Surviving the end of enclosure, Teesdale Mercury

Surviving the end of enclosure

Sep 27, 2007

By Jinny Howlett 

There are a surprisingly large number of good quality straight roads in Teesdale, despite its relative remoteness. The road over Folly Top, much favoured by motorbike riders, springs to mind as a good example.

It might just cross the mind that these roads could be Roman in origin. After all, there are a number of well-documented Roman Roads in our region including the one now followed by the A66 and another crossing the Tees at Piercebridge and heading North to the Roman Wall.

The truth about many of these straight roads is, however, more mundane. A few of them are Turnpike Roads - a type of toll road developed in the 18th Century to try to improve the appalling state of rural roads.

Most of these straight roads are, however, neither Roman Roads or Turnpike Roads. Many of them are in fact Enclosure Roads.

These replaced the often winding and narrow lanes that crossed the open land in the years before that land was divided up and enclosed. They were built to a required standard - generally 40 feet wide - and included a grass verge alongside each side of the road.

Enclosure Roads were usually bounded by a wall or a hedge. Most of them date back to the middle of the 19th Century. They must have made a big difference for anyone wanting to travel around Teesdale.

It was Enclosure itself though, much more than the Enclosure roads that made the greatest impact on Teesdale's landscape and life. I wonder if you find it as difficult as I do to envisage Teesdale without its dry stone walls and with open ground instead of fields.

However, it is generally accepted that until perhaps the 17th Century, there were far fewer walls and fields than there are today. Before this time, farming was more of a communal activity based on the village.

Each village was surrounded by three or four enormous fields, each bounded by a ditch or perhaps a temporary hedge of cut gorse or hurdles. Beyond these common fields, there was the common pasture or the moor. There might be small areas of natural meadow, often on the low-lying land by the edge of the rivers that were ‘closes' and kept separate until after the hay was cut, but Teesdale's landscape would be mostly without walls.

Villagers had their own strips of land within the open fields and they would know where they were, but the fields were cultivated as a whole. Ploughing was done by a team of as many as eight oxen. Naturally enough, there would just be one team of oxen for each village and that was likely to be owned by the local lord.

Villagers had their own stock animals, cattle and sheep and geese. However, the animals ran with everyone else's on the moors and on the fields after the crops were gathered.

I suppose this was all right when people were really struggling to survive, but when peace came and prosperity with it, the flaws in this system of farming began to be seen. It was fine if everyone looked after their animals to the same standard - but they didn't and disease could soon spread if some of the villagers weren't vigilant. And when crops are grown communally there isn't exactly much scope for innovation or raising yields is there?

In the 17th Century, the lords of the manor and the principal landowners started a movement to break up the common fields. At first just a few landowners were involved, but it soon became the trendy thing to do. By the 19th Century, laws were passed to speed up the process and by the middle of the Century most of the countryside was divided up into fields and separate farms and in many cases this included the common pastures and moors.

There were many advantages to be gained in farming individually. Animal husbandry had begun to develop and distinct breeds of cattle such as the Northern Shorthorn emerged - quite a contrast to the small dexter-like cows found in Teesdale in the Middle Ages.

Attempts were also made to improve the quality and size of the hill sheep by selective breeding. There was a similar revolution in experimenting with different fodder crops. On the Raby Castle estate, for instance, turnips were grown as winter food. I suppose change was inevitable.

Not everybody gained, however. It was fine for the successful farmers but not so good for the poor. Many villagers only had a strip or two in the Open Fields - perhaps eight or 12 acres. They survived because they could pasture their animals on the moor and common pasture. However, when the fields were divided up and enclosed, poor tenants were often given poor land as their share and, of course, they could no longer pasture their animals on the big common fields.

Most of Teesdale's poor did manage to survive enclosure. They were in a better position than the landless farm workers of Norfolk.

They were helped by the way farms worked in Upper Teesdale. Although many Teesdale villages such as Eggleston and Cotherstone had Open Fields and common pasture, there were exceptions.

Teesdale isn't an average sort of place. Higher up the dale, villages were small and scattered and only small amounts of land were suitable for cultivation.

The fact that farming in Teesdale was sometimes a bit different from the norm helped when Enclosure eventually arrived.

Dalesmen have always been able to diversify in order to survive.

First published in the Mercury, September 19, 2007