(^96) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
involved the dissolution of the age-old distinction between permanent
arable and permanent pasture, and brought an end to the great mobile
folding flocks, making their daily walk from downs and heaths to fallows.
Sheep-corn villages had often had between a quarter and a half of their land
devoted to permanent grazing, but this was now drastically reduced. Where
this had comprised grass heath, in particular, the expansion of arable was
usually considerable: the thin deposits of sand were easily ploughed and
reclaimed. Arthur Young famously described how in north-west Norfolk:
All the country from Holkham to Houghton was a wild sheep walk before
the spirit of improvement seized the inhabitants... Instead of boundless
wilds and uncultivated wastes inhabited by scarce anything but sheep,
the country is all cut up into enclosures, cultivated in a most husbandlike
manner, well peopled, and yielding an hundred times the produce that it
did in its former state.^20
In biological terms the enclosure of heaths, downs and other lowland
commons was disastrous, rendering many plants once common locally
figure 19 The distribution of parliamentary enclosure in England, after Michael
Turner. Left percentage of land area in each county enclosed by act: open fields and
commons. Right: open fields only.
elle
(Elle)
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