“A dwelling-house having been erected, the next step was to appropriate a few acres of land surrounding it.... The difficulty of obtaining sufficient land for the keep of a cow was no more than the labour of enclosing and reclaiming it.
“In this way some thirty or forty families were settled in cottages built by themselves, around which were three or four fields, where for many years they lived in undisturbed possession. By patient labour the gorse and fern were got rid of, trees were planted round the cottage, or allowed to grow where they sprang up in suitable places in the hedgerows; by cultivation and manuring the herbage was improved.
“With the Enclosure Act there came a disturbance of this state of affairs. The partition of the unappropriated land seems to have been carried out fairly, by adding to each farm a quantity of land in proportion to the amount of pasturage the occupier enjoyed on the common.... When, however, we come to consider the case of the cottager, his treatment was by no means fair. Enclosures of over twenty-one years’ standing were not interfered with, and their owners were left in undisturbed possession, but such as had been enclosed for a shorter period were claimed by the Lord of the Manor, who lived some twelve miles away, and possessed little or no land in the parish. He advanced his claim cautiously, asking only a nominal rent, and as unlettered peasants felt the inequality of a contest in the matter, this rent was paid. Consequently more than half the cottage holdings fell into his hands, and the poor occupiers were deprived of the ownership of the dwellings they had erected, and of all the improvements they had put into the land they had enclosed. None of them had to leave their holdings, and the rent at first charged was trifling; but except in cases where life-leases were granted, the cottagers had lost all their rights, and they and their holdings were left entirely in the hands of a large landowner.”
The Enclosure Act, of course, prevented the creation of any more cottage holdings. The fertility of the soil in these small holdings, Mr. Swain says, is enormously greater than that of the land, naturally similar, on the other side of the hedge. Usually the cottager gets a neighbouring farmer to plough half an acre of his holding for him, paying for this service in labour at harvest time; and keeps the rest, except the garden plot, under grass. The average size of the holding is about six acres; which is found sufficient for two cows, a heifer, a calf, several pigs, thirty fowls, and a dozen ducks. The produce supplies all the vegetables, fruit, milk, butter, eggs and bacon consumed by the family, and brings in the following money returns, on Mr. Swain’s calculations:--