Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in great condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> As originally conceived this collection would have extended and illustrated published work on local enclosures of the 18th and 19th centuries in particular by examining aspects of agriculture immediately before and after and the mundane mechanisms of the process itself. This would have been precisely in keeping with the approach preferred in school textbooks and likely to be welcomed by teachers as a means of reinforcing what is in danger of becoming a simplistic orthodoxy. What follows may be thought unsatisfactory for school use in that it reveals patterns which virtually contradict those which are often taught and fails to provide materials covering any single instance of parliamentary enclosure in detail. The first reflects ascertainable fact; locally as elsewhere throughout the east Midlands enclosure took place over some three centuries spasmodically and unpredictably with parliamentary legislation merely contributing to speed up completion of the process. The latter reflects gaps in the primary sources notably those capable of revealing how individuals responded to enclosure; if I can be proven wrong in this respect and to have overlooked material so much the better. Other local peculiarities will inevitably cause difficulty even for the informed reader particularly the confusion between parish boundaries along the extreme north-east Trent valley which was apparently an ancient problem and one compounded now by decay or virtual destruction of some settlements; careful reading of early maps in comparison with the modern landscape does not always resolve things here. (LL)