The people of Tingewick, Buckinghamshire (England)
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Inclosure of common fields - background

The three field system had many disadvantages. Between the mid-18th and mid-19th century the system was ended in parishes all over the country. Instead, the common fields and pasture were enclosed and the land allocated to each villager who previously had common rights. These were generally copy-hold. Rent was paid to the landowner (New College, Oxford in the case of Tingewick) but the land was controlled by the copyholder - it could be sold or handed on as an inheritance, subject to a "heriot" which was originally the "best beast" owned by the dead copyholder.

In 1773 an Act of Parliament was passed permitting the enclosure of the common ground in Tingewick Parish. The enclosure award (held at the County Record Office) is dated 1775. This changed the parish dramatically to something very like the present landscape. Plotting the new enclosures on the 1888 O.S. map reveals that the field boundaries changed very little over the intervening 100 years - one or two fields were subdivided, one or two were joined together to make larger fields but the general outline remained. Some attempt was made to allocate the land in a sensible way - the newly-enclosed field west of Cow Lane was allocated to John Ginger who already held the land from there west to the corner of Church Street. The church was given 41 acres of Glebe land north and west of the existing Rectory Close. Revd John Risley himself leased 11 acres west of this land as far as the Stratford Road. Earl Temple (who leased both Manor Farm and the Mill) held a new sizable piece on either side of the Mill Road; virtually all the rest of that central section north of the village (188 acres) between the Water Stratford Road and the Mill Road became Tithe land. There was further Tithe Land west of the Barton Road - 37 acres north of the West Wood and 19 acres south of it. North west of the West Wood were nearly 24 acres "in trust for the poor".

Most of these new fields were of a good size, between 20 and 30 acres for the ordinary villagers. New College retained the woodland it had held before. There were no allotments described as such on the plan, although there were a few smaller strips of about � acre in the middle of the fields to the south-west of the village (north of West Wood) and south of the main road at Little Tingewick. There were however 60 acres allocated in the south of the parish for "Preston Inhabitants" and 11 acres at the edge of Pond Wood beside the Gawcott-Preston Bissett Road for allotments for Gawcott. The inhabitants of Gawcott were also given � acre north of the turnpike road near Dudley Bridge; and the inhabitants of "Staningo" were given 1� acres which are unfortunately not marked on the map but were probably close to the river south of Dudley Bridge as a 1790 map of the Marquis of Buckingham's land refers to Stanningo Moor and Stanningo Hill in this area northeast of the Gawcott Road.