‘Wild, Barren and Frightful’ – Parliamentary Enclosure in an Upland County: Westmorland 1767–1890

While there has been some research on the parliamentary enclosure of upland waste in England and Wales during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this topic still receives little attention in some recent accounts of parliamentary enclosure. Many aspects of the processes involved, and their impact on the landscape, are also poorly understood. Much research has proceeded either at a very general level or on the basis of detailed individual case studies. This paper adopts an intermediate scale, focusing on the old county of Westmorland to examine the geographical and chronological patterns of enclosure before looking more closely at some of the problems involved in creating a new landscape. Introduction Parliamentary enclosure and its landscapes are a familiar element in English agrarian history. Over 7m acres, around 21 per cent of the area of England, was affected, of which some 2.3 million acres were waste rather than open-field arable. Some of this land comprised lowland commons, heathlands and wetlands, but much of it was upland waste. Cumbria had the highest proportion of unenclosed upland waste of any region of England in the later eighteenth century. Between 1760 and 1830 nearly a quarter of the region was enclosed under parliamentary act, only a tiny fraction of which was open field arable. While there has been some research on the parliamentary enclosure of upland waste in England and Wales this topic still receives little attention in some recent accounts of parliamentary enclosure. Many aspects of the processes involved, and their impact on the landscape, are also poorly understood. This paper focuses on the old county of Westmorland to examine the geographical and chronological patterns of enclosure before focusing on some of the problems involved in creating a new landscape. Parliamentary enclosure in Westmorland: general patterns Westmorland was described by Defoe as ‘the wildest, most barren and frightful of any (county) that I have passed over in England, or even in Wales’. However, this statement conceals major contrasts in topography and landscape within the county. The uplands of Westmorland range from some of the highest and most rugged fells in the eastern Lake District to the steep scarp face and peaty plateaux of the Cross Fell range. Between them Rural History (2003) 14, 1, 21–38. *c 2003 Cambridge University Press 21 DOI: 10.1017/S0956793303000025 Printed in the United Kingdom a curving band of limestone forms a series of plateaux and valleys stretching from Shap to Kirkby Stephen, offering considerable scope for improvement. South of this lay the flat topped but steep sided Howgill Fells. Between the uplands were valleys with more fertile soils, particularly in the Eden valley, while to the south of the county, around Morecambe Bay, were extensive areas of lowland peat moss and salt marsh ripe for reclamation. In 1800 Westmorland had the highest proportion of its land in waste – 79.7 per cent – of any English county. Over 129,000 acres still remains as upland common pasture but between the late eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries over 101,000 acres, some 21 per cent of its area, was enclosed by parliamentary act. Most of this was upland waste and common pasture. It is impossible to calculate a precise figure for the area enclosed as many awards did not give an accurate total surveyed acreage. With such acts the area of allotments, quarries and public watering places can be totalled to give a fairly accurate figure but the amount of land occupied by public and private roads is rarely given. The origins of parliamentary enclosure in Westmorland lie in the mid eighteenth century, with evidence of interest from the 1760s. One influence was probably activity in neighbouring Cumberland, where seven acts relating to over 16,000 acres of common pasture had been passed before 1770 and six awards completed, and Lancashire, where thirteen acts covering over 5,500 acres, including some in the north of the county, had been passed and completed by 1770. A more local influence is likely to have been enclosure agreements arranged privately without recourse to Parliament. The amalgamation and enclosure of open field arable strips by private agreement was a longestablished process in Westmorland so that by the late eigheenth century there was very little land left in open field. Such agreements were also being used to divide and enclose areas of pasture. At least four instances are recorded in the county before 1770. The earliest known so far, the division of a 130-acre stinted pasture called Low Close in the township of Morland, occurred in 1756. Although this enclosure process is recorded by only a brief and simple document, the task of surveying and dividing the land was undertaken by three local yeomen from other parishes in roles analogous to those of parliamentary enclosure commissioners. It is probable that this and other similar privately-arranged enclosures were developments of earlier less well-documented agreements. In particular the privately-agreed enclosure in 1769 of the commons in the township of Crackenthorpe near Appleby may have provided the catalyst which precipitated the first burst of parliamentary enclosure in Westmorland during the 1770s. Although the lord of the manor of Crackenthorpe, Richard Machell, was a relatively small landowner, his lands adjoined the estates of the earl of Thanet, an absentee landlord whose land agent in Appleby, Thomas Heelis, was one of the witnesses to the Crackenthorpe agreement. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that the first enclosure under parliamentary act to be completed in north Westmorland, the year after the Crackenthorpe enclosure, was for the adjoining township of Brampton, or that Thomas Heelis was a commissioner. Parliamentary enclosure in Westmorland involved 97 acts, spread over more than a century from 1767 to 1879. Figures 1 and 2 show their distribution. Table 1 shows the 22 Ian Whyte Parliamentary Enclosure in Westmorland 23