25. The 18th Century Enclosures
The Agrarian Revolution
The 18th Century saw an Agrarian Revolution in farming. The old open field strip farming system of common ownership going back to Anglo Saxon times at least, was replaced by large enclosed farms, each in the ownership of one landowner or farmer.
Prior to 1801 each village had to have a separate Act of Parliament to enclose its fields into individual holdings, but the 1801 Act of General Enclosure decreed that providing three quarters of landowners agreed, enclosure could go ahead.
The economic reason for this change was that the increase in the price of food and wool encouraged the search for more productive farming methods. Behind this, the political power of the landowning middle classes ensured that the Enclosure Acts succeeded. Many, however thought that their land had been stolen by the rich.
Landowners enclosed their new land with hedges, fences and walls. They built access roads to new farmhouses outside of villages located within their new holdings. Farmhouses within villages were not favoured by this new system as access to fields would have been poor.
From 1730 to 1780, 1257 individual village enclosure acts were passed. This was however a small number relative to the number of villages requesting enclosure, hence the 1801 Act.
The areas gaining enclosure spread patchily northwards and westwards from the south east of England it is assumed. The Harley area being on the extreme west flank of the enclosed area was slow to respond. By 1850 it was considered that enclosure throughout the country was virtually completed. But not in Harley.
Several writers in the early 20th C have noted that there were five farmhouses in Harley village. The very last of these to close as a farmhouse was Forge Farm, the tenant farmer being Jim Brookshaw There were still five working farmhouses in the village in 1973.
Following Jim Brookshaw’s death the Raby Estate sold the house in 2003 the land being absorbed into neighbouring farms.
The persistence of the old open field farming system in Harley is remarkable, so perhaps the worst aspects of enclosure in this area was reduced and spread over time.
Writer, Trevor Rowley remarks that there is still evidence of the open field strip farming system on the first Ordnance Survey sheet of 1882 in the form of remnant Ridge and Furrow patterns to the south west of Rowley Farm.
From a productivity viewpoint the change was advantageous. The old strips were only 22 yards wide so dividing land was lost to cultivation. Also the recently invented mechanical seed drill and other machinery could operate better on a larger scale.
Nevertheless, despite the longer term gains the process by which change occurred was basically unfair, ruthless and neglectful of people and their families, and was driven by power and greed.
All of this must have had consequences related to Harley but there does not appear to be any written record of the effects bad or good.
When looking at Harley, there is a puzzling aspect to this. When farms held strips in three different locations in the old three field system, it would have been sensible to locate farmhouses in the village.
Following the Enclosure Acts, it was no longer sensible. Farmhouses were then better positioned within their new landholdings rather than in the village. Only Merryfields farmhouse, about one mile up the Kenley road fits this bill. Rowley farmhouse one mile from Harley centre, is part of the old hamlet of Rowley as recorded in the Domesday Book.
So the fact that in 1973 there were five working farmhouses in the village is very strange. Jim Brookshaw, tenant farmer of Forge Farm had to drive his tractor down Domas Lane to his landholdings more than half a mile away.
