swing and agricultural prices were very high: this was a great incentive to enclosure and agricultural improvement. In 1815, after the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, the boom turned to bust, and the moment was lost. There were few enclosures in the immediate post-war period.

          A report in the Jesus College archives dated March 1814 is a survey of the tithes due to the college and “also an Enquiry into the expediency of the College accepting an allotment of land in lieu of the said Tithes under the proposed Bill for inclosing the Open field and Waste Lands in Great Shelford”. Unfortunately, there are no recommendations. However it is notable that Messrs Pemberton and Fiske were the college's lawyers, and this suggests that the college may have been the prime mover in the attempt. So far I have not seen anything further on the subject to account for its failure. But clearly the attempt stalled, because it was another 20 years before the parish was enclosed. Great Shelford was very late to the party.

v1 © Helen Harwood, uploaded March 2025