Inclosure of the Open Fields of Bampton By Miriam James
A Bampton Archive Publication
www.bamptonarchive.org
The reasons for the Inclosure
Bampton Inclosure Award 1821
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The Open Fields of Bampton
Today we all know what a field is: a piece of land, of varying size and shape but generally square or rectangular, fenced off from the fields next to it by a hedge, a ditch, a wall or a wooden fence, with a gate for access; growing one crop, belonging to one person. Two hundred years ago, such a piece of land was not known as a field: it was ‘an enclosure’ – or, as it would have been spelled at the time, ‘an Inclosure’. A field was something much larger: it was a great open space, where the crops for the village grew, where cattle and sheep grazed, whose land was held in common. It belonged to the people in the town or village; and it was farmed, by agreement, on a rota system of three or four years’ different crops. Now we call it a ‘common’ field, or an ‘open’ field, but then it took the name of the town to whose citizens it belonged: the fields owned by the people of Bampton were the Bampton Fields. 3
By the end of the eighteenth century, some of the fields close to the town had already been enclosed and hedged. There were fenced enclosures alongside the road south to Tadpole Bridge and the Thames, and others to the north, towards Black Bourton and Brize Norton. But outside the town, the common land where the arable crops were planted and harvested stretched from the edge of the town to the skyline. These great open fields were divided into strips, each belonging to someone; not in equal measure – the rich and the poor are never equal - but almost everybody in Bampton had a claim to a part of the open fields.
Published by R.Davis, Lewknor, August 1 1797 R. Davis’ map of 1793 shows the two great expanses of the fields. Bampton and Aston Fields lay to the north and east of the town, reaching as far as the hamlet of Aston in the east and the settlement of Lew in the north; while to the southwest a second open field ran from the Thames in the south almost to Black Bourton in the north, and past the outlying hamlet of Weald, along the track towards Clanfield and as far as Black Bourton Brook in the west. 4
For as long as anybody could remember, the great open fields that surrounded the town had been held in common. Every freeman in the town had a claim to land there, on which he could grow a crop of corn or barley or beans on the strips of land allotted to him, just like everybody else. He could graze his cattle on the common land, and if he was too poor to own a cow, he could at least fatten a goose for his family to eat on the great feast of Michaelmas, the autumn quarter day when the farming year ended. After the harvest, he and his family could glean the remnants of the corn from the fields. His children could earn their keep by looking after the sheep as they grazed, and preventing them straying into the meadow. The common provided fuel for warmth, herbs, nuts and berries. Rich men had more strips that poor ones, and therefore more say in how they were planted; but everyone had to be consulted on the planting and harvesting of crops, because the fields were the property of everyone, they were the common fields. In 1789 a ‘Plan of the Bampton Estate in the County of Oxford’ was drawn up by Thos. Bainbridge. It must have been expensive to make - surveyors, who had to be skilled and accurate, did not come cheap; but we don’t know who commissioned and paid for it.
Part of a Plan of the Bampton Estate5 in the County of Oxford 1789. Thos Bainbridge delt
The plan shows the strips of land in the common fields of the hamlet of Weald, which lay outside Bampton, beyond the bridge over the Shillbrook on the south-west. Each holding is numbered or named; sometimes the name of the owner is given as well, and sometimes the size of the strips, in acres. The numbers presumably refer to a list of the holdings. The variations in the sizes of strip holdings are clear to see; and so are the many holdings of Bulkeley Coventry, Esq, at Ham Court, some of them already enclosed, on the west side of the ‘Clanville Road’ – maybe Thomas Bainbridge was strange to the area – but many others are scattered through the open fields. There is a clear division shown between the two settlements of Bampton and Weald; at its most easterly point a hedge is marked, with the comment that ‘This side of the Hedge is within Bampton the other in Weald’: somebody was evidently very firm about that.
The centre of Bampton; from Thos. Bainbridge’s map of 1789
The map also has an inserted plan of the town, showing that the surveyors started – number 1 – at a house on the east side of Broad Street, now unidentifiable; other houses are also numbered, one is labelled ‘Mr Manders’; while The Talbot, named for the emblem of the Earls of Shrewsbury, is both labelled and numbered, perhaps reflecting its importance in the lives of the townspeople. 6
Beyond these early enclosures lay the great expanses of the common fields. The fundamental difference between the two forms of landholding was that the holders of enclosed land could farm as they wished, while the planting of crops in the common fields had to be agreed by the owners of two-thirds of the land – which is different from two-thirds of the owners, so people with more land had more say. The pattern was well established, it had been the same for generations, everyone knew how it went. The crops were changed, or rotated, on a four-year basis: corn one year, barley the next, beans after that. During the fourth year of the rotation, the fields were left fallow, to be manured by grazing cattle and sheep, and for the soil to recover the goodness removed by the crops. Fathers, grandfathers, ancestors as far back as anybody could remember would attest that this was the best way to plant and the way to harvest the largest yield. A three-year rotation was held to be better, but the freeholders of Bampton used a four-field system. The great agricultural writer Arthur Young reported in 1807 that Bampton land was worth from 30 shillings to 40 shillings an acre, “exceeding fine land.”
