Perspectiva educativa de la didáctica del paisaje

Eighty-five Enclosure Acts for Wales and Monmouthshire were passed before 1793, which gave the go-ahead for the enclosure of nearly 35,000 acres of land. A further 85 acts passed between 1793 and 1815 legislated for the enclosure of at least 213,000 acres. The period between 1793 and 1815 witnessed the most vehement activity, with the later acts between 1815 and 1885 dealing with the smaller amount of 166,000 acres. The post-1793 acts related to the vast upland moors, where newly-enclosed fields were added to existing farms, or sometimes detached from such holdings, and provided a stark contrast with the irregular, small, old fields. While enclosure improved farming in lowland areas, little was done to improve the upland pastures. Enclosure in these areas signified ownership and an attempt to stop piecemeal small encroachments.82

The social consequences of enclosure have been widely debated, and require little repetition here. Some scholars have argued that enclosure brought a fuller and more remunerative demand for labour, more regular and secure employment, higher standards of living, an increase in the number of small landowners and tenant farmers, and a positive increase in the population. Others have conceded that enclosure led to

78 _{The element of discipline and restraint in English food riots has been noted by several historians,}

including Stevenson, Popular Disturbances, 105.

79 _{NLW GS 4/1006/4.8 (1762).} 80 _{NLW GS 4/1006/4.31 (1762).} 81_{Thompson, ‘Moral economy’, 132.} 82 _{Howell, The Rural Poor, 9.}

damaging out-migration, a fall in real wages, detrimental effects on poor relief expenditure, labour unrest, class tension, and deterioration in diet and health.83 _Of

particular relevance to this discussion is not the actual outcome of enclosure, but how contemporaries viewed the enclosure acts and perceived the effects. It was widely believed that enclosure would have a devastating effect on small farmers and cottagers and would lead to a loss of additional income for tradesmen. Artisans took wood and rushes from the commons, and farmers worked the small stone and slate quarries on the wastes. Livestock was grazed on open pastures, which saved many from being dependant on poor relief. The enclosure acts sought an end to all this, and combined with the mass unemployment and increase in poor rates at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, sparked extreme resistance across England and Wales.84

Thirty-seven women participated in what appear to be enclosure riots in the period under study. It is unclear, due to the formalised language of the indictments, whether these incidents represented community-wide social resistance to enclosures, or private, possibly family, disputes over property. Nevertheless, the involvement of both men and women in enclosure riots was perceived by the participants as being wholly legitimate, not only because the acts threatened their subsistence, but because the majority of the working community opposed them.85 _{The riots involved the physical}

removal or destroying of hedges, fences and walls marking enclosure boundaries and were both practical and symbolic. In enclosing common land, communal rights, many of which had existed for generations, had been forcefully removed. The taking down of the barriers sought to reassert these rights.86 _{In one particular act of defiance, two}

women broke down a gate and allowed their cattle to enter a field and trample on another person’s corn. On a more practical level, six women destroyed a wall which was

83 _{For works that emphasise the positive outcomes of enclosure see, for example, J. D. Chambers,}

‘Enclosure and labour supply in the Industrial Revolution’, Economic History Review, Second Series, 5 (1953), 319-43; J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay, The Agricultural Revolution, 1750-1880 (London: Batsford, 1966). In contrast, some studies which argue that enclosure had a negative impact on society include J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, The Village Labourer, 1760-1832: A Study in the

Government of England before the Reform Bill (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911); Gilbert

Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields (London: Constable, 1907); Wilhelm Hasbach, The History of the English Agricultural Labourer (London: P. S. King, 1908); N. F. R. Crafts, ‘Enclosure and labour supply revisited’, Explorations in Economic History, 15 (1978), 172-83; K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, 1600-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), ch. 4.

84 _{Archer, Social Unrest and Popular Protest, 10-11.}

85 _{Walter raises the same point in his study of seventeenth-century English enclosure riots: Walter,}

Crowds and Popular Politics, 21-22.

preventing their cattle from gaining access to water.87 _{The barriers not only took away}

common land, but also threatened the existence of livestock.

The enclosure of land had a particularly huge impact on singlewomen and widows. The number of unmarried women who owned or rented small plots of land before enclosure is undoubtedly underestimated, but even without such land, singlewomen and widows could still survive by means of common rights. As tenants of cottages with rights of common they might become dairywomen, using the products produced for subsistence, or perhaps even supplying local communities with eggs, milk or butter. Peat from the large fens was also carried by women from the hills to be sold at the coast as an additional source of income.88 _{However, when the commons were}

enclosed the ability of unmarried women to make a living in agriculture was severely undermined.89 _{Many survived only on occasional day labour in the fields, or working at}

remaining local cottage industries. Others were forced to migrate in search of work during the harvest period. Given the hardship created by the enclosure of common land, it is perhaps unsurprising that 19 of the 37 women indicted for enclosure riots were singlewomen, with a further eight recorded as widows. Unlike married women, it is possible that many singlewomen lived alone and may have been reliant only on themselves, or poor relief, to survive. Their participation in these riots could be considered indicative of their frustration and financial desperation.

The conflict over common and wasteland, and grazing rights, in Wales was more pronounced than has been acknowledged in existing historiography. A Radnorshire MP stated as late as 1844 that ‘I am sorry to say, that in the enjoyment of these rights [to enclose land] there is the utmost possible violence exercised on the part of the strong against the weak’.90 _{Thomis and Grimmett have similarly argued for a}

distinctly Welsh experience of enclosure riots. While acknowledging that ‘[t]he causal links between enclosure, discontent and disturbance are easier to assume than demonstrate’, they assert that ‘anti-enclosure protest clearly occurred’ and women made a definite contribution which ‘seem[s] to have happened most frequently in Wales’.91 _In

Cardiganshire during the early nineteenth century a group of women wearing dripping-

87 _{NLW GS 4/270/5.15 (1734).}