Collins New Naturalist Library

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R. Murton K.. Collins New Naturalist Library

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DEDICATION

TO MY PARENTS

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The big rural transformation came between 1750 and the General Enclosure Act of 1845, most of the open fields going in the sixty years of Farmer George III. Most of the earlier enclosures had been of common, waste and woodland, expensive to achieve but less disturbing for the community in that the old peasant system could still be based on self-sufficiency. The enclosures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were based on economic necessity and were a national policy that brought much suffering and ill-will. In less than a century, they transformed peasant England into modern England. There were many protagonists. Pioneers of modern farming like Arthur Young, who did much to disseminate the latest results of experiments and supported all the agencies like farmers’ clubs, ploughing matches and sparrow clubs which helped to diffuse ideas, claimed that enclosure brought more employment in fence mending and turnip husbandry, even though sheep were lost. Young was enthusiastic but he was inflexible and lacked judgement and others were less enchanted:

The fault is great in man or woman,

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