The revoluTion in agriCulTure^107them away’.^76 Perhaps of even greater importance was the loss of numerous
ancient coppiced woods: the declining value of underwood in many areas
encouraged their conversion to farmland, especially as the heavy soils which
they often occupied could now be improved by underdrainage. The extent of
all these changes varied from parish to parish, with the greatest alterations
occurring where large estates, and keen ‘improvers’, held much of the land.
But to some extent they affected all anciently enclosed areas, and in 1801
one observer of the Essex countryside was able to declare: ‘what immense
quantities of timber have fallen before the axe and mattock to make way for
corn’.^77 In general, the countryside in these anciently enclosed districts was
neater, tidier, than it had ever been before.
figure 21 Landscape historians often emphasize the transformation wrought by
the enclosure of open fields and commons in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
but this period also saw a measure of ‘de-enclosure’ in many old-enclosed districts.
This map, drawn up in 1825, shows how one landowner (George Hall) planned to
modernize the landscape at Weston Colville in south eastern Cambridgeshire. The
plan was only partially executed.