Ridge-and-furrow near Fisher’s Bridge The traces of generations of ploughing along one side of a strip, round the top and down the other side, turning the soil into the centre with each furrow, meant that the land was imprinted with long mounds often called ‘ridge-and-furrow’, especially visible after harvest or – as here - on grazed land, tracing the outlines of the long strips in the fields. Most of these have now been ploughed out, flattened to give scope to modern machinery, but they are still visible in the pasture next to Fisher’s Bridge. 7
Some growing seasons were better than others, in some years there was a shortage; but even for the smallest landowner, it was clear that the method was fair. Everyone suffered from the shortfall; and in a good year, everybody prospered. There was no point in growing more food; in a good year, there was enough for everyone, with no demand from neighbouring parishes; while in a bad year, the neighbours would need all they had grown and would have no surplus to sell. Using this age-old method, enough crops could be grown to feed the people of Bampton. Rich people, with many strips, ploughed with their own horses, directed by a ploughman; poorer people joined forces to plough, sometimes with cattle, and subsidized the yield with other jobs, including working for the richer holders.
By the middle of the eighteenth century this centuries-old state was starting to change. The population of England was growing; there were more mouths to feed, and money to be made from the sale of crops. The growing towns of Witney and Burford in the north, and Abingdon, across the river to the south, housed townspeople who had no fields, nowhere to grow crops, and who therefore had to buy food; the demand for corn grew. There were also new ways of producing more food; owners of large landholdings had been trying out new methods of growing crops and experimenting with new methods of breeding animals. They had learned that a different crop rotation produced more food than the old time-honoured crop rotation system. Under the new system, instead of being left fallow for a year, other crops such as clover could be grown. ‘Turnip’ Townshend, in East Anglia, had shown that a year growing turnips could both feed sheep and enrich the soil, and that a crop of clover restored the nitrogen used up by corn and barley. The richer men in Bampton and Weald had already consolidated some of their land holdings and enclosed them with hedges and ditches, planted crops every year, and become wealthy on the proceeds. There were new machines that could be used on enclosed fields as well: Jethro Tull’s seed drill planted crops in straight rows, instead of using the ‘broadcast’ hand-strewn method which everyone had always used, and which had the sanction of the parable of the sower to support it; though, as the old rhyme went, a lot of the broadcast seed failed to germinate: as the rhyme went, “Sow four seeds in a row, One for the pigeon, one for the crow, One to rot, and one to grow.” 8
Another agricultural innovator, Robert Bakewell, had shown that stock could be hugely improved by selective breeding, impossible to carry out on the common land where animals grazed and mated without restriction. The new craze among the wealthier was to breed better stock, and even to have portraits of themselves painted with their prize animals; in these portraits, sometimes the best points of the animals were exaggerated, but then who could blame a successful breeder who was proud of his prize cattle?
