The Shepherd Fields allocated in Enclosure 1759

Enclosure was the radical change to the countryside which replaced the open field system of farming, instead of open land, fields were created with fences or hedges round them.  Before the enclosure act in England,  portions of the land was categorized as either common or waste.   This would have been divided under this open system among the lord and his tenants.  But for new machinery and crop rotation schemes to work Farmers now needed large consolidated plots of land.  The poor in theory were compensated for the loss of their rights to common land, but they were often unable to get a livelihood from the small plots they were given.  

In most parishes enclosure was not a single event, but a series of events spread across several decades. There were two main types of enclosure, by private action (with or without the consent of all landowners) and through an Act of Parliament. Between 1751 and 1800, 134 enclosure Acts were passed for Leicestershire parishes and by 1842 all the land in Leicestershire had been enclosed.

A farmer might have had 100 individual strips of land spread across the whole parish, which were exchanged for a compact block of land. There was a huge amount of work to be done and a limited time to make the changes between the harvest and sowing the next year’s crops. Once the apportionments were made, new leases had to be agreed. Owners then had to hedge their boundaries and pay a share of the overall costs, which could amount to between £3 and £10 for each acre.

The parish of Wymeswold or Wimeswould was enclosed in 1759, as a result of this enclosure farmhouses were constructed away from the village in positions convenient to the new fields.  The Shepherd's below received their share of the land according to their rights to the common land, this was divided up after Trinity College (Cambridge),  the vicar and the lords of the manor (Thomas Allsop and John Davys) had been allocated the lion share of the land.  John Shepherd was one of the larger individual Farmers to receive land, he received 3 parcels of land at just over 57 acres.

Glebe terriers were written surveys of land in a parish that is owned by the church. They can provide evidence of the progress of enclosure and were compiled at regular intervals by the incumbent and churchwardens, several survive for most Leicestershire parishes.

Please see below images from Terrier of the Parish and Lordship of Wimeswould below.  (MS 657)
* Courtesy of  University of Nottingham Libraries, Manuscripts and Special Collections 

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*Sources : www.bbc.co.uk,  leicestershirehistory.co.uk,  University of Nottingham Libraries, Manuscripts and Special Collections