A Contested Landscape
Part 2 - Enclosure
by Keren Jones PhD, CMLI, Dip LA (Glos)
The next great milestone in the Shropshire story of conflict over land and property was the Tudor dissolution of the monasteries. The first parish records of 1536 record there were around 800 religious buildings in England and Wales, yet four years later there were none. For those of us with an interest in all things landscape, the dissolution was to ultimately be a mixed blessing as it also marked the birth of the English Garden, and with it, the birth of what was to become, much later, the landscape profession. As demolition made land available for large, new country houses with large parks and deer enclosures, the new landowners were often absent or did not need to earn a living off the land. This meant that adjacent land was often put to aesthetic uses, rather than being cultivated. These changes proved to be a mixed blessing for my Shropshire family. Those wedded to the old ways lost out as their rights to common land were eroded, but other members of the family gained new employment on the grand estates.
Various branches of my family lived on the summit of Brown Clee and became known as out-commoners. In exchange for the rights to grazing, cutting turf and collecting wood, they would have been subject to a modified form of Forest Law, which meant that they were not allowed to disturb deer that ate their crops.
They had to follow very precise routes, known as Straker Ways, from their homes to the grazing areas on the Clee. Many can still be traced as sunken or hollow ways. This was the way of life that was now at risk.
What began with the Tudors and Dissolution, escalated after the Civil War. Although the war had impacted on and divided communities and families across England, it was the subsequent fight between rich and poor over land enclosure that was to have a lasting and permanent impact on people, place and nature. Initially Shropshire was less affected by the Land Enclosure Acts, because of its pastoral nature. Since the 1600s any enclosure of arable fields had been mainly achieved by stealth, as a farmer bought out rights. Matters became contentious, however, when the remaining stretches of moor and marshes started to be enclosed. These areas were subject to over 70 different acts, and as a result many landless squatters became homeless.
My Brown Clee ancestors were amongst those who had to fight for their rights when, in 1809, a local enclosure act was focused on the common land around nearby Stoke St Milborough. The Lord of Earnstrey, tried to obtain extensive allotments on the west flank of Brown Clee, including rights to a Royal Forest.
Earnstrey’s actions had an impact on many small holders and landless labourers, but the commoners’ resistance meant that common land on the Clee Hills still remains today, even though it is not as extensive as it once had been.
On the other side of Brown Clee and the Earnstrey Estate, lies the Burwarton Estate, still one of the county's largest private estates not open to the public. In the 18th century it passed to Viscount Boyne who created an Italianate House, formal gardens, pleasure grounds and an extensive landscape park, all sited to take advantage of the rugged upland scenery. At the time, my great, great grandfather was a young boy living in Burwarton, and very likely became part of the gardening and construction force. He was the first known gardener in our family.
His eldest son, my great grandfather, also learnt to work the land from a very young age, developing skills as a gardener at the Dudmaston Estate, near the River Severn south of Bridgnorth, and within the remnants of the ancient Royal ‘Forest of Morfe”.
But the world was changing. Industrialisation was spreading its tentacles from what was to become the Birmingham and the Black Country conurbation. My great grandfather would have seen the first steam trains hurtling past Dudmaston making their way down to Bewdley.
Then in the 1880s - having lost his wife to tuberculosis – the struggle of making a living in the place that had been our family’s home for generation became too much. He left his two children with family relatives, and broke the pattern of living off the land to start a new life in Middlesex.
Nick Haye’s ‘Book of Trespass – Crossing the Lines that Divide Us’ looks at all the contemporary issues which have developed around land and boundaries over time. He finishes as I will, by dwelling on what he calls the alternative stories that threaten the established land histories. These alternative stories are “the stories of the commons, folk stories, the stories that come not from the castle but the plains, the collective voice of the people … these are the stories, that consecrate an alternative story of the land”. (Nick Nayes, 2020).
In this spirit, I want to finish by touching on an extra layer of richness in this local landscape and community narrative that my family would have shared and passed down through the generations. For Shropshire hill country is the land of giants, fairies and witches. Folklore is rooted in the landscape. Here is just a couple of the many myths and legends:
Long, long ago when the earth was new there were two giants looking to make a home. When they found Shropshire they decided to create a large mound where they could live and see for miles around. However, the giants that lived here fell out and threw stones at each other across the Clee Hills.
Later, when the young Saint Milburgh from Wenlock Priory, fleeing from a pursuer, fell from her horse on Brown Clee, a new holy spring appeared on a site where she fell. It gushes with water to this day.
These stories that combine historical fact and community myth and legend shape how we relate to the landscape, as well as what we see when we visit. By studying the past we can gain a better understanding of why it is as it is, what is important about the landscape for local people and also perhaps better appreciate that what we see is not as idyllic, equitable or sustainable as it might seem at first glance. In so many ways the landscape I have learnt to love epitomizes the view of Anne Whiston Spirn, in her book ‘The Language of Landscape (1998): “Landscape is not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for not only does it have a new story to tell everyday, but it has many stories.” This blog captures a mere few of those stories which I have had the pleasure of discovering.
What next: My journey of discovery started over ten years ago with collecting and archiving information, records, letters, photographs and any other snippets of material I could get my hands on. Some argue that this act of archiving is akin to the folk art of quilting:
"Like quilting, archiving employs the obsessive stitching together of many found pieces into a larger vision". Goldsmith K, 2011, Archiving is the New Folk Art, Poetry Foundation, 19 April, 2011.
I feel that now is the time to tell the stories which I have discovered. I am immersed in the process of creating a book series, entitled ‘Archives to Art’. It has become six stories, one for each of my grandparents, and a fifth which is about their relationship with land and landscape. There is also sixth story which is intertwined through all of these, and has emerged, unexpectedly. It is the narrative about my own journey - exploring the details in the archives, visiting places and talking to people - and turning archives into art.