Agricultural Sustainability and Open-Field Farming in England 235was particularly concentrated in the midland counties of England. We therefore
draw our main references from Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire,
Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland, forming a con-
tiguous group of counties in the central and eastern parts of England (though we
also include some references to adjacent counties).
An impression of the prevalence and persistence of open-field farming is best
demonstrated by measuring its dissolution. There are various ways by which this
was achieved, all of which fall under the description of enclosure, but the fullest
record of enclosure was undertaken through private and local acts of parliament,
most of which changed the farming system from communal to several (private)
ownership, and from communal to several administration. This was achieved
mainly on a village by village basis (Turner, 1984). Figure 11.1 locates our study
area, but in representing the incidence of enclosure in a quantified way it also
measures the size of the task that was undertaken, and thereby conveys the import-
ance of the process in the whole history of English agricultural change. The mir-
ror image of enclosure is precisely the dominance of open-field farming. The
illustrative village examples we subsequently use demonstrate some of the pressures
that open-field farming faced and how they were resisted. However, these pressures
were eventually too great to resist the final outcome, which was the ultimate dis-
solution of the open-field farming system by enclosure.
The Simplified Model
The standard literature of traditional agricultural history has still properly to
acknowledge modern methodologies of approach. The core elements of agricul-
tural sustainability that we adopt here first came to our attention through relatively
little-known work (Pannell and Schilizzi, 1999), which encouraged a wider review
of the literature (to include Norman et al, 1997; Pretty, 2002; Uphoff, 2002;
O’Riordan and Stoll-Kleemann, 2003). The core model appropriate to a lengthy
historical dimension embraces ecology, economy and equity. The last in this list is
our adaptation of what might equally be referred to as ethics. The appropriateness
of this adaptation should become apparent as these three elements in the model are
applied to our empirical base. In the best of sustainable worlds they should be in
harmony. It is when these linkages separated that we conclude that farming in a
sustainability framework was at risk.
The principal ecological elements of our application of sustainability relate to
husbandry practices, and the extent to which these maximized the use of the avail-
able land resources without compromising soil quality, soil texture and underlying
fertility. This was achieved by using a nutrient recycling regime. However, it must
be understood that this took place during a time of relative scientific ignorance,
and therefore it was recognized by contemporaries through time-honoured pro-
cesses. These included the use of tried and tested crop rotations, including experi-
mentation with plants capable of fixing atmospheric nitrogen, even if this scientific