Forest fences: enclosures in a pre-enclosure landscape

Langton, John

doi:10.1080/01433768.2014.916902

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…From at least as early as 1189but gaining pace in the reigns of Henry III and Edward Ithe Crown profited from the effective selling of forest land through assarts, a policy also used to encourage settlement in periods of low, or negative, population growth from the reign of Henry VIII onwards. 74 So much was true in the New Forest, and is systematically documented during the reign of Henry III. 75 While later material does not mirror this systematic approach to recording, the archive occasionally does detail approval for clearing forest land.…”

Section: Squatting and Enclosure From The Bottom Upmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500–1850

McDonagh

Griffin

2016

Journal of Historical Geography

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This paper examines issues surrounding protest, trespass and occupation -brought to the fore as a result both of recent social movements including the global Occupy movement and of emerging critical discourses about so-called 'new enclosures' -through a historical lens. Wary of histories of property and protest that rely heavily on the notion of the 'closing of the commons', the authors present a different story about the solidification of property rights, the securitisation of space and the gradual emergence of the legal framework through which protest is now disciplined. They do so via an exploration of three episodes in the making of property in land and three associated moments of resistance, each enacted via the physical occupation of common land. The first examines strategies for opposing enclosure in early sixteenth-century England; the second considers the Diggers' reimagining of property and the commons in the mid seventeenth century; and the third analyses the challenge to property rights offered by squatting and small-scale encroachments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In so doing, the paper begins to rethink the relations between past and contemporary protest, considering how a more nuanced account of the history of common rights, enclosure and property relations might nevertheless leave space for new solidarities which have the potential to challenge the exercise of arbitrary power.Suddenly, in 2011 occupations were everywhere. Student sit-ins, the symbolic gathering and occupying of prominent 'public' spaces during the so-called Arab Spring, the Indignados of Spain, the Direct Democracy Now movement in Greece, and the Occupy movement, all united by their shared use of the physical occupation of prominent and symbolic spaces by way of protest.If ultimately their aims were different, the technique of gathering together and occupying tied the protests together. The act of occupation is not a new one, though rarely has the physical and spatial act been given such symbolic prominence as in the Occupy movement. The practical and symbolic actand thus public performanceof occupying public space was not just rooted in political symbolism but also a direct critique of the 'privatization' of public space. Occupy thus reclaims and remakes space for the public against the interests of those who seek to exclude and delimit the use of space supposedly once of the public. 1 Central to this assertion is the mobilization of the idea of the 'commons' to historically and conceptually underpin its actions. Indeed, central to Occupy's declared intent is the belief in the importance of, and a desire to return to, the 'commons', to throw off private property in land and, simply put, return the land to the people. In this oft-repeated narrative, before the demonic act of enclosureon which more belowthe land was of the people, unrestricted and unregulated for all to use. Enclosure closed the commons down, the hedges and fences erected forcing the poor from their land and gifting it to the wealthy ruler...

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Section: Squatting and Enclosure From The Bottom Upmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500–1850

McDonagh

Griffin

2016

Journal of Historical Geography

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“…Communal ‘drifts’ removed and returned their animals before and after fence month and winter haining . Routine construction, alteration and removal of fences according to the deer's requirements were necessary to enable their extensive common rights . Swirling beneath these regular rhythms, illicit hunting was rife in all levels of society .…”

Section: Non‐royal Forests and Chases In The Hundred And Quo Warrantomentioning

confidence: 99%

Royal and non-royal forests and chases in England and Wales

Langton

2015

Hist Res

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Royal forests comprised land devoted primarily to hunting. They were a distinctive feature of Norman and Angevin England and Wales. Expressing the crown's arbitrary power to prevent holders of land from using it as they chose, they were generally resented. Royal forests must disappear to enable individuals to utilize landholdings for their own private economic purposes, and so for commercially oriented land uses to occur. However, it is shown here that ‘royal forests’ did not constitute a hermetic historiographical category, distinct from non‐royal ‘chases’. There were royal chases as well as royal forests; monarchs had private forests and chases as well as royal ones; and non‐royal earls, barons and high churchmen possessed and created forests and chases of their own, which were as well protected and displayed the same non‐economic imperatives and cultural consequences as those of the crown. They were not a transient feature of medieval times which inevitably disappeared with the inexorable progress of commercial economy. Some of them continued to flourish, in all their distinctiveness, through early modern times into the nineteenth century. In consequence, the transition between the medieval and modern worlds was not as clear‐cut nor as complete as is suggested by the conventional narrative of English historical development.

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“…'Fence' is here used in the general meaning as a structure, irrespective of material, used to control movement of livestock in the landscape (cf. Langton, 2014). A key feature of managed infield meadows is that these must be fenced, in order to prevent grazing by cattle and other livestock before the hay harvest.…”

Section: Fencing Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Origin and Development of Managed Meadows in Sweden: A Review

Eriksson

2020

Rural Landscapes: Society, Environment, History

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This review concerns when and why infield meadows developed, i.e. enclosed land, constructed and managed for production of livestock fodder. Meadows have been associated with 'stalling' of livestock, in turn associated with, for example, protection from adverse weather conditions, increasing efficiency of milk and manure production, or changing human-animal relationships. The suggested timing for origin of meadows ranges from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Meadows are embedded in a complex of interactions, including aspects of culture, material conditions and the environment, and these were treated as different components, unfolding over time: harvesting fodder, stalling livestock, milk production, use of manure, crops and permanent fields, fencing systems, tools, and settlements and land ownership. The interpretation is based on Hodder's entanglement theory. It is concluded that these component's appearance is distributed over a very long time, from the Neolithic to the first centuries AD, when meadows, viewed as a 'complete' system, appeared. People most likely for long knew the advantages of feeding livestock, and the means to achieve this: collecting additional fodder, keep livestock in close quarters, eventually indoors, and collect and distribute manure on crop fields, but the introduction of iron tools during the centuries around AD was the key to develop meadows. Stalling livestock and construction of infield meadows may have been partly decoupled. Although climate change was not a driver behind development of meadows, the agricultural system with meadows and livestock stalling was adaptive during later periods of climate deterioration, and for colonization of northern forests in Sweden.

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Forest fences: enclosures in a pre-enclosure landscape

Cited by 7 publications

References 16 publications

Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500–1850

Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500–1850

Royal and non-royal forests and chases in England and Wales

Origin and Development of Managed Meadows in Sweden: A Review

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