1380 - Land Enclosure at Sheldon by Robert Reynald
| Working strips in the great fields is not always the best way of
doing things. I have some bad neighbours who do not control the weeds
and so the seeds blow over my land and when they grow it gives me
a lot of extra work.
I have several strips in each of the fields and so have to spend time walking from each to the next. It is not very far but each day I waste time and each week it must add up to hours of walking. If I could swap strips in the different fields and get all my land together I might then put a fence around it and be able to do exactly what I want. The only problem would be that my Lord would increase my rent as my productivity would increase. If I owned my land it would be well worth doing extra digging and carrying dung to improve fertility but as a tenant my Lord can throw me out with no notice and then someone else would benefit from all my hard work. In the big fields the first people to ,harvest their crops often get careless about closing gates and this allows the animals in which trample on the crops not collected. Robert Reynald is one neighbour who has consolidated his selions (strips) in Holifast Field to save time and get away from careless neighbours. Many of us want to follow his example and if we can do it we will benefit and so will my Lord. Over the years all the land in England has been enclosed but because
some people were against the idea or could not agree on how to do
it there were enclosures going on until about 1900, but most was
done by 1850.
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