When all cattle grazed in the common fields, it was an advantage to a poor man to have a chance for his cow to breed from the best bull; but that wouldn’t be possible if the bull was fenced away from the open field to mate with the finest cows. By 1770 there was another problem to be overcome: how was this potential increase in production to get to market? This difficulty was not confined to Bampton; in general, roads between villages were little more than rough tracks, good enough for people to walk from one village to another, or for the better off to ride. But in wet weather they flooded, while in dry weather the hard ruts prevented wheeled vehicles from using them. As travellers struggled to get along, they often had to use the outside edges of the muddy roads, to avoid the holes and ruts in the centre of the track, so widening it still further; at some points roads were said to be as much as 70 ft wide. It was clear that they could not accommodate food-laden wagons, nor the fast stage-coaches that were being introduced. 9
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The wealthier and more travelled members of Bampton society would have been aware of the great new roads which were being developed to link larger towns with one another: roads which charged a toll for their use, which were barred at each end by a gate or pike; they were known as ‘Turnpike’ roads. An Act of Parliament was needed to build a turnpike road; but that expense had seemed worth it to groups of the richer men of Burford and Witney, who had formed a Turnpike Trust to build a road to Eynsham in 1751 and on to Oxford seventeen years later. Bampton had a great advantage over these transport systems; the River Thames ran within easy distance to the south, and there were already wharves at Radcot and at Tadpole Bridge. Roads which crossed the Thames there could go on to the markets in Faringdon or Abingdon, or by water to the greater riverside cities further afield. In 1771 a Turnpike Trust was established, and an Act of Parliament was applied for, to build a new, fast road from Witney to Clanfield and on to Radcot. In 1777 another Trust was set up, to build a road from Asthall, through Bampton, following the line of the old salt way that had run from Droitwich, and on to the river. This turnpike crossed the Thames by a new wooden bridge, and the road went on up the hill to Buckland, to join the Faringdon to Abingdon turnpike built nearly two generations earlier. The increase in traffic meant that in 1802 a stone bridge, 14 ft wide, was built to replace the wooden one, and the hopes of the Turnpike Trust shareholders rose; though in the event neither of these turnpike roads made a profit. R Davis’ map shows the position of the turnpike roads, and even of the turnpike gates themselves on the Witney road. It also shows something of the width of these roads, laid down by law, and astonishing by today’s standards. The Clanfield Turnpike was 33 ft wide, and the Witney Turnpike was even wider; both this road and the road south to Tadpole Bridge were 40 ft wide; that is, wide enough for large, fully-laden wagons, pulled by teams of twelve horses, to pass one another with ease. The farm wagons were 6 ft wide, and double that in length, and as high as a tall man even before they were loaded; they were built to the ‘Oxfordshire’ pattern, with raised galleries over the large front wheels.
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As the 19th century progressed, stage coaches could use the turnpike roads as well, and accommodation for their passengers and horses was made in the town; most inns, like The Talbot, had a yard behind their main buildings, while in about 1811 The George – now the Morris Clown - was built at the end of the High Street near the start of the Buckland Turnpike, with a yard behind it for stabling. R Davis’ map shows that the road to Buckland was at its widest on the southeastern edge of Bampton, where it crossed the Shillbrook. Until Fisher’s Bridge was built, vehicles and people apparently had to make their way through the marshy land as best they could. With the building of the turnpike roads and the opening of new markets, the demand for increased production expanded; and by the start of the nineteenth century there was another reason to grow more food; the French Revolution had provoked Britain into war with France, and Napoleon’s ‘Continental system’ of 1806 blocked all imports. Wealthy landowners and farmers were determined to take advantage of the new methods of increasing their crops and the new markets opening up to them; but under the common field system of farming, any change in farming methods was impossible to carry out. In Bampton, Ebenezer Williams had planted new crops such as turnips, rye grass and sainfoin as early as 1761 at Ham Court Farm, and other landowners with large land holdings were determined to follow suit. But so long as the open field system survived, progress was impossible. In order to use the new methods of farming, the fields would have to be enclosed, parcelled out to individual owners who could plant crops of their own choice instead of following the time-honoured agreed pattern; but before an Enclosure Bill could be brought before Parliament, the owners of two-thirds of the land had to be in favour of it. By 1810 the need to grow more food was becoming evident in Bampton itself; at the beginning of the century, in 1801, the town had a population of just over a thousand; by 1831 this had increased by more than fifty per cent, to 1,605. There was an increased demand for poor relief, and a parish workhouse was set up; wages were subsidized by the poor rate, paid on a sliding scale tied to the price of bread and the size of family. More corn must be grown to provide this bread.
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In spite of the increased production of the enclosures at Ham Court, Bampton was behind the times in applying for an Act to enclose the great common fields. It was not surprising that the smaller landholders, who perhaps owned only a few strips in each open field, would have no interest in the changes of crop; they had barely enough to feed their own families, let alone to sell any surplus, and change was threatening to them. But the owners of tithes in Bampton objected, too; Bampton was a ‘peculiar’ in the Diocese of Exeter, and the Chapter of Exeter Cathedral was perhaps afraid of losing land rents if the existing pattern of landholding was changed. The three vicars of Bampton, the tithe holders, were also unsure what the result on their incomes might be. Besides, people were afraid of the cost; would the heavy outlay justify the expense? Might it be better to leave well alone? Christ Church, Exeter and Jesus Colleges, in Oxford, also owned varying amounts of land in the fields. These great landowners were perhaps slow to appreciate the need for change, or worried about the effect that it might have on their revenues from Bampton. In 1812, finally, John Coventry, the nephew and heir of Bulkeley Coventry, and one of the larger landowners, brought the matter forward again, this time successfully. Three years later, when French imports again became available, the passing of the Corn Laws prevented the import of cheap corn; the great ecclesiastical landowners must have been reassured that the expense involved in enclosure was worthwhile. The Act for enclosing Bampton, Weald and Lew was voted through, and the process of surveying and allotting the new enclosures to take the place of the common fields could at last begin.
