A gentleman of my acquaintance remembers, as a child, being sent by his mother to collect firewood from the ‘common’. At the beginning of the second world war, with coal in short supply, firewood was still needed to cook the family’s food and heat the family home. Of course by […]
Towards the end of the 19th century there was a resurgence of interest in the loss of the common fields. Books appeared on English Field Systems, The English Peasantry, The Commons, Common Land and Inclosure and so on, but almost all were concerned with the history and organisation of the […]
“In the open field village the entirely landless labourer was scarcely to be found. The division of holdings into numerous scattered pieces, many of which were of minute size, made it easy for a labourer to obtain what were in effect allotments in the common fields”. [1] So said Gilbert Slater […]
If the impression is that commoners were still to be found in large numbers by the beginning of the 19th century there was also an impression that there were a large number of people who used the wastes and commonable lands but who were not, in legal terms, commoners. It […]
“ Cecil Graham: What is a cynic? Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of a single thing.” […]
The subject of agricultural improvement in the 18th and 19th centuries is a vast area and is dealt with in a separate post and John Martin’s own experiments in improvement are discussed here. In the brave new inclosed world the farmer in severalty could grow new crops, plough, sow and […]
John Martin of Evershot 