Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 5 - The commons, enclosure and radical histories

  • Edited by David Feldman, Birkbeck College, University of London, Jon Lawrence, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Structures and Transformations in Modern British History
    Published online:
    04 February 2011
    Print publication:
    20 January 2011, pp 118-141

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on the enclosure of the common or waste and its effect on the labouring poor. Neeson's Commoners of 1993, based on detailed studies of the South Midlands, argues that common rights, and especially common rights on the waste, were a central part of the political economy of the rural poor for as long as the lands lay unenclosed. As Turner and Wordie have shown, the vast majority of land enclosed in the modern period was enclosed between c1720 and 1830, the period of 'Parliamentary Enclosure by Private Bill'. The amount of common land left in England in 1845 was a matter of dispute. After 1876, enclosure of commons or waste in the classic sense came to an end. After 1845 the organization of much opposition to enclosure was urban and middle class, as opposed to rural and plebeian.