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The Process of Inclosure
Signatures on the Inclosures Award 14
John Coventry’s neat signature appears alongside his seal on the Award Document, below the signatures of T J Tatham and the Bishop of Oxford, and between the penciled spaces left for the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Earl of Abingdon, neither of whom bothered to sign. The landowner who was to benefit most from the Act, Edward Whitaker, Esq of Bampton Manor, signed his name and stamped his seal below six empty spaces. The fifty-one signatures to the Award show the varied levels of literacy of the landholders. Some signed with a fine, fair hand, some with confidence: T Tatham added squirls to his signature, Henry Dixon’s writing was the largest, Wm Collisson and Henry Williams just underlined theirs; Caroline Anne Horde wrote with no flourishes, Wm Williams carefully added loops as he had been taught, Joseph Andrews added a small flourish. Henry Williams brought the seal down so firmly that the wax spread over into the space above it. Several men made their mark – Thomas Fox, William Prior, Thomas Townsend; though James Townsend, Mary Townsend and John Townsend were literate enough to sign for themselves. Were the illiterate people able to understand the Award? How had they ‘read’ it? What were their reactions as they wrote their X and stamped the seal onto the hot sealing wax next to their names? And what about the people whose unsealed names on the document show that they were expected to sign it but failed to do so? Where were J Packer, John Reade, Ed Webber, and the other sixteen people whose names were written in pencil? Did they just not bother? Was it all too trivial for them? Or were some of them afraid of the officialdom involved? With the Act finally presented to Parliament, the process of reallocation started. Each landowner, great or small, had to present the written evidence of his or her holding – a task that was beyond some of them. We have no idea how many holders of strips were not able to supply legal evidence of ownership, but without it they could receive no allotment of land; some smallholders may have found themselves landless before the allocation began.
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The next part of the process of enclosure was the measuring of the land. Surveyors arrived in Bampton, carrying the tools of their trade. Chief among these was the measuring chain, 22 yards long, marked off into rods and perches.
An iron measuring chain with steel handles, divided into ten sections
Marker links at each section of twenty perches (one is missing)
All the land in the town was involved, as well as the fields; every plot was assessed by its size in acres, rods and perches; 10 chains to the furlong, 8 furlongs to the mile; an acre was a furlong long by a chain wide; there were 4 rods to each chain, and forty perches to each rod. Each piece of land was measured, its exact size calculated, its deeds of ownership examined. The process would have taken a long time, especially as the Act of Inclosure included, as well as Bampton itself, the outlying settlements at Weald and Lew. 16
The Schedule of the Inclosure of Haddon Farm in Weald
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The Surveyors’ task was to measure the open fields and the individual land holdings, and then to allocate an equivalent amount of land to the legitimate holders. The names and measures of the Inclosures were listed exactly, with the sums payable and the number of bushels each produced. The maps which accompanied the Award, printed as an Appendix, show the enclosed former open fields; each allotment was numbered, and the size of the enclosed land was given; in the case of the larger holdings, where there was more space on the map, the name of the new owner was also written: for instance, on Map II, plot 286 was the 3rd Allotment to John Roberts, of 117 acres and 32 perches; John Roberts’ 5th Allotment, numbered 364, was 15 acres, 2 rods, 10 perches. Where there was not enough space to write more, just the number of the holding was given; the full details of each holding was written down in the accompanying Award, taking up more than half the 78 pages of its total. After these detailed and accurate plans had been drawn up and numbered, any appeals against them were heard. There were problems about compensation for tithes; the three vicars had been getting more than £600 a year, because of the high value of Bampton land; and the claims of the Exeter Chapter had to be taken into account. Finally, the costs of this lengthy process had to be allocated to each landholder, proportionately to his or her holding. We do not know what objections, if any, were made to the allocation of land; maybe there were none. Perhaps the larger landowners, who had set the process in motion, were satisfied, while the smaller landowners, those with only a few strips, were persuaded that the process was fair and that they would be able to go on farming, though in a different and better way. Whatever they may have thought, the Award of the Bampton Inclosure was passed in 1821, and finally “enrolled in His Majesty’s Court of Common Pleas at Westminster of the term of Easter in the Eighth Year of the Reign of King George the Fourth” – that is, in 1827, six years after the Award had been written out.
