David Winskill
Hornsey Parish Church. Print by William Ellis, 1791
- Credit: Hornsey Historical Society
The opening to David Frith s cracking new book on The Hornsey Enclosure Act is rather brutal.
The purpose of the legislation, he writes was to “enclose, divide and allot to individual tenants or freeholders the commons and waste lands of the manor that had by custom previously been used by all.
At a stroke this did away with vital rights of grazing and collecting fuel for the poor. There had always been enclosures in England and the process accelerated from the mid-18th century. Between 1750 and 1815 around one sixth of the country was fenced off, and by 1873, just 7,000 families owned four fifths of England s green and pleasant land.