Enclosure

Enclosure was the process of consolidating and privatizing common land in England, which began in the 12th century and accelerated between the 15th and 19th centuries. This movement involved the division of communal fields, meadows, and pastures into individually owned and managed plots, effectively ending the traditional rights of commoners to access and use these lands for grazing and farming. The enclosure of land led to bigger fields and crop rotation was used to increase the yields even further.

Before the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as either common or waste. Common land was under the control of the lord of the manor, but certain rights on the land such as pasture, pannage, or estovers were held variously by certain nearby properties. Waste was land without value, typically less than a yard wide in awkward locations. Pasture is the ancient right to graze sheep, cattle or ponies, Pannage is the right to allow pigs to eat acorns and beech mast and estovers is the right to take underwood or branches for fuel or repairs.

The remaining land was organised into a large number of narrow strips, each tenant possessing a number of disparate strips throughout the manor, as would the manorial lord. Called the open-field system, it was administered by manorial courts which exercised some collective control. What might now be a single field would have been divided under this system among the lord and his tenants, poorer peasants were allowed to live on the strips owned by the lord in return for cultivating his land. 

The parish of Wymeswold or Wimeswold was enclosed in 1759. One-eighth of the land to be enclosed was to be granted to Trinity College, Cambridge, as compensation for the loss of the rectorial tithes. As they were important landowners they received  an increased amount of  around 800 acres in total. The vicar received 73 acres, allocated to the vicar in lieu of the small tithes, this was to be worth at least £30 a year. The rest of land was then divided amongst the other 'proprietors' according to their rights in the common land. The lords of the manor, Thomas Allsop and John Davys, were awarded about 575 acres in some 56 fields which were mostly to the north and east of the village. Ten other persons received amounts in excess of 50 acres,  including John Shepherd who was allocated over 57 acres.

As a result of this enclosure the building of farmhouses and their associated buildings moved away from the village in positions more convenient to the new fields. Several farmhouses date from this period and some are still in use as farms, such as Wymeswold Lodge, once farmed by the Sheppard family.  You can see photos of  the Terrier for the parish of Wymeswold below, Terriers or Glebe Terriers are written surveys or inventories of glebe land and other property of the parish.

The 3 figures in the Terrier assigned to each person i.e. "17 1 3" in old English enclosure records signify a land parcel measuring 17 acres, 1 rood, and 3 perches. Acres, roods, and perches are traditional British units of land measurement, where 1 acre equals 4 roods and 160 perches.

Adapted from various sources including -
A Portrait of Wymeswold 1991. Copyright Wolds Historical Organisation.
https://www.hoap.co.uk/who/pow16.htm

Above Images of  Enclosure (Terrier) from mss-library@nottingham.ac.uk
Schedule to the enclosure plan for Wymeswold, Leicestershire, c.1759