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We can compare the new allocations of land with the map of the holdings in Weald in 1789 shown on page 5. Where the new Clanfield Turnpike joins the road from Black Bourton, the strips of land formerly held by Jesus College have been allocated to Lord Shrewsbury; and so has the land on the far side of ‘Welcome Way’ Road. Jesus College now owns consolidated land to the north of the Black Bourton Road, which had earlier been divided up into strips. More than 26 acres on the south of Weald Street have been allotted to ‘Abingdon Poor’, replacing their scattered former strips which had included ‘Short Bed-stead Furlong’ and an unfenced holding on the north side of Weald Street. To the east, Miss C A Horde has been awarded a 3rd Allotment of nearly 50 acres, alongside the newly-marked public footway to Rushey; many of the strips that make up this land were formerly those of ‘Coventry’. The adjoining holding, number 847, has been allotted to The Honble J Coventry, with H Williams as his lessee, as a 1st Allotment of 53 acres, 3 rods and 17 perches. Further west, beside Moor Lane, Rev G Richards has been allotted 65 acres, 1 rod, 18 perches of land which in 1789 had been ‘Young’s Close Furlong’, formerly the property of Mr Coventry and of Jesus College, among others, and including a strip named ‘Owls Nest’. Rev Richards now also owns two further fields, bringing his holding to more than 250 acres, and extending as far south as the parish boundary at Sharney Brook - land that in 1789 had been divided into the small strips of the open fields or been part of Weald Common Meadow. When the allotments had been made, the owners had by law to fence their new parcels of land. This could be done with stone or posts-and-rails; but in spite of the abundance of stone in the fields round Bampton, the cheapest and quickest practice was to dig a ditch and plant a quickset hedge on the bank of spoil; under the terms of the Award this had to be done within twelve months. Blackthorn was readily available and quick to grow; it also made a very good hedge, especially when the art of layering it was developed. Many of these hedges are still there today, although they are now generally cut rather than layered; and where they have gone, it is often because they were removed in the 20th century when ever-larger machinery made small fields difficult to cultivate.
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An enclosure in the former common field, with a hedge and a road,
As the ordained boundaries of the new holdings were usually straight, so were the new hedges. They were generally planted by men who made it their trade, and pride was taken in the way it was done; two hundred years after they were planned and planted it is still possible to tell a pre-enclosure hedge from an enclosure one by the former’s crookedness and the varied material that make it up. It is easy, for instance, to distinguish the hedges and ditches that define the enclosures in the former open fields between Bampton and Aston from those that border the pre-enclosure road from Bampton to Black Bourton; the enclosure hedges are as straight as though they had been ruled, while the older hedge follows the long S-shape of a ploughed furrow.
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The Surveyors had a further task to carry out. They had to plot the roads which would give access to the newly-enclosed fields and carry the newly abundant crops to sell in nearby markets. Although there were roads to other towns and villages, the new turnpikes were not designed to carry the crops in from the fields, nor from one outlying farm or barn to another. Before the Inclosure, the crops grown in the open fields were not generally large enough to need more than a horse and cart to bring them into the centre of Bampton. As the yields increased with the new farming methods, better roads were needed to cater for larger wagons, and as the great open fields were abolished, and enclosures with defining hedges created, there was a need for roads and gates to give the owners access to their land. Part of the task of the Surveyors was to plan and map these new roads. Just to the north of Bampton, on the edge of the town, a new road was mapped; it was to be called The Bowling Green Road, and it ran almost due west to east, starting from the junction of Broad Street and the beginning of the Burford Turnpike. It was to be 40 ft wide, and the owners of land either side had to fence it off from their holdings on Spittle Croft. There was to be a second new road giving access for vehicles to Aston, further south, but also on the edge of the town, branching off from the turnpike to Buckland. Until now there had been no road to Aston, only footpaths across the common field, starting along the public footway running east from Bushey Row. Before the enclosure, the people of Aston would have used this path to get to church in Bampton; there was not yet a church at Aston. The newly designated Aston Road branched off the Buckland Turnpike to the northeast as the High Street curved south, and ran past the new enclosures on the north and the smaller ones on its south side as far as ‘Hamlet Aston’. As people travelled along the new Aston road, they would have passed Truelands Road on their left – then, as now, a private road, although it may once have been more generally used than it is today, because it led to the Aston Public Bridle Way.
‘Truelands Private Road’ today 21
There was another new road leading across the former common fields, due north from the Aston Road, past the end of Bowling Green Road and on up the hill towards Lew: it was called Beam Road, because it went past the outlying homestead of The Beam, probably the oldest part of Bampton. Its width, at 33 ft, was less than the widest roads; it was designated to take local traffic only. Fifty chains to the north of the town Map II (Appendix p34) shows the lands allotted to The Rev H Owen, of almost 76 acres, as his ‘5th allotment for tithes’, as well as a further 22 perches (number129) for tithes, on the hill overlooking the new landscape towards the spire of Bampton church in the distance; today it is called after him, Mount Owen, and Beam Road towards it has become Mount Owen Road.
