Rowley - The Enclosure Act - Part 1

Rowley, a rural parish, developed from feudal times as five manors of the lord and his serfs, all bound to the land. Life depended on what was raised on that land and a society based on communal agriculture and rights came from it. Serfs were housed with a small family garth but had to work communal infields in which strips were allocated equitably over the better and poorer land. Additionally serfs had rights to pasture livestock on the open outfields. Apart from maybe a hedge or wall around the personal garths and temporary markers on the infields the land was simply open ground. Witnesses reported ‘mountains of the Wolds’, and an ability to ‘ride for 30 miles without meeting a hedge’. Our high Wolds were almost completely grassland with whins and small bushes at best. It was a little better in the lower parts where some woodland persisted and the ground was more fertile. However the essence of society up to 1500 was a population bound to the lord and the land, with equitable rights for all.

The outcome agriculturally was a low mean standard decided by the township as a whole. Disputes were rife about wandering animals, or numbers of sheep on the outfields; a need to shepherd the flocks and poor overgrazed grass led to low quality milk, meat, and wool not competitive with lowland animals. As an example our woollens, for which Beverley was famous, led to the West Riding taking the trade by demanding better quality. Church tithes and king’s taxes were low from such lands and by 1550-1600 a movement to greater efficiency was spreading. Those lands under single ownerships were being managed as closes and enclosed fields; sheep needed no shepherding, arable planting and harvesting wasn’t dependent on how your neighbour’s strip was behaving. Quality of produce might have been rising, but the cost to the serf came from his loss of rights and living. The serf became an employee not a tenant.

In Rowley parish it started in Bentley in about 1280 with an enclosed wood, but it was from the mid-1600s that it really began. It ended in Little Weeton (as it was known) about 1810. Apart from the social aspects the changes to the landscape were such as to have amounted to a revolution. I would like readers to have some detail of our geography to better understand what happened–for this purpose I attach a map of the parish, with each of the manors identified relative to present day features.


Big Thank You to Barrie Heaton for his historical articles.

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