Conflict, agreement and landscape change: methods of enclosure of the Northern English countryside

• Enclosure methods were chosen for their level of formality.
• The most formal methods were used in the most complex situations.
• Formal methods were used to avoid conflict or legal ambiguity.
• This applies to pre and post-1760 enclosures.
• Parliamentary enclosure provided a higher level of formality than available before.

The enclosure of commons and open fields was carried out by many different methods over a long period of time. Traditionally, enclosure methods have been thought to have replaced one another chronologically, unity of possession being replaced by agreements, which were in turn replaced by Acts of Parliament in the mid-eighteenth century. Recent research has however revealed the continuing importance of non-parliamentary methods in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In light of this it is necessary to examine the reasons behind the selection of a particular method of enclosure, which will be attempted in this paper. It is found that the most formal, and thus most expensive, methods were used only when necessary in order to avoid conflict or legal ambiguity, or where specific local problems required them. Less formal methods were preferred where the circumstances were appropriate. Parliamentary enclosure was used as a particularly formal type of enclosure in the most complex or contentious situations.