‘Beam Road’ today To the southeast, Map IV (Appendix p36) shows that roads were built to east and west off the Buckland Turnpike to enable farmers to reach their new fields; and in the southwest towards Weald, as shown on Map III (Appendix 3), the ‘Clanville Road’ has become a Turnpike, and the roads through Weald have been fenced where there had been open land in 1789; there is to be a fenced public road past the outlying houses, too, although many of the roads are still shown as ‘Private’; while ‘William Way’ has become ‘Welcome Way Road’: have the Surveyors tidied up a muttered response to their questions, or is this a gentrification of the original name?
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The map also shows a bridge over the Shillbrook as the Buckland Turnpike road leaves the village; it is not as wide as the rest of the turnpike, it is true, but at least it was now possible to cross the brook dry-shod. The Surveyors had to work out and take into account the exact amount of the cost of these roads, in terms of area: the Award allocated 4 acres, 1 rod and 29 perches to ‘Gravel and Road Materials’. Rev H Owen was one among several ecclesiastical holders of land to the north of Bampton. Some of these were allocated to ‘The Dean & Chapter of Exeter’; Bampton was a ‘peculiar’ of the Diocese of Exeter, attached to the Cathedral of Exeter, and the land awarded to the Diocese was let to various different holders, some as Allotments for Tithes, some as direct leases. Edward Whitaker, Esq for instance, held nearly 200 acres for tithes as a lessee of Exeter Diocese, as well as 293 acres for leasehold lands including the Rectory estate, and 230 acres for copyholds. Another consideration was the award for rights which had been held under the old system: Manorial Rights, awarded to the Earl of Shrewsbury and to Hon John Coventry: nearly 8 acres to the former, almost 25 to the latter; nearly 200 acres for the Glebe, to the three vicars Rev. George Richards, Rev. Hugh Owen and Rev. Thomas Burrow; for tithes held by the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, 20 acres; for the Vicarial Tithes, more than 616 acres, to the same three vicars and also to Rev. James Thorold, though his holding was only 1 rod and 9 perches. In 1844 the Diocese of Exeter again recorded the ‘Allotments’ of these three vicars as more than 200 acres each. Among the larger landowners there were a few women who had claim to land, in addition to Caroline Anne Horde’s 173 acres in Weald. Sophie Elizabeth Wykham, for instance, held 74 acres freehold and 81 acres leasehold, under the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, totalling 155 acres, and the widowed Mary Townsend held 15 acres in old enclosures and 19 acres in new ones; in Weald, in 1789, both Mrs Sammon and Miss Frederick held farms; but the number of women is very small, and they were certainly all either orphaned spinsters or widows; daughters and wives had as yet no right to ownership of anything. Established charities received substantial amounts of land: the Almshouse at Abingdon held 29 acres as old enclosures and 41 as new ones, a total of more than 70 acres. The Trustees of the Bampton Poor held nearly 20 acres – an old enclosure; Bampton’s Poor House and Garden was to be under the care of
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the Churchwardens. A Swinbrook Charity had 49 acres; while the poor of Witney held an old enclosure of 6 acres. The Trustees of the National School had 36 acres and one rod, the Court Room and the Meeting Room 1 perch each; the pound, for keeping straying animals, had 5 acres. At the Post Office, Thomas Skinner was awarded a cottage and garden; Thomas Banting, the blacksmith, had a house, the blacksmith’s shop, a yard and a garden, 14 perches altogether. There were many small cottage-andgarden holdings in the town itself, some as small as 1 perch for a ‘shed at Fisher’s bridge’, others from 3 to 5 perches for a ‘cottage and garden’, all duly plotted and labelled on the maps and in the document of the Award.
The title page of the Bampton Inclosure Award
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The date of the of the Bampton Inclosure Award is given on its title page as 1821: the announcement of the award was read out in Bampton Church on Sunday 8th April 1822, in the hearing of Rev Whitaker, the Clerk to the Council. The open fields of Bampton had officially ceased to exist. None of this process was cheap. It has been reckoned that together with Parliamentary and legal fees, and the actual fencing of the land allotted, the final cost of enclosure amounted to as much as £10 an acre – a sum beyond the dreams of the smaller holders, who would only have seen a few pence in the course of their lives. There was no question of their being able to afford the fees involved in enclosing their land; they would have to sell it. In addition to this, 72 acres of land were offered for sale, perhaps in order to pay expenses. There were people willing to buy it. The Enclosure Award includes, for instance, an award to Bernard Green ‘in lieu of his Common Field Land and Common Rights thereon belonging two several allotments of lands’ of 2 acres and 21 perches and 1 acre, 2 rods and 8 perches; not content with this, he also bought from Ann Carter ‘an allotment of land situate in Brookfast Furlong containing one rod and five perches bounded on the north by the Aston Road on the east and south by the last described allotment and on the west to an allotment to the said Ann Carter and three several Allotments from Thomas Higgons in lieu of the Common Field Lands and right of Common’; four acres, one rod and thirty-eight perches from Robert Townsend, two rods and five perches from James Pettifer. He must have been counting on being able to recoup the cost of these purchases by using new methods to grow more crops.
The Inclosure Award to Bernard Green
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The greater landholders went on to prosper; Edward Whitaker was allotted 69 acres – a new enclosure – which had formerly been a holding of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter; he also held a freehold of 229 acres, Haddon Farm of 456 acres and a lease of the Deanery of 57 acres. He gained the copyhold of Hanks’s field - 99 acres: of Sidwells - 29 acres: and ten other holdings of one to two acres, a total of more than 1,700 acres. Like Bernard Green, he bought land from James Pettifer, a stone mason; and, perhaps with the money from these sales, on 21 September 1830, James Pettifer rented a house called Eatons from Exeter College. There was evidently some dispute as to its ownership. Edward Whitaker, Esq claimed that he owned the freehold; but Exeter College’s lawyer countered, in an angry letter, that the Commissioners of Inclosure had stated that it belonged to the College, and were so informed by ‘the old People of that time’ and by Mr Whitaker senior. The lawyer supported his claim with a sketch map of the cottages in question, at the end of ‘the street to the Church’ and opposite the ‘School’ – now the Vesey Room and the Library:
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An angry letter from Exeter College’s lawyer, refuting Edward Whittaker Esq’s claim to ownership of cottages in Bampton and citing the opinion of the Commissioners of Inclosure as evidence
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Under the terms of the lease, Mr Pettifer had to take down the existing house, and build a ‘respectable dwelling house’ with three bedrooms as well as a ‘good parlour, sitting room and kitchen in the ground floor’; the exact size of the house was laid down, and the new tenant was expected to complete the building in two years.; the lease was a ‘repairing’ one, of 37 years. Emboldened, perhaps, by this purchase, James Pettifer went on to rent several other houses from Exeter College on long repairing leases. One lease included the condition that he had to ‘feed and lodge for one day and night every three years the Rector and Scholars and their Officers and Servants not exceeding six in number, with feed, lodging, stable room, good hay, provender and litter for their horses’ when they needed to come and visit their properties in Bampton; a considerable outlay, in addition to the rent of £9 per annum. James Pettifer continued to flourish, and rented other houses on long repairing leases: in 1838 he was commissioned to build the new Town Hall. The Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral as holders of the tithe must have been relieved to find that their landholdings remained the same; in spite of their possible misgivings, a map of 1844 shows that they still held the same amount of land in Bampton and the adjoining parishes.
Tithe land held by the Diocese of Exeter in 1844
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In many villages, a result of enclosure was that farmers with consolidated land holdings built themselves houses on the new farms, so as to be near to their fields; but Bampton farmers seem to have preferred to remain in their town houses, near to their friends and fellow farmers. The only new outlying farm was Coal Pit Farm, built on the new road to Lew. Apart from this, landowners went on living in the town, as they had done before enclosure, sometimes improving their houses as they prospered, following the example of Edward Whitaker at the Manor House. The newly prosperous were also adventurous in their farming methods; beef cattle were raised, and Hereford oxen were grazed. While wheat and barley were still grown, fruit crops were introduced: apples, pears, apricots and walnuts; Jerusalem artichokes did well, and so did peas. Some of the smaller farms kept sheep; while on Mount Owen there was a flock of 87 ewes and lambs, 50 cattle and 30 pigs by 1861. In the west, College Farm grew roots and barley and was good sheep country; while the old pasture in Moor Close was also good for grazing sheep and growing oats. By the middle of the nineteenth century there were five farms of over 200 acres in Bampton and Weald: Deanery Farm, Calais Farm, the two Ham Court Farms and Mount Owen Farm, all growing corn. There were also sixteen farms of over 100 acres. Sheep were farmed on College Farm on former open-field land in the west, oats and sheep on the former pasture in Moor Close. Three years later, Ham Court was praised for its excellent state of cultivation, put down to the skill of the tenant, and in contrast to the surrounding farms. Not all the new land holders did so well: by 1822, at College Farm, David Miller was in rent arrears, partly because of the growth in the poor rate, although his farm was ‘in a very superior state of cultivation’. He was helped with essential repairs and rent relief. Twenty years later, the excellent state of the farm at Ham Count was put down to the skill of the tenant, who had done well in spite of the crops scorching in dry seasons. The enclosure of the open fields brought a new status to the concept of land ownership. When even the poorest had rights to land, however small, ownership of land was not intrinsically connected with social standing. Now that poor people owned no more land than a small garden outside their houses, a divide opened up between landowners and landless people, which grew larger as the holdings of farmers increased. 132 families were working on the land in 1811 – almost double the number of workers in trades and crafts; fifty
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years later there were 24 farmers, and more than 350 farm workers listed, including 12 shepherds. What became of the people who sold their land? What did Thomas Higgons do, when he had spent the money paid by Bernard Green for ‘three Allotments in lieu of his Common Field lands and rights of Commons?’ How did he feed his family, now that he had no land to grow crops or graze cattle? Many of the smallest landholders received more money than they had ever handled before; some of them, like James Pettifer, put it to good use, but it was generally thought that most of them spent it heedlessly, perhaps on drink. They also often found themselves with no alternative way of earning a living. Even before enclosure there had been a lot of unemployment among the labouring poor; things had not improved by 1834 when the conditions of giving out Poor Relief were made harsher, and poor people had to move to the deliberately ‘ineligible’ conditions of the Poor House. There were riots in Bampton, a well-to-do farmer was attacked, and the Oxford police were called in to help put down the riots. Special constables were sworn in to protect the peace, and given a staff of office handed out to each of them from the window of The Talbot. Although the old open-field system had made progressive agriculture impossible, it had given every countryman the great advantage of a stake in the land. While it lasted, the cottagers had rights to at least a strip or two in the common fields, and everyone enjoyed legal or customary rights in the wastes where they could graze cows, sheep, geese and goats; most families could produce enough food for themselves, and even have a small surplus to sell. The enclosure of the open fields put an end to this possibility. It also ended the herding together of cattle and horses on the common, and the possible chance of improving stock by the haphazard breeding which this made possible. We do not know how many people left Bampton as a result of the enclosure of agricultural land; nor, if they left, where they went. Perhaps they moved to Witney, to work in the blanket manufactories where they could earn a steady wage and work regular hours in a warm, dry environment. But Arthur Young, who urged farmers to use the new methods, admitted that ‘by nineteen out of twenty Inclosure Bills the poor are injured, and most grossly’. A poor man’s allotment under the Award might be no more than an acre, which he could not afford to fence; he lost his rights in the common waste where he had formerly been able to graze a cow; he had to sell both land and cow. He could no longer 30
feed even a goose on the common land; that too had been enclosed, fenced off from him by somebody who could afford to do it. As a rhyme of the time went:
The fault is great, in man or woman, Who steals the goose from off the common; But what can be that man’s excuse Who steals the common from the goose?
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APPENDIX Inclosure Maps of Bampton: 1821 Map No I: Plan of the town of Bampton
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Map No II: Plan of Bampton Field to the north-east
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Map No III: Plan of part of Weald
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Map No IV: Plan of Bampton to the south-east
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Map No V: Plan of Haddon Farm and part of Weald
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Sources An Historical Atlas of Oxfordshire, edited by Kate Tiller and Giles Darkes, Oxfordshire Record Society, 2010 An Historical Atlas of Berkshire, edited by Joan Dils and Margaret Yates, Berkshire Record Society 2012 The Bampton Inclosure Award, 1821, held at Oxfordshire County Record Office A map of Oxfordshire, Published by R Davis, Lewknor, August 1st 1797 The Middle of the World: the very particular memories of a Filkins man, Charles Farmer, The Filkins Press, 2013 The Bampton We Have Lost: A History of the Town from Earliest Times to 1914, J L Hughes-Owen, The Friends of St Mary’s, Bampton, 2005 A Plan of the Bampton Estate in the County of Oxfordshire, 1789 Thos Bainbridge del. The Victoria County History of Oxfordshire ed Simon Towneley, Vol 13 1996 Bampton papers 1815 – 30 Archive of Exeter College, Oxford A Plan of the Township of Bampton and Weald….in the County of Oxford, 1844 Archive of Exeter Cathedral
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Acknowledgments: My thanks are due to the following:
The Dean and Chapter of Exeter, Cathedral Archives The Principal and Fellows of Exeter College, Oxford Cogges Manor Farm The Oxfordshire County Record Office Tony Page Rosemary and Mike Pelham Harriet Porter Janet Rouse Mike Williams Charles Willmer
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BCA-11/